Exhale (Tao Te Ching 36)

36.

If you want to exhale, 

first take a deep breath.

If you want to relax, 

first tense your muscles.

If you want to clear your mind

first notice your frantic thoughts.

If you want to receive,

first give. 

This is how to perceive 

the light that’s hidden 

amid the shadows.

Flexibility can overcome rigidity 

and gentleness can conquer force.

So, don’t try to pull Leviathan 

from the sea with a fishhook.

In state craft,

remember to play your cards

close to your vest.

Written Reflection

In this chapter we are seeking to capture Lao Tzu’s application of the main lessons for learning to surf the Tao. To do so, we took some liberties. But these are liberties common to something many great sages have done over the years: translate the transcendent into very immanent and ordinary things and describe the ordinary in sublime, transcendent language. 

Here, exhaling refers contracting whereas inhaling refers to expanding. These pairs of opposites are important for understanding the flow of the Tao in many aspects of life. We are envisioning a chapter best read on one’s back, perhaps even on a yoga mat, conscious of breath. Thus, tensing your muscles to help them relax—a valuable old trick—makes a lot of sense, though it ought not be understood to be precisely the sort of pairing the original Chinese conveys. 

When in prayerful and meditative states, many seekers past and present have found their random thoughts distracting. Here, instead of trying to push such thoughts out, Lao Tzu advises us to take notice then move on. Again, that wasn’t the only or the big umbrella meaning but it definitely is consistent with the principle.

Leviathan and the fishhook is from Job 41:1: “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” It is part of God’s response to the suffering existential cries of Job. It is not an easy response to understand. At first, it seems to be a cruel deity telling a suffering little creature: My answer to your pain is that I’m really powerful, big and creative and you’re suffering is insignificant compared to the important stuff I’m up to.  

Read that way, God is hardly more worthy of worship than the Satan character, to whom we are introduced at the beginning of this book of the Hebrew Bible. But there is another way to read this: mystically. The artist-philosopher who opens this interpretation up brilliantly is the filmmaker Terrence Malick, whose Tree of Life (2011) visually answers a grieving parent’s question—Why God Why?—by showing the immense beauty of the cosmos and its biological manifestations on earth. We recommend at least watching that scene and taking in the musical score, which you can watch here. 

When experienced, the answer needs no further conversation. But shortly after, the mystic who’s glimpsed the beatific vision—such as the vision of Julian of Norwich who had faced down a world ravaged by war and the Black Death but yet interpreted her mystical experience as a message  That all shall be well, and that all manner of thing shall be well—can sometimes become embarrassed that they thought such an intimate taste of bliss could justify all the tears of those in torment. Rationally, it seems immoral to concede that aesthetics could be the answer to the philosophical problem of evil. Nonetheless, for those who have met the Presence even just once, it is hard to deny that there is enough joy in a hazelnut to quench the fires of a thousand hells.

Now, once we realize this, we also must reckon with the fact that the depth of chaos, pain, sin, and despair is much, much further down than we like to think. And this is why Lao Tzu’s basic answer to this question of learning defense against the dark arts, is to not mess with the chaos monsters in the first place. Don’t try to bring out the deep magic, is the main advice. Don’t play your cards out in the open because, even if cruelty isn’t ultimately as powerful as love, it can stir up pretty intimidating monsters. We may eventually need to stir up medieval dragons, but we ought to avoid waking such beasts without reason. 

There’s an invisible reality out there that some have called magic. Sometimes it’s best not to disclose how magic works.