Progress, Line 5

The fifth line is the hexagram arriving. Legge's translation says that all occasion for repentance disappears, instructs the subject not to concern himself about whether he loses or gains, and states that to advance will be fortunate and in every way advantageous, while the commentary on the image adds that the movement affords ground for congratulation. It is the most unreserved good fortune in the figure, and the condition attached to it is an attitude rather than an action.

The position is the ruling seat of the whole hexagram, a yielding stroke at the centre of the upper trigram Li, the sun. By the ordinary rule a soft line in an odd place is incorrectly placed, and Progress does not care, because what the fifth line of this figure has to do is shine rather than exert. The judgement of the hexagram describes a prince given horses and received three times in a day, and this is the line that judgement belongs to.

The instruction about loss and gain carries the substance. Every line below has been calculating something: whether trust would come, whether the advance was justified, whether the position could be held. At the point where advance is finally right in every direction, the text removes the calculation entirely, which is not indifference to outcomes but a recognition that a reckoning still running at this station is the one thing that could spoil it.

Six in the fifth place is the best reading in Progress and it asks the querent to stop keeping score. Repentance disappears, the advance is fortunate in every direction, and the single instruction is not to be concerned with losing or gaining. Somebody drawing this line is usually still auditing the situation out of a habit formed in harder positions, and the text is telling them the habit is now the only liability left in it.

The seat is the ruling one, a yielding stroke at the centre of the trigram of brightness, incorrectly placed by the ordinary rule and entirely unbothered by that. Progress is a figure about being seen and recognised rather than about forcing anything through, and softness at its ruling seat suits the work. The commentary offers congratulation, a word the classic uses sparingly, and it offers it for the movement itself rather than for anything obtained by the movement.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Li becomes Qian and the figure becomes Standstill, King Wen 12, heaven above and earth below with nothing passing between them. That is the sharpest caution the classic could attach to the best line of a hexagram, and it is well placed. Brightness at this seat is what keeps the exchange open, and an advance that hardens into pure strength at the top stops being progress and becomes a blockage.