The Way And Its Power

So then, the whole conception of nature is as a self-regulating, self-governing, indeed

democratic organism.

But it has a totality.

It all goes together and this totality is the Tao.

When we speak in Taoism of following the course of nature, following the way, what it means

is more like this.

Doing things in accordance with the grain.

It doesn't mean you don't cut wood, but it means that you cut wood along the lines where

wood is most easy to cut.

And you interact with other people along lines which are the most genial.

And this then is the great fundamental principle, which is called Wu Wei.

Not to force anything.

I think that's the best translation.

It's often called not doing, not acting, not interfering, but not to force.

Seems to me to hit the nail on the head.

Like don't ever force a lock, or you bend the key or break the lock.

You jiggle until it revolves.

So Wu Wei is always to act in accordance with the pattern of things as they exist.

Don't impose on any situation a kind of interference that is not really in accordance with the

situation.

It would be better to do nothing than to interfere without knowing the system of relations that

exists.

It's terribly important then to have this feeling of the interdependence of every form

of life upon every other form of life.

How we for example cultivate animals that we eat, look after them and build them up

and see that they breed in reasonable quantities.

We don't do it too well as a matter of fact, especially troubles arising about supplies

of fish in the ocean.

All sorts of things.

But you have to see that life, that the so-called conflict of various species with each other

is not actually a competition.

It's a very strange system of interrelationship.

Of things feeding on each other and cultivating each other at the same time.

The idea of the friendly enemy.

The necessary adversary.

Who is part of you.

You have conflicts going on in your own body.

All kinds of microorganisms are eating each other up.

And if that wasn't happening you wouldn't be healthy.

So all those interrelationships, whether they appear to be friendly relationships as between

bees and flowers, or conflicting relationships as between birds and worms, they are actually

forms of cooperation.

And that is mutual arising.

You have to understand this as the basis, apply this not forcing anything, and you get

spontaneity.

A life which is so of itself, which is natural, which is not forced, which is not unduly self-conscious.

Now another term that is important, although I'm not aware that this word occurs in Lauser's

book, it's found in greater use at a much later time in Chinese thought, in a philosophy

that is called Neo-Confucian.

And it's also used in Buddhism.

But it is a very useful word for understanding the sort of order that all this constitutes.

It's the word "li".

And this means, originally, the markings in jade, or perhaps the grain in wood or the

fibre in muscle.

It is translated nowadays in most dictionaries as "reason" or "principle".

But this isn't a very good translation.

Joseph Needham suggested that "organic pattern" was an ideal translation for this word.

And so in the same way the foam patterns, the rock patterns, the patterns of vegetation

are once extraordinarily orderly, but they don't have an obvious order.

Nobody can ever pin it down, that's what I'd like to say.

You know that there is order there, there's something quite different from a mess, but

there's no way of really getting it.

Now in order to be able to paint that sort of way, or to live that sort of way, or to

deliver justice that way, if you were a judge, you have to have it innately.

You have to have an essential sense of "li", and there's no way of prescribing it.

This is the very devil for teachers.

Because you see, all our universities and schools are trying to teach creativity.

That's the great thing these days.

You know, and you hear at the Esalen, all sorts of people are giving courses and workshops

in creativity.

Now the trouble is this, if we found out a method whereby we could teach creativity,

and everybody could just explain how it was done, it would no longer be of interest.

What always is an essential element in the creative is the mysterious.

And so again and again in Taoist literature, you will find this character, Xuan, which

means the deep, the dark, it's like the black in lacquer.

The impenetrable, and yet the profound depth out of which glorious things come, but nobody

can see why.

This very much goes together with Tao.

When there's a place in the Lao Tzu book where he says that the spirit of the valley never

dies, well the spirit of the valley, the deep ravine, is this.

There's a poem which says that when the bird calls, the mountain becomes more mysterious.

You imagine for example you're in a mountain valley, and everything is very silent.

And suddenly a crow squawks somewhere.

You don't know where that crow is, and that little sound emphasizes the silence.

Silence becomes deeper and deeper.

Well this word is used for the kind of mysteriousness which that bird's call creates.

So these two words together are used in Japanese, the expression "Yuugen".

And "Yuugen" is a quality which the poet Soami, who was a great artist of the Noh plays, said

"Yuugen is to watch wild geese flying and be hidden in a cloud.

To watch ships sailing in the distance and to disappear behind a far off island.

To wander on and on in a great forest without thought of return."

Now all those things have in them, you see, an element of mystery.

There's a Chinese poem which puts it this way.

It is a poem written by a man who has gone to find a sage in the mountains.

And the sage has a little hut at the foot of the mountain and a boy there who is his

servant.

"I asked the boy beneath the pines.

He said the master's gone alone, herb gathering somewhere on the mount, cloud hidden, whereabouts

unknown."

And this also creates the mood of "Yuugen".

The hermit, you see, is a kind of "Yuugen" personality.

He's a very valuable person and a very wise person.

But nobody knows where he is.

And ever so many Chinese poems are concerned with the life of hermits, seeking after hermits,

and the wonder of hermits who totally disappear altogether.

There's this funny idea of the deep and the dark, the thing that is important just because

you can't quite understand it.

Now to Westerners, all that tends to sound rather hopeless.

You say, "If you can't tell us how it's done, what's the use?"

And that, you see, is because we have insufficient trust in ourselves.

We think that we'll never be able to do certain things unless we have instructions as to how

to do it.

This comes, of course, partly from our toilet training.

Mama gets anxious that it won't happen and starts making commandments about it.

And then you have to have courses.

One of the funniest stories I heard was somebody was in a hotel in Europe, in England somewhere,

and was going downstairs and suddenly there was a room, you know, where they have committee

meeting rooms, and there were a whole chorus of people saying, "We haven't today, but we

will tomorrow.

We haven't today, but we will tomorrow."

I said, "What on earth is that?"

Somebody said, "That is Dr. Kueh's constipation class."

The Taoist idea is not like that, you see.

Let it happen.

It will, trusting yourself, because your own organism fulfils these things spontaneously

of itself, and you don't have to force it.