Water, Flexibility and the Tao Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Water, Flexibility and the Tao - Essay Example This refrain of the Tao Te Ching holds up water as a model for human flexibilty and adaptiveness. Water, it says, is gentler than any components in its way, but then it breaks down those components with its very delicacy. This is valid in nature, obviously. Water transforms rocks into sand, making delicate what is difficult. Numerous things break up in water, when all the water can do is stream around those components. Water respects anything in its manner, a wonder effortlessly observed by any mountain stream. Water respects a stone in its manner, streaming around it. Along these lines the â€Å"gentle defeats the rigid,† and the water discovers its way to the ocean without being halted by stones or fallen trees. As the Tao says, everybody has seen this, yet few can make this fact work for themselves, in their own lives. This trouble comes from the human propensity to coordinate our own activities, and can be unraveled by a comprehension of the Tao as the common state to whic h things can return. In a critique by the Center for Taoist Thought and Fellowship, the author proposes that individuals misjudge this refrain, feeling that being adaptable like water implies being powerless. Nonetheless, the vast majority don't see the little bits of hardness that are in water. â€Å"It isn't the water which assaults the hard and solid, it is the infinitesimal bits of hard and solid suspended in the water which do the job.† This proposal gives the stanza another significance, permitting the peruser not to be exclusively delicate however to permit their delicateness to encompass a ground-breaking hardness.