Biting Through, Line 2

Where the opening line met a fault that had not yet moved, the second meets one that offers no resistance whatever. Legge's translation gives a figure biting through soft flesh and going on to bite away the nose, and then declares that there is no error. Two things are happening in one image. The flesh is soft because the offender yields at once, and the vanished nose belongs to the punisher, who has been carried by the very ease of the work past the point the offence actually asked for.

The hexagram treats punishment as a means of clearing an obstruction, and an obstruction that gives way immediately removes the friction that would otherwise regulate the force applied to it. That is the whole hazard of this position. Resistance teaches a judge how hard to press; its absence teaches nothing, and the bite continues under its own momentum after the obstruction has already gone.

A yin stroke correctly occupies this even position, and it is central within the lower trigram Zhen, which is why the excess pictured here does not become blame. Centrality supplies the corrective the image itself lacks, so the overshoot is recognised and stops. The line is not saying that going too far is harmless. It is saying that a properly placed and central judge notices the overshoot, halts it, and is therefore not held at fault for the momentum that an unresisting case produced.

As a changing line this stroke warns a querent about the specific trap of an easy win. Whatever is being corrected, contested or set right has folded immediately, and the danger is no longer the opposition but the querent's own momentum. The image of biting so readily that the nose is lost describes force applied after the need for it has ended, and readings landing here often concern an argument already conceded, an apology already offered, or a concession already granted, which the querent is still pressing.

The line is unusual in granting no error to a situation it has just pictured as excessive. That grant is conditional on the centrality the stroke actually holds, correctly placed and central within the lower trigram Zhen, so a querent should read it as available rather than automatic. It is extended to someone who catches the overshoot and stops, not to someone who continues on the grounds that the text promised no fault.

Practically the counsel is to name the point at which the matter is finished, and then honour it. Compliance that comes quickly deserves to be met by a correction that ends quickly. Where the first line advised proportion before anything had moved, this line advises knowing when to stop once everything has, and a querent who cannot answer the question of what would count as enough is being shown exactly why that answer needs settling now.