To yield: the art of retreat

The generals have a saying:
"Rather than make the first move
it is better to wait and see.
Rather than advance an inch
it is better to retreat a yard."

When two great forces oppose each other,
the victory will go
to the one that knows how to yield.
- Stephen Mitchell, from his 1995 translation of the Tao Te Ching

. . .

I have, above my desk, a little plaque that a subscriber sent to me twenty years ago. It says, “what sets your heart Free?” Then in a small font it says, “surrender.”

Years ago, in my interview of arctic explorer Will Steger, he said to me that in raising money to fund his expeditions, and surviving on the expeditions themselves, he follows the dictum, “Give in, give in but never give up.”

I find military strategy fascinating, despite the horror that results. I’ve read biographies of many of the major military leaders of the last two thousand years. One of my favorites is Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, known also as the “Delayer” or the “Cunctator.” He saved Rome from being overrun by Hannibal by employing the strategy of drawing his enemy into countless fruitless maneuvers and in the process exhausting them. He specialized in the art of retreat. He would muster his army on far off hilltops, and when Hannibal rushed over to engage, the Cunctator would disappear and then reappear miles away, behind Hannibal’s forces, where he cut off supply lines.

Similarly, the United States seems to have a strange habit of engaging in wars on the other side of the globe. There they win every battle, but lose every war. The Taliban had a saying, “They’ve got the watches, but we’ve got the time.” Similarly, George Washington used these tactics against the British, the Vietnamese against the French, and later the Americans, the Russians against Napoleon, Sam Houston and the Army of Texas against the Mexicans. Castro started with 160 men. After directly confronting Batista’s army of 30,000, he was left with twelve. Shifting tactics, he wore Batista down.

This philosophy of bending, not breaking, of yielding, of being like water not like rock, is a central tenet of Taoism. Sun Tzu's The Art of Warstates that "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting".

The art of retreating in order to exhaust one’s enemy, to gradually sap their morale, has shaped history.

The Tao Te Ching returns to this image again and again — water wearing stone, the valley that outlasts the mountain, the open hand that holds more than the fist. Yielding is not passivity; it is the patience of something that knows its own nature. Zen teachers return to this same paradox: the bow that bends does not break; the student who empties herself learns. Strength, in both traditions, is less a possession than a quality of attention — a willingness to wait, to give ground, to trust what endures.