If a branch is too rigid, it will break. Resist, and you will perish. Know how to yield, and you will survive.

Strength should always be complimented by softness. If you resist too much, you will break. Thus, the strong person knows when to use strength and when to yield, and good fortune and disaster depend on whether you know how and when to yield.

You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless.

Develop flexibility and you will be firm; cultivate yielding and you will be strong.

If you play a game where scrap pieces of glass are at stake, you will play skillfully. If your expensive belt buckle is at stake, you'll start to get clumsy. If it's your money that's at stake, you'll fumble. It's not that you've lost your skill. It's because you are so flustered by things happening outside that you've lost your calmness inside. Lose your stillness and you will fail in everything you do.

There was a man whose only son died of a sudden illness. He did not mourn for his son, nor was he sad about it. His friends were curious about his behavior, so they asked him, "Your only son is dead. You should be heartbroken. Why do you act as if nothing had happened?"

The man replied, "Before my son came, I had no son. I was certainly not heartbroken back then. Now I have no son. Why should I be heartbroken now?