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Leaving gracefully.
What may be called true authority is brought about first in bearing oneself with the correct etiquette and in making clear distinction between right and wrong, reward and punishment. If one will act in this way and be neither prideful nor intimidating toward others, the retainers and common people will not respect him simply out of fear, or despise or make light of him, and he will be endowed with a natural authority.
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
— Sun Tzu
An ordinary man is unable to see beyond Form. He is unable to under-stand Emptiness. When something appears, he says it has manifested itself. From the standpoint of enlightenment, we say it manifests itself even when it returns to Emptiness and can no longer be seen.
— Soho Takuan
Do many people stubbornly move up the path of their evolution like in a samurai legend about carps?
Carps are so persistent in their efforts that they swim up the stream and sometimes reach the spring source high in the mountains and turn into dragons after that.
Usually a person either progresses or regresses. You cannot be standing in the same place. Like Heraclitus said, no man ever steps in the same river twice. You cannot stop the flow of time. Each person has very small choice: either to move forward like a carp, or move down the stream of life, becoming only weaker, losing momentum, and get stuck in some cesspool to rot there and die spiritually even if their body has still many years of life left. Such people are like walking dead who waste the remainder of their physical existence without any meaning or progress.
The will to fight and to reach the mountain water source to become a dragon can change everything.
Perhaps this goal is unattainable, but it's a worthy one. What do you think?
Tatiana Berg, "Mentor's Words"
