Influence, Line 2

The second station is where a body would ordinarily begin to move, and the text stops it. Legge's translation shows the subject moving the calves of his leg and gives evil, then reverses the outcome entirely on a condition: if he abides quietly in his place there will be good fortune. The commentary explains that through compliance with his circumstances there will be no injury. One line carries both verdicts, and which of them applies is settled by the person rather than by the situation.

Anatomically the calf is the part that commits a body to a step. A toe can stir without consequence, but calves that move carry the whole person forward. The hexagram is tracing an influence upward through a body, and this is the first station at which the impulse has enough purchase to produce an action, which is exactly why it is the first at which restraint is worth a verdict.

The stroke is yielding in an even seat, correct by the ordinary rule, and it holds the centre of the lower trigram Gen. Gen is the mountain, whose attribute is stopping. A correct central line inside the trigram of stillness is being asked to be what its own trigram already is, and the good fortune promised for staying put is therefore not passivity but agreement between a line and the figure it stands in.

Six in the second place gives a querent both possible outcomes and hands them the choice between the two. Moving brings misfortune, staying in place brings good fortune, and nothing else about the circumstances differs. A reading landing here is rarely about whether an attraction or an opportunity is genuine. It is about whether the person can decline to act on something genuine while it is still too early to act on it.

The commentary frames the successful version as compliance, meaning agreement with the conditions actually in force rather than submission to anybody. That distinction matters in practice, because the line is not counselling a querent to give up what they want. It counsels them not to walk toward it yet, on the ground that the movement itself, at this stage, is what would do the damage.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Gen becomes Xun and the figure becomes Great Preponderance, King Wen 28, a ridgepole bending under a weight its ends cannot carry. The transformation shows the cost of the refused movement rather than a reward for refusing it. Pressure that is not discharged accumulates somewhere, and the classic is candid that holding still in the second place is a load-bearing act with a load attached to it, not a comfortable one.