Overview
- Two Kinds of Action
- Learning Through Pushing Hands
Two Kinds of Action
How should we take action in our lives?
A simple approach is to embrace a yáng-yīn continuum between hard and soft. Hard actions would be forceful, strong, and firm. Soft actions would be yielding, gentle, and receptive.
The term for “hard” is gāng, 剛. It also means: “firm; strong; tough; rigid; barely; exactly.” It shows a knife, 刂, slicing through a net, 岡.
The word for “soft” is róu, 柔. It also means: “flexible; supple; yielding; pliant. The sign for tree, 木, provides the meaning while the glyph, 矛, suggests the pronunciation (happens to mean a spear or lance).
The fastest way to understand this is to practice Tàijíquán, especially Pushing Hands, Tuīshǒu. 推手. The key idea is that we need both hard and soft. One is not better than the other and we can’t be effective unless we alternate between them.
However, every culture gave more credence to the hard. Especially in military matters and fighting, hardness seemed like the key to victory. That’s why the Dàodéjīng gave special emphasis to extolling the soft. Here are two examples:
柔弱勝剛強
Soft and delicate overcome firm and strong.
—Dàodéjīng , chapter 36
弱之勝強, 柔之勝剛,
天下莫不知, 莫能行.
Weak overcomes strong.
Soft overcomes hard.
Everyone in the world knows that,
yet none can practice it.
—Dàodéjīng , chapter 78
Learning Through Pushing Hands
In practicing Pushing Hands, we yield as the opponent advances. Once the opponent has reached the maximum extension, they cannot continue any farther. They have reached their limit. Perhaps that’s another allusion in the term Tàijí: they have come to their supreme limit. At that point, one must change immediately and become assertive. After all, we hae also reached our supreme limit in retreating. So just as our opponent must withdraw, we advance.
When the opponent has retreated to their upmost, that’s also the time when they are most vulnerable. If we have advanced correctly and if we add a slight amount of force, we will push them beyond their supreme limit and therefore prevail. This is called: “Four ounces deflects a thousand pounds.”
This same principle can be extrapolated to daily life. We can learn to be tremendously effective, preserve ourselves, and cope with any situation simply by understanding hard and soft.