Tao Te Ching, chapter 68
Mar 26th, 2008 by spaceagesage
Another Tao Te Ching passage that has me thinking these days is number 68. This chapter is about non-striving and non-contenting, even in what are normally adversarial situations. The passage reads:
A good soldier is never aggressive;
A good fighter is never angry.
The best way of conquering an enemy
Is to win him over by not antagonizing him.
The best way of employing a man
Is to serve under him.
This is called the virtue of non-striving!
This is called using the abilities of men!
This is called being wedded to Heaven as of old!
As a third degree black belt who has taught many students over the years, this idea of non-striving in a self defense situation at first seemed counter-intuitive and counter productive. But recently I have realized conflict is quite often a state of mind. For example, if I see myself pitted against adversaries, valiantly trying to hold my ground against those who disagree with me, and waving a flag that reads, “Victory only through dominance,” I will not value non-striving because it is striving that would give my life meaning and a framework.
There is an old Yiddish phrase that goes, “If you are out to beat a dog, you are sure to find a stick.” If I live my life this way, I am always looking for the negative. It would be like having conflict as a default setting on my outlook on life. If that is the case, the world becomes them vs. me. All my viewpoints get filtered through the glasses of doubt, mistrust, and wariness.
Chapter 68 is about living a life free of conflict. Like a willow bending in the wind, a person moves with life instead of against it. Like water flowing in a river, a person travels with the current instead of fighting it. I have found that conflict or resistance or opposition causes an equal and opposite reaction in the other person. Chapter 68 is about neutralizing that reaction.
For example, my husband knows I am the more verbally contentious of the two of us. He rarely argues back at me in a “tit for tat” or “toe to toe” way. Instead, he listens and then gently asks a question that usually deflates — not my ego and not my argument — but my desire for conflict. It is like trying to drill a punch into a heavy bag and poof! the bag disappears, and I fall on my face looking sheepish.
In a self defenses situation, Chapter 68 works to help me avoid the event because I am not looking for a fight and I am not looking like a victim. Should someone attack me, I would use humor, distraction, and anything else that comes to mind (Does your mama know you are out attacking people?!), and then if combat is necessary, it would erupt in a flash and subside as quickly. Like a wall of water in a flash flood rushing powerfully down a creek bed, the action would simply take place and then be over. There would be no coming from a state of conflict, no puffed up ego, no opposition allowed to exist — just sudden and overwhelming victory.
I often interpret the paradoxes in the Tao Te Ching as encouragement to trust one’s instinct instead of relying solely on the intellect that’s often anticipating and calculating.
99ppp — Thanks for the comment. Yes, instinct, or as I call it intuition, opens the doors to responding with intention rather than reacting with aggression, anger or the antagonizing energy talked of in the Tao. It will be the subject of a future post.
act with strong force, but not brute power