Following (Sui)

Following (Sui), also identified as Hexagram XVII, presents following not as mere obedience but as a flexible relation in which people may follow others or be followed themselves. Its promise of great progress and success is conditional: conduct must remain firm and correct, so that adaptation does not become selfishness, misplaced attachment, or a threat to legitimate authority.

Meaning and Conditions

The hexagram’s general judgment links its favorable prospect directly to right conduct: under its conditions there can be great progress and success, but firmness and correctness are advantageous, and only then is error avoided. The accompanying explanation grounds the image in social responsiveness. When harmony and satisfaction prevail, people are willing to follow; they will not readily follow those with whom they have no confidence or contentment. The idea therefore covers both sides of influence—following another and attracting followers—and the same standard of propriety governs each.

The resulting flexibility is a source of strength, not a license to yield indiscriminately. The hexagram’s favorable judgment depends on whether changing one’s course or gathering adherents serves what is proper. Its lines test that condition in different relationships: between a leader and those below him, between a minister and ruler, and between a person’s immediate preference and a more worthy guide.

The Six Lines: Changing Course and Choosing Whom to Follow

The first line, strong and correctly placed at the base of the figure, shows a person changing the object of pursuit. Though this change might seem to unsettle an existing course, the line’s strength and proper position make it auspicious if firmness and correctness are maintained. The person goes beyond his own gate to seek associates and thereby achieves merit. The commentary reads this outward movement as public-spirited: he is not confined to private or selfish considerations.

The second line gives the opposite example. Its subject clings to the little boy and lets go the man of age and experience. The commentary explains the choice through the lines’ relation: the second line’s proper correlate is the strong fifth, but instead of waiting to follow that worthy counterpart, it attaches itself to the line immediately below. The text leaves the bad omen implicit; the commentary makes the error legible as a preference for the near and lesser over the proper guide.

The third line also turns away from the first, but follows the strong line above it, reversing the second line’s course and producing a different result. Yet the third line is weak, and the fourth is not its proper correlate. Its choice is therefore not given the unqualified approval accorded to the first line’s public-minded search for associates: the commentary treats the conclusion as a caution. Following can be better directed than in the second line without thereby becoming wholly secure.

Leadership, Loyalty, and the Outcome

The fourth line is strong and occupies the position of a great minister beside the ruler in the fifth. Its strength gives it the capacity to attract adherents, but that very following carries political risk: a minister’s personal following may injure the ruler’s supreme and sole authority. The line avoids error and misfortune only through sincere loyalty. Influence is thus shown as an obligation as well as an advantage; the minister must not turn service into a rival center of power.

The fifth line, also strong and in its correct place, has the second line as its proper correlate. Their relation supplies the auspicious image: the ruler and the corresponding figure below him are joined in a fitting alignment. This contrasts with the second line’s choice to cleave to the lesser line beneath it, making the hexagram’s judgment depend not simply on whether someone follows, but on whom they follow and whether the relation is properly ordered.

At the top, the hexagram reaches its ideal in sincerity firmly held and bound fast. The image is of the king presenting offerings on the western mountain. The commentary identifies that mountain as Mount Qi, at the foot of which the house of Zhou had its original settlement in 1325 BC. It also notes that the title of king in this line places the setting at least in the time of King Wu, rather than King Wen. The closing image extends sincere adherence beyond relations among people to spiritual beings; the movement from changing one’s pursuit at the first line to steadfast commitment at the sixth gives the hexagram its full arc.

Interpretation and Translation

The text belongs to a larger structure in which King Wen interprets each hexagram as a whole, while the Duke of Zhou treats its lines individually through symbolic illustrations and judgments about good or bad fortune. The account of Following’s whole judgment is meant to accord with the combined significance of its six line readings. Its political distinctions—seeking associates, choosing a guide, serving beside a ruler, and maintaining the ruler’s authority—show how a compact divinatory text can also be read as an essay on social conduct.

The translator describes the difficulty of rendering such material as more than a problem of vocabulary. In his account, Chinese written characters are symbols of ideas rather than representations of spoken words, and their combinations convey what a writer thinks rather than simply reproducing what the writer would say. A translator must therefore seek the scope of the thought rather than attempt a literal version, while still expressing the original meaning as exactly and concisely as possible. Parentheses mark words supplied to make that thought intelligible in English. This method matters to Following because its judgments and line images acquire their force through relations among the hexagram’s name, its lines, and their positions—not through any single image taken in isolation.