Tending the Roots of Wisdom
Leave a step on the narrow path
What you give up is your own way back
Tending the Roots of Wisdom: where the path is narrow, leave a step
You are tight with everyone and tired either way. This asks why the book files giving way under making your own life lighter.
What actually happened?
One entry reads: where the path is narrow, leave a step for others to pass; where the flavour is rich, take three parts off and let others taste it. This is a method of great ease in going through the world. The last clause carries the weight. He does not call it a virtue. He calls it a method of ease, which means a way of making your own days lighter. Hong Yingming wrote in the Wanli years of the Ming, three hundred-odd entries on living among people.
Two people wedged on a narrow path, nobody passes
Giving a step is not surrendering the path, it is keeping the path usable. Whoever has to be first at everything wins each occasion and loses the next one, because the man opposite braces on sight from then on and everything easy turns into work.
Give half a step on the next narrow path, then watch whether that path is easier to walk six months later.
A method of ease names the motive
He does not say this is noble, he says it makes you comfortable. Enduring for somebody else's sake keeps a ledger and eventually presents the bill. Giving way so that you need not stay braced is finished the moment it is done. Same action, and only one of them lasts.
Before giving way, ask which one this is: for him, or so that you can stop holding yourself tight.
Three parts, not all of it
The instruction is three parts off, not hand it over. Whoever gives everything away lives on the other person's conscience, which is no steadier than having to be first. A step and three parts are measured amounts, and seven parts stay with you.
Put a number on it when you give way: how much this time, and what is still mine afterwards.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: everything with people has gone tight, and you are either taking every inch or giving every inch.
Ask first: is this path actually too narrow for two? Is this step for him or for me? Three parts, or all of it?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as give way in all things — he said three parts, and whoever retreats to the end is living on somebody else's conscience; and calculating each concession puts the tightness straight back.
Lines to keep
Where the path is narrow, leave a step for others to pass.
He calls this a method of ease, not a virtue.
Whoever gives all of it away lives on another man's conscience.
Same situation, other people are asking
Neither of us will be the one to back down.He meant it. Do I still let it go?Neither of us will give an inch and we both need to get past.He has gone quiet on me and I don't know what to say.It turned into a fight · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.