Activity

Silk

A fine, strong, soft lustrous fibre produced by silkworms in making cocoons and collected to make thread and fabric.

Silk is strong and soft both. If you are strong then only you can be vulnerable, soft.

That’s how it is: when you are really vulnerable you feel stronger, not weaker. If you are stronger, you will feel vulnerable. Only a weak person remains closed, out of fear. A strong person is open, open to all: open to death, open to all kinds of winds, open to light and darkness, to the friend and to the foe. A strong man is open, vulnerable, and a vulnerable man is strong. If vulnerability brings the idea of weakness, then it is not vulnerability. They look alike but they are not. A weak person cannot be vulnerable, that is impossible: the weak cannot afford it. It is a great luxury to be vulnerable.

As your strength grows so will your vulnerability; as your vulnerability grows so will your strength. At the highest peak of strength one is like a child…delicate, like a rose flower. It looks paradoxical but that is how it is. That’s what Lao Tzu means when he says to become waterlike, not rocklike, because water is strong yet vulnerable. The rock looks strong but is weak, that’s why it is closed. It is not fluid. It is afraid: it cannot afford that much risk. So when water and rock come in conflict, logic would say that water will be defeated, but life decides just the opposite.