Chapter 69 – ‘the enemy’ needs to be estimated, daily

“There is a saying among soldiers:

i dare not make the first move but would rather play the guest;

i dare not advance an inch but would rather withdraw a foot.

This is called marching without appearing to move,

Rolling up your sleeves without showing your arm,

Capturing the enemy without attacking.

being armed without weapons.

There is no greater catastrophe, than underestimating the enemy.

By underestimating the enemy, I almost lose what I value.

therefore when the battle is joined,

The underdog will win.”

—-

That’s obvious, common sense, isn’t it? Doesn’t everybody do that?

Everyday we experience a taste of losing something we value, of having a weaker connection than what we would like, with something or someone we love.

But that is life isn’t it, just part of being human, we can never overcome that, can we?

If we act as though there is nothing we can do about it then we are underestimating the power of our enemy, along with the tragic dimension of the likely consequences.

So, what is our ‘enemy’ here?

This enemy comes in many disguises. It might be our emotions threatening to rule every choice that we make, or it might be our exaggerated confidence in our ability to overcome the unknown, to overcome that which can not be overcome.

Through science can’t we eventually know everything, and easily explain everything?

After about 50,000 years of known human existence we haven’t managed to, so we don’t know, may be we will, but the real question is how do we deal with what we don’t know?

Lao Tzu is always pointing us to a non-verbal language, a non-verbal way of knowing. “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” is the first sentence and it puts us in the picture immediately – the picture of not knowing, the picture of exploring spirit-wisdom and letting go of words.

Former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, gave up drinking when he entered politics. He was painfully aware of how badly he behaved when he drank too much. He was also painfully aware that he could not easily stop himself from drinking too much. For this reason, he refused to be at risk of embarrassing his country and his office. This is one of many public examples of a person successfully estimating their enemy, and thereby gaining what they value.

The teenage mind tends to have difficulty acknowledging the enemy within. As adults, we may or may not be practiced in acknowledging the enemy, but that does not mean we are always vigilant in our response to it. We surround ourselves with intellectual and material certainties to provide the illusion of comfort and control, and still we keep losing that which we value. One of the best forms of vigilance is to set ourselves simple disciplines to follow in our daily lives, rules to live by. School or work often provides a framework, but over time we each need to discover and nurture a more personal and relevant regime.

By astutely identifying and estimating the strength of our enemy, we are in a much stronger position to gain what we value. This is true for every human being, and it is this type of wisdom that makes Lao Tzu’s writing of such eternal value.