Return, Line 5

Dignity enters the hexagram at the fifth position. Legge's translation calls this the noble return and states that there will be no ground for repentance, a formula slightly different from the opening line's promise: not that repentance is unnecessary because the fault was small, but that nothing remains to repent of because the return has been made completely.

The quality named here is self examination. This is the central line of the upper trigram Kun, the earth, and although a yielding stroke stands in an odd place, incorrect by the letter of the rule, centrality carries the position entirely. Commentary connects the nobility of the return to honesty with oneself: the person represented does not soften the account, does not distribute the blame, and does not require anyone else to move first. Having looked squarely at what went wrong, they turn without conditions.

Set against the third line's repeated slipping and the fourth line's solitary turn, this is the return that finally holds. It is generous rather than grudging, and the phrasing, no ground for repentance, describes a settled state rather than a narrow escape. Here is Return at its ruling place, showing what the hexagram looks like when its movement is carried all the way through to the end.

A querent drawing this changing line is being asked to make the return generously and to make it entirely their own. The promise that no ground for repentance will remain is conditional in practice on the self examination the tradition reads into this position: a partial account, one that keeps a share of the blame in reserve for somebody else, does not produce the settled state the text describes.

This is often the most demanding line in the hexagram to act on, because nothing external is forcing it. Central in the upper trigram Kun, the line carries authority, and authority makes an honest admission costlier and more consequential than it would be lower down the figure. The reading tells a querent in such a position that the cost is worth paying, and that the completeness of the accounting is precisely what removes the residue an incomplete one leaves behind.

Read against the lines below it, this position supplies what none of them could. The first turned back quickly, the second followed good company, the third kept slipping, the fourth walked away alone. The fifth simply finishes the movement, without drama and without reservation, and the absence of anything left to repent afterwards is the plain result of having addressed all of it.