To Grow from Yielding

The most yield­ing thing in the world
  will over­come the most rigid
The most emp­ty thing in the world
  will over­come the most full
From this comes a les­son —
  Stillness ben­e­fits more than action
  Silence ben­e­fits more than words

—Verse 43, Tao Te Ching

Sometimes, tem­per­ance is the great­est weapon.

When some­one attacks you with words or tries to make you feel any less than your­self, you mere­ly need acqui­esce.

In doing so, you dis­arm them. You rob them of their only weapon — anger — and their words lose all mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance.

Tai Chi, as the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Taoist philoso­phies, fol­lows the same idea.

Then you will under­stand the flow of inter­nal pow­er, and, hav­ing repeat­ed­ly prac­ticed and refined your tech­nique and explored your own aware­ness, you can use and con­trol your inter­nal pow­er at will.

The T’ai Chi prin­ci­ple is as sim­ple as this: yield your­self and fol­low the exter­nal forces.

—Waysun Liao, The Essence of T’ai Chi

When your oppo­nent expands, con­tract. Create a void in your stance, and let them fill that void. By absorb­ing your oppo­nen­t’s ener­gy, you reduce it to noth­ing.

No one proves them­selves more inane than one who match­es ener­gy with ener­gy, force with force.

I’ve final­ly come to ful­ly under­stand such an idea. The the­o­ry made sense, but I nev­er put it in prac­tice, and prac­tice is what makes the under­stand­ing com­plete. It was only recent­ly that I had the chance to apply it. The old me was hot-head­ed with too much to prove. When faced with insult­ing, patron­iz­ing words, I would have react­ed, instead of fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of wu wei. The sit­u­a­tion was a test of myself, and I passed.

From this I’ve learned how much I’ve grown.

8 comments

  1. I thought you achieved that long ago when you men­tioned that the abil­i­ty to apol­o­gize is the sex­i­est trait a woman can have.

  2. Hahahah…I can’t believe you remem­ber talk­ing about that. Or maybe you read my old entry (how odd­ly imma­ture my words seem to me now).

    Apologies are cir­cum­stan­tial. In the case you bring up, both par­ties agree that one per­son did some­thing wrong. There’s learn­ing, growth involved. Very attrac­tive.

    In the case of the entry above, nei­ther par­ty agrees on who is wrong. There’s no point argu­ing; it won’t go any­where with such a dis­agree­ment. When one per­son attacks the oth­er, the best option is to yield.

    I’ve had enough rela­tion­ships to fig­ure out the for­mer, but it took an inter­est­ing and spe­cif­ic set of cir­cum­stances to force myself to learn the lat­ter.

  3. Hey Jeff,

    When some­one attacks you with words or tries to make you feel any less than your­self, you mere­ly need acqui­esce.

    In doing so, you dis­arm them. You rob them of their only weapon — anger — and their words lose all mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance.”

    More than that, you con­fuse them. It’s not what they expect and they are left with no obvi­ous way to con­tin­ue oth­er than to repeat them­selves. There are few more dif­fi­cult to launch a tirade against than those who are self-dep­re­cat­ing. It’s a tac­tic I’ve used on a num­ber of occa­sions (espe­cial­ly when the attack is com­plete­ly jus­ti­fied!). Also those who can adopt such a stance of humil­i­ty or who can laugh at their own inad­e­qua­cies are usu­al­ly well liked.

  4. Awesome step.

    It can be hard to wrap the head around. It match­es min­i­mal force with firm­ness. Detachment with car­ing. Not esca­lat­ing and not retreat­ing. It takes a long while to mas­ter that.

  5. No one proves them­selves more inane than one who match­es ener­gy with ener­gy, force with force.”

    On a kind of relat­ed mat­ter, aiki­do works off the same prin­ci­ple of not meet­ing an oppo­nen­t’s attack with yet force, but rather redi­rect­ing it in a man­ner that caus­es as lit­tle harm to both per­sons as pos­si­ble.

  6. @Dennis — I com­plete­ly agree. Sometimes peo­ple don’t expect humil­i­ty from oth­ers. When the attack is jus­ti­fied and you agree with what they say, they have noth­ing left with which to hurt you. Repeating them­selves becomes point­less, and they end up upset­ting them­selves more than you.

    It’s only recent­ly that I’ve real­ized how dif­fi­cult it is to deal with those who can’t laugh at them­selves. As a result of their inse­cu­ri­ties, they care about image and the opin­ions of oth­ers.

    @Pearl — You’re right. Taoism is about find­ing that bal­ance between action and inac­tion, though with­out pas­siv­i­ty, and fol­low­ing the Way. I still strug­gle with it in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions to this day.

    @CK — I learned a bit about that in my Tai Chi class and saw a demon­stra­tion once. It’s inter­est­ing to see how oth­er Oriental mar­tial arts relate to each oth­er.

  7. inter­est­ed in pow­er ‑vs- force?
    David Hawkins book goes into great detail about pow­er, real pow­er and how to ‘get’ it (more pre­cise­ly, how to reveal your own true power..it’s not some­thing to find, but some­thing revealed)

    No one proves them­selves more inane than one who match­es ener­gy with ener­gy, force with force.”

    this idea encap­su­lates his basic idea in his book. It’s about the lev­el of ener­gy you choose to live in. lower,negative ener­gy is based in force, high­er, pos­i­tive ener­gy pro­duces pow­er.

    glad you’ve cho­sen to embrace emo­tions, emo­tions tell us how we are thinking…are we think­ing good things? neg­a­tive things? bad things? then that’s the ‘pow­er’ you are ‘putting out there’ and THAT is the same thing you will attract (Law of Attraction …see movie: The Secret)
    Emotions are glo­ri­ous! and will not be denied!

    you’d love the read..though eck­hart tolle writes a bit more elo­quent­ly.

  8. Sounds like David Hawkins is a bit of a Taoist him­self, although I’m not sure that there’s the same con­cept of “neg­a­tive” or “pos­i­tive” ener­gy in Taoism, only more gener­ic “yin” and “yang” ener­gies.

    I agree that it’s def­i­nite­ly a choice, some­thing that must be found. I’m not so sure that there are any rules of attrac­tion though. For many peo­ple it may apply, but not for those who don’t fit into soci­ety’s stan­dards as nor­mal, who are the ones I’m nor­mal­ly attract­ed to.

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