tao te ching 78

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water.  Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong, nothing can surpass it.  This is because there is nothing that can take its place.

That the weak overcomes the strong

And the submissive overcomes the hard

Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put this knowledge into practice.

Therefore the sage says,

One who takes on himself the humiliation of the state

Is called a ruler worthy of offering sacrifices to the gods of earth and millet.

One who takes on himself the calamity of the state

Is called a king worthy of dominion over the entire empire.

Straightforward words seem paradoxical.

  

Submission, weakness, humiliation, calamity.  Like desolation, solitude and haplessness, who would want them?  The sage takes these on, not as woeful weights but as rightful fashions to navigate the way she must walk; they are the unfashionable fashions of the way, fashions the sage refashions in her navigations.

What is this knowledge that our reputedly powerful species contains but cannot enact?  Is it the suppressed knowledge of feebleness’ hidden powers?  How do we transform our incapacity into impossible practice?  It has already been thought and written and, having been thought and written, done:  through returning.

To speak truly is to reunite the contradictions of silence in words; to speak falsely is to verbally resolve—that is, to fragment—the inherent contradictions of our existence.

Dao sides with water over stone and in so siding offers sacrifices to the earth, the visible sphere of the empire.