Do the Tao Now
Go on a 24-hour fast. When you feel hunger pangs, switch your thoughts to gratitude for the eternal force that’s always with you. Warmly let your physical self know that it will be fed when the fast is over, then switch to the Tao self that’s unaware of hunger. Enjoy the different nature of the Tao self by concentrating on locating its energy flowing through your body. It will reveal itself—perhaps as contented, exhilarated, or blissful. Note the difference between how this feels compared with worldly pleasures.
36th Verse
Should you want to contain something,
you must deliberately let it expand.
Should you want to weaken something,
you must deliberately let it grow strong.
Should you want to eliminate something,
you must deliberately allow it to flourish.
Should you want to take something away,
you must deliberately grant it access.
The lesson here is called
the wisdom of obscurity.
The gentle outlasts the strong.
The obscure outlasts the obvious.
Fish cannot leave deep waters,
and a country’s weapons should not be displayed.
Living in Obscurity
A large part of your growing-up life lessons revolved around the words Notice me! You were taught that the more attention you received, particularly for being a “good little person,” the more status and approval you’d get from your peers (as well as the adults you knew). Become number one, you were told, earn that gold star, win that championship, get the best grades, become valedictorian, attain that letter sweater, gather up trophies, and so on. Such lessons were all about rising to the top of the crowd and evaluating yourself based on how you stacked up competitively with everyone around you.
When you change the way you think about your place in the great scheme of things, you’ll discover that “the wisdom of obscurity” allows you to eliminate competition from your life and retreat into quiet strength. In other words, Lao-tzu is asking you to take it easy and base your view on entirely new criteria. As you do, your world will begin to reflect a gentle, low-key soul who outlasts those who measure their strength by how much status they have compared to their peers.
This verse opens with the idea of understanding the dichotomous nature of the material world and then encourages you to become an astute observer of your life. Feeling belittled means that you must know what it’s like to be important; the idea of being weak grows out of having known what it’s like to feel strong. As one translation of the Tao Te Ching (The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner) reminds us:
He who feels punctured
Must once have been a bubble,
He who feels unarmed
Must have carried arms,
He who feels deprived
Must have had privilege . . .
Avoid the pitfalls of feeling weak, unimportant, stressed, or fearful by transcending the thinking that got you there in the first place. Keep in mind that if you feel weak, you must have had the opposite perception of being strong at least once. If you experience stress, you have an idea of what being unstressed is like. By becoming independent of the need to compare yourself and fit in, you choose the path that Lao-tzu calls “the wisdom of obscurity”—that is, you release your need to be more anything in the eyes of others.
Lao-tzu concludes this elegant verse with the metaphor of fish leaving the deep water—when they try to examine the surface and see the “big world” beyond those depths, the little guys no longer endure because they’re captured by a net. Hence, you find the great lesson of this 36th verse: Stay under the radar and you’ll outlast all who strive to be recognized. When you shift to this viewpoint, your desire for obscurity will surpass your need to be seen as strong and above everyone else—and you won’t end up all alone in your trophy room!
Here’s what Lao-tzu offers you from 25 centuries ago, when he dictated this enduring tome of wisdom:
Strive to know oneness by seeking awareness of opposites.
Make every effort to stay in a state of oneness in your mind. For example, if you’re tired, remind yourself that you know what being rested is like. Recognize the opposing feeling so that you can know both of them simultaneously. Do this with any sensation: If you’re depressed, weak, jealous, unloved—anything—the antithesis of what you’re going through is within your experiential framework. Seek the 36th Verse opposite feeling right in the moment and be at one with it in your mind, for this will provide you with a balanced sense of being at peace within yourself. This is oneness, wherein you entertain extremes and use your mind to be like the Tao, which never divides anything. How can oneness be broken apart? It would no longer exist if you could split it up.
Withdraw yourself and allow others.
Monitor your inclinations to compare yourself to others or to stay within the “system.” A system is designed to get you to behave just like everyone else, as it contrives to make comparisons determine your success or happiness. The Tao Te Ching urges you to seek obscurity: Draw little or no attention to yourself, and don’t ask to be recognized. Instead, allow, allow, allow.
Let other people flourish, waxing on about their strength and popularity. As Lao-tzu says, you must deliberately grant others the right to expand, but take
