In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength but by?

Question

perseverance. ?

Answer 1

by softness.

The soft always overcomes the hard. The soft is alive, the hard is dead. The soft is flower-like, the hard is rock-like. The hard looks powerful but is impotent. The soft looks fragile but it is alive. Whatsoever is alive is always fragile, and the higher the quality of life, the more fragile it is. So the deeper you go, the softer you become, or the softer you become, the deeper you go. The innermost core is absolutely soft.

Answer 2

Why does it have to be confrontation. I would have thought for the rock it was more of a journey, If the stream is moving the rock along the stream bed gradually. I suppose there is always the risk for the stream that if the rain is very heavy then it will lose the rock through brute strength of the down pour washing the rock out of the stream bed and to another place out of reach. Floods always push things away, only for the water to dissipate. And then the rock would stand in the warmth of the sun.

Answer 3

Perseverance or persistence. I follow this: “In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins; not through strength, but through perseverance.”

Answer 4

Perseverant though they may be, streams or rivers age. When young, they run in a straight line from source to some nearby lowpoint basin where water can gather. But as the stream ages, the gradient along its path becomes less steep, shallower. The action of the stream itself, in carrying debris from the higher to the lower points along its course, ensures this.

As the gradient lessens, the stream begins to meander. Could you call this the rock's revenge?

The path of a meandering stream looks like a sine curve. It is, in one word, sinuous.

You can learn more from the link below, courtesy of West Virginia University,

Among other tidbits, you can learn that there is a constant mathematical relationship between the width of the sine-waves and the width of the river's channel, and that relationship is one of startling simplicity. The wave is 6.5 times the width of the channel. λ = 6.5W

Why? I'm not clear on why its 6.5 rather than some other number. Should we be looking for a trigonometric reason or a geological reason? I'm not even clear from the discussion in that source whether 6.5 is a true invariant, or whether that is an average figure, allowing for whatever fluctuations soil quality might cause. Would soil quality cause fluctuations in the wave/channel ratio?

I'll defer to the wisdom of any hydrologists out there. In the mean time, this seems to me valuable as a striking example of the relationship between numbers and the world they either describe, explain, or (if you're a Pythagorean) the one they constitute.

Answer 5

Lacking in form. The riddle is that there is a confrontation but Taoist philosophy (from which your riddle springs) does not beleive in dualism. It's an entire whole that defines eachother rather than works against eahother in balance.

The stream also cannot "win" since it never tried to assert a form though, and all forms "tire" then all comes back to and springs from the Tao or formlessness.

Answer 6

And he is th eimmovable rock, as high and broad and immovable as a mountain, and then the hot running stream that gushes down along its ravines and labrynths, ever moving, and then I look to see he is as vast as the sky encompassing th eenitire planets and the universe, and yet he is as a drop in hi sown ocean, a fallen tear from his own eye...and he is life and the living, the seeker and the sought, th ejourney and the goal.....He Is..

Answer 7

why is there confrontation?

cant they be friends??

maybe they have a pact where the stream always flows on top and the rocks settle on the bottom

=]

Answer 8

The Romans had a proverb, which translated into English as "Constant dripping on a stone" - sorry I can't remember my Latin - which embodied the same sentiments, that perseverance can achieve ends far in excess of strength.

Answer 9

As applied to the human condition,
The person who emulates the stream overcomes adversity(the rock) by flexibility .I know most will say perseverance but truthfully and from my own experience being willing to take a new path if the way is blocked ,If you cant go through it, go around or over or under.go with the flow.he has the power to choose his path.

The person who emulates the rock is not flexible, He veiws the stream as adversity and unwilling to take a risk or change ,he sits still in the path while life (the stream) rushes around him or over him and eventually wears him down .he has surrenderd his power to choose his path.

Peace><>

Answer 10

The water is alive, flowing, and better able to adapt to it's surroundings, the rock is fixed, solid, and hardly able to move. The more flexible one is, the greater the ability to adapt to one's surroundings. So you see, it's not about fighting, it's about surrender. By being fluid you have more strength than by holidng oneself in a fixed pattern.

Betsy