To feel for finishing off activity is following the tao, but if we feel for making a new course of action it would be out of place.

Translators do not agree on the last line, making different sense of this basic idea that they have in common. Our intuitive feeling is normally looking for how to act in our circumstances, so a simple warning that we may be facing the wrong direction seems in keeping.

The single aim of completing activity will make the way clear for a new flow.

Three symbolizes transition, change. Change is what the journey is about and during it we may become polarized in choice and so become two and lose our wholeness, one. So if we are trying to be empty, and so whole and symbolically one, as well as choosing, which is symbolically two, we are three and we lose our wholeness, one. If, on the other hand, we are alone in our wholeness and do not choose we have the company of all things.

Accepting the life force is genuine decrease of separate self; we do not choose and it is choice that separates the one who chooses.

When we choose we increase what we choose and diminish others, but this increase in acceptance does not do this. If we have a direction we have no need to choose one so it is easier for us. Our home is where we identify and here we do not identify and so have no home, but if we are just part of the life force this is where people identify and we will appear to have followers.

With our life energy moving into an inactive phase, and having the feeling of difficulties we wish to get out of, we may be persuaded to push some activity to make things better; this is not going to be useful when we are in a state where we do not see our way very well.

The gossip comes from all those parts in us which think we can get out of difficulty by doing something but do not realize that the difficulty is an unawareness that we cannot help at present. Good fortune comes eventually because this state is itself part of change.

Here we become free of involvement in difficulty by a re-awakening of our intuitive feeling about our circumstances instead of trying to sort it out with our conflicting ideas.

Resolving a conflict of ideas is not the only way of dealing with it, although when we are in conflict it may seem so. We can simply return to our observing centre and cease to project any idea on what we experience. Kin are those who are related, and within our personal self the related parts which were in conflict do not blame each other, instead they change their way entirely (symbolized by the number 3 for change and hundred for the entirety).

Not taking sides in a conflict is sometimes quite difficult. Initially it is a hard course because participants within us wish to join in, but eventually it is rewarding as we understand more widely.

The middle way is the ancient virtue; it attains its ends because conflict is always temporary and fluctuating. If we are ruled by some identification (in service of a king) it is better not to further it now.

Here we are accepting a world active in conflict. As we accept it, we do not fight to resolve it.

Here we can see the conflict from outside and so do not take sides. We see that the argument is fruitless.

In this tao our feeling is closed to the “other” so conflict arises; here we recognize this closed feeling and see it as causing the conflict or as an important element in it.

There can only be conflict when views are narrow—when they are wide they overlap.

The active life energy emerging into this tao becomes conflict due to lack of insight. Here we accept this as the tao, as our way of inner being, but conflict as a way of being resolves nothing and pushes identity further into its identifying isolation. In a wide sense, we lose when in conflict, whether we win or lose the contest.

The situation in contest changes all the time and this (the number 3) takes our advantage from us. The gains are superficial and transitory.

As the top line of the hexagram is accepting this line, it is not we who see the life force as becoming active, it is itself returning to an active phase already and we do not have difficulty in making things anew.

Life force activity returns from a short journey, a short time away; there was not a great trough of inactivity to cause us regret and our normal urge to activity is in keeping with the tao, which brings harmony to our actions and is the great good fortune.

When we do not interpret the life force in feeling we are not separated from it by our selection; this is in keeping with the free flow we are in.

We react to the tao without fuss or stress. Whenever we can be one with the tao we are blessed with good fortune.

In this situation of finishing off a cycle of activity it is necessary to completely finish or there are remainders, karma is made which will still need expression; these retained forms are habit.

The cycles come and go and if we are slaves to our habits we repeat ourselves; this is the danger. No blame because in habit we cannot see ourselves.

Here we project ourselves less into outer activity in a tao which is the end part of a cycle of the life force; this has the effect of centring us, making us more one in ourselves.

By choosing the middle way, not identifying in the outer nor the inner, the multitude we are becomes a whole, returning alone is returning as one.

At the turning point where old activity of the life force is spent and new is about to arrive we remove our involvement from the old, now silent and gone. This is in preparation for a new cycle.

The nobleness of this return is symbolic of the withdrawal of self interest, of priority to the way we are feeling, allowing it to die away with a readiness to take on something new. As this opens out into new activity in the coming cycle there is no regret.

If we become less involved in the emerging tao when it is in an inactive phase we are likely to miss the next emergence of activity and be out of phase with it.

It is self-evident that if we do not recognize that we are at a turning point of the cycle and press on, we shall miss the changes that are taking place and all our responses will be inappropriate. We will be ruled by desire patterns of our already formed identity, so disaster is stated for the ruler (the identifying process is the ruler of identity). If the turning point of the cycle is completely ignored nothing can be done about it until the next turning point, a complete cycle away and symbolized by ten, the whole, and year, the cycle.