Tao Te Ching XXXVI

If you would have a thing shrink

you must first stretch it;

if you would have a thing weakened

you must first strengthen it;

if you would have a thing laid aside

you must first set it up;

if you would take from a thing

you must first give to it.

This is called subtle discernment.

The submissive and weak will overcome the hard and strong.

The fish must not be allowed to leave the deep.

The instruments of power in a state must not be revealed to anyone.

The Tao, to the exploitative, seems to exploit.  The people are straw dogs.  In order to suck the life from something, you must fatten it first.  Yet to the one who follows the way, the Tao ducks past morality’s comfortable words; she sidesteps slaves and masters with equal disregard, quite happily allowing them to feud on their various predictable battlefields.  Long before Nietzsche’s supposed revelations, she erects an alternative morality—neither a morality nor an erection but a dance that shadow-steps flesh’s peculiar moves.

One cannot exploit if one has neither desire to gain nor nothing to gain.  So the submissive and weak overcoming the hard and strong is no Christian morality—no advocacy of flagellation and blood; it is the recognition that worms will outlive humanity and that moist grass is trampled on yet thrives but dry grass is trampled on and snaps.

The sage is nimble, not committed to anything.  Nevertheless, she leaps on things for a ride, for this is what humans do and she is human.  She bends and laughs but does not snap; others walk on her and think they gain from her.  Yet she loses nothing for she has nothing but reflections to be lost.  And what is a reflection but something that can be given freely and yet never lost.  So all laugh—some because they think they gain, others because they do not think about gain.

Petty secrets are lost when they’re shared; great secrets can be shared yet remain secrets.  Everyone knows how to save the world yet no one does it.  The secret is not in the mind or the will, but in the belly.  If you become the stomach and don’t fear it, you become the secret that is freely shared yet always mysterious.