Verse 69

69.

There is an old saying:

“Rather than make the first move

it is better to wait and see.

It is better to retreat a foot

than to advance an inch.”

This is called

going forward without advancing,

pushing back without using weapons.

There is no greater misfortune

than feeling “I have an enemy”;

for when “I” and “enemy” exist together,

when you believe your enemy to be evil,

you destroy your three jewels

and become an enemy yourself.

When two great forces oppose each other,

the victory will go to the one

that knows how to yield and

that enters with the greatest compassion.

People often oppose us in life: agendas conflict, misunderstandings arise and many people behave with limited integrity due to their conditioning and the limitations of their personality.

But they don’t become “enemies”, as such, until we cast them in that role by creating a mental script and narrative about them in our minds. We then cease to see the being beneath the behaviour and see only the less-than-shining mental image we’ve formed of them. Dehumanisation is the one of the greatest evils in the world and it’s perpetrated by humankind all the time on a massive scale.

To ditch the story we spin in our minds is to see beyond the conditioned behaviour of our so-perceived enemy. Better still, to be able to recognise the spark of Tao shining within them, however dimly it might appear, is to end conflicts before they begin, using the most decisive and powerful of all weapons: compassion.