25 – Twenty-Five Wu Wang / Remaining Blameless
Thunder rolls beneath Heaven, as is its nature and place:
Sage rulers aligned themselves with the changing seasons, nurturing and guiding their subjects to do the same.
Exceptional Progress if you are mindful to keep out of the way of the natural Flow.
It would be a fatal error to try to alter its course.
This is a time of Being, not Doing.
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
This is thoroughly a matter of the heart.
If everything you attempt, no matter how carefully planned, ends in disarray, then examine your motives.
They are the cause of your predicament.
It isn’t that your motives aren’t pure — even the best intentions will fail under these circumstances.
What stymies you in this situation is that you have a motive at all.
Free yourself of all expectations, release any tenuous grip you may have, and roll with it.
This is totally out of your control.
There are higher powers and more elements affecting the outcome of this situation than you can imagine.
Get out of their way.
Six in the second place means:
Plow your field for a field well-plowed, not for possible harvests.
Clear the wasteland for land well-cleared, not for potential rich fields.
Such guileless enterprise can’t help but succeed.
If one does not count on the harvest while ploughing,
Nor on the use of the ground while clearing it,
It furthers one to undertake something.
‘Autumn Ploughing’ – E.R. Sturgeon (1920 – 1999)
We should do every task for its own sake as time and place demand and not with an eye to the result. Then each task turns out well, and anything we undertake succeeds.
38 – Thirty-Eight K’uei / Estrangement
Fire distances itself from its nemesis, the Lake:
No matter how large or diverse the group, the Superior Person remains uniquely himself.
Small accomplishments are possible.
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
You are working at cross-purposes with another.
The distance between you is very wide.
The gap can be closed, however, with no compromise of your integrity.
You are not adversaries in this case — just two persons addressing individual needs.
Ask yourself: are these needs mutually exclusive?
Is there common ground here?
Must there be one winner and one loser?
Could you become partners in seeking a solution that would allow for two winners?