2.  Dao flows like water. Water flows because it is empty.

3.  ‘Form is emptiness and emptiness is form’.  The Heart Sutra

4.  The transient and the ephemeral as well as the enduring share this emptiness.

5.  The Budha’s wisdom calls on humans to seek a ‘middle way’, while yielding to the extremes and taking from them. So, also, the Daoist vision includes yielding and appropriating as a form of genuine strength.

6.  Water seeks its own level.  Plants seek water.  The seeker of Dao becomes plant-like.

7.  1.Dao is tender and flexible (76.1)  2.Dao is beautiful and yielding (40.1)  3.The hidden (roots) support the visible (leaves), which return to the roots when they perish (16.2)  4.Dao is hidden nonbeing, the root to which all return (34.3).  5.The movement of Dao is seasonal and cadenced. Thus it is ‘great’ as in Summer, ‘disappearing’ as in Autumn, ‘faraway’ as in Winter, and ‘returning’ as in Spring (25.2)

8.  6.Dao is pliant; non-Dao is stiff and dead (76.1)  7.Dao is quiet (16.2)  8.Dao moves always at its own pace and, like plant, is always giving birth to itself (55.1)  9.The Daoist celebrates perpetual childhood (55.2)  10. Like water (as in Lispector’s Stream of Life), Dao yields, has depth, and flows around obstacles and is thus the greatest form of goodness. Through yielding it wins (78.1)