Return, Line 2

Legge's translation calls the turn described in this second position the admirable return, and attaches good fortune to it without qualification or condition. Where the opening line was measured by distance, this one is measured by quality. Nothing here is difficult or costly; the return is simply well made, and the text does not trouble itself to explain why beyond calling it admirable.

Classical commentary reads the ease of it as a matter of company. This is a yielding line correctly placed in an even position and central to the lower trigram Zhen, and it rests directly above the single strong line that carries the returning light of the whole figure. Its virtue is not independent of that neighbour. It stays close to what is good, follows it willingly, and receives the good fortune of the movement without having had to originate the movement itself.

That dependence is nowhere treated as a weakness. Return is a hexagram about recovery after a dark time, and recovery is more often a matter of attaching oneself to something already turning than of turning entirely by oneself. The admirable return belongs to someone who recognised what was worth staying near, and the line credits that recognition as a genuine virtue rather than as an accident of position.

Drawn as a changing line, this second position counsels a querent to attach themselves to the person, group, or course already moving in the right direction rather than to strike out independently. The good fortune promised is unusually unhedged, with no warning and no condition attached, and the tradition explains that plainness by position: the line neighbours the one strong stroke that carries the hexagram's returning light, and draws its own soundness from that proximity.

For a reading this often means the answer is not original. The right course exists already, someone else is on it, and the querent's task is recognition and willingness rather than invention. Humility of a very ordinary kind is what the line asks for, the humility of following a good example without needing to improve on it or to claim it as one's own idea.

Central and correctly placed in the lower trigram Zhen, the line carries none of the peril the third position will describe and none of the isolation of the fourth. A reading landing here usually marks a straightforward moment: the way back is visible, good company is available on it, and the only thing likely to spoil the outcome is an insistence on going a different way for the sake of going one's own.