INTRODUCTION
The Effortless Mind
The experience of effortless mind is something we commonly attribute to athletes, artists, writers, poets, and philosophers. This state of consciousness is not bound by the limitations of the mind, but rather finds infinite expression and laserlike focus within the limited framework of our mental capacities and lives. We generally think of this mental state as being in the zone. We can sense this state when we watch a star athlete achieve the impossible or when a group of musicians improvise and feed off each other’s energy to create a rhythmic synergy that nourishes our ears and inspires our hearts. Being in the zone is also the state of sustained concentration required to write a book, as I am doing right now. And yet there is an intrinsic paradox to being in the zone: in all crafts, to be effortlessly in the zone requires focused and sustained effort without any intention to achieve effortlessness within the mind. The effortless mind of the craftsman, then, is evoked by skillful effort without the intention of achieving that end. It is as though the craftsman and the craft are essentially one. Their effort is actually effortless because it is devoid of a person “doing” it; it is just happening spontaneously of itself in harmony with everything else.
The ability to focus the mind for a sustained period of time evokes the state of being in the zone, which allows us to achieve the impossible. This occurs because the conscious mind shuts down to allow the wisdom of the unconscious mind and body to take over. Muscle memory takes over, while the sense of “you” doing the task has been reduced.
According to cognitive science, the analytical conscious mind, the ego persona, what you refer to as “you,” is located within the cerebral cortex, which covers the front of the frontal lobe of the brain. This part of the brain is known as the prefrontal cortex (PFC). It is a part of the brain that evolved later than many of the others in an effort to navigate through the increasing planetary obstacles we continually encountered. Cognitive science refers to the prefrontal cortex’s analytical function as “cold cognition” or “System 2.” Cold cognition is the cognitive control function of the mind, which gives us the ability to exert effort and discern between “this” and “that,” and which formulates our opinions of “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad” based on our own personal experience. In our modern world the cold cognitive aspect of the mind is constantly overemployed from the beginning of life through education and then throughout working life, where it is thought that if we continue to force our effort continually, we will achieve our desired result. But as we all surely know, this is hardly ever achieved, because our focus is constantly distracted by the bombardment of external stimuli.
This analytical, active part of our mind in the prefrontal cortex is physiologically expensive if it is not supported by the more primal regions of the brain that we associate with the unconscious mind. The function of the unconscious regions of the brain is known in cognitive science as “hot cognition” or “System 1.” Hot cognition is the function of our mind and body that is automatic, spontaneous, fast, effortless, mostly unconscious, and thought to be emotionally driven. Hot cognition is located within the earlier-developing primal regions of the brain and is associated with the unconscious. Its spontaneous and effortless function is what makes our head turn unconsciously when we see something beautiful in the environment, maybe a handsome man or ravishing woman, for example. And it can sometimes be a hindrance, as when we find ourselves unconsciously reaching for that piece of chocolate cake—a habit that arises from the way we evolved to seek sugar for momentary sustenance. On the one hand, hot cognition can produce all the miracles that spontaneously grow out of the mind and universe, and on the other hand it can lead us to being unhealthy (because there is an abundance of sugar that is constantly tempting us, for example). This is where the discernment of cold cognition is beneficial for our well-being.
The positive aspect of hot cognition is what drives those unconscious, spontaneous miracles achieved by many sports people; it is also what allows a musician to play her instrument without having to think about it. It is what allows artists, no matter whether they are painters, writers, musicians, gardeners, or athletes, to express the unconscious wisdom of the universe that lays dormant within our hot cognition. In all of these examples, the cold cognition within the prefrontal cortex that gave birth to the sense of “I,” the personality, has shut down to allow the effortless flow of the universe to come to life. As a result, none of these creative types have to “think” to achieve the miraculous, and this is the effortless hallmark of being in the zone.
When we shut down our analytical, thinking mind, we achieve greatness. In India this is known as grace, and in ancient Asian thought it was understood that this grace comes about because of the ability to see that everything is done when left undone. Yet people were perplexed as to how a state of effortlessness within the mind can be attained with effort. Effortlessness, of course, implies no effort. As the American professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia Edward Slingerland has asked, how do we try not to try? In the ancient East most people were not craftsmen, and still are not, so they began to ask how they could attain the effortless, embodied skill of the craftsman as their everyday state of consciousness. People also wondered if being in the zone is beneficial, or even possible, in our ordinary lives.
In the ancient East wise people observed the mind of the craftsmen. They studied their ability to shut down their cold cognitive prefrontal cortex, so it appeared that their effort actually required no effort, as if their minds were at one with the universe’s unfoldment. Craftsmen’s work doesn’t look like work; rather it looks as if their mind and body have been attuned to the rhythm and dance of an invisible realm that brings a real joy to their lives and at the same time inspires others.
Craftsmen have this ability to be one with their craft without the sense of a person “doing” it. This is what interested the wise of the ancient East. As a result, the documented birth of martial arts was based on the effortless mind of the craftsman. The martial artist focused on trying to cultivate an effortless mind, where being in the zone is one’s ordinary state of mind all the time. The first traces of spiritually oriented martial arts, and their focus on health, longevity, and physical immortality, can be attributed to the philosophy of Yang Zhu (440–360 BCE: Wade-Giles, Yang Chu; Pinyin, Yang Zhu), who is credited with “the discovery of the body.” His philosophy is known as Yangism. There is speculation that the oldest forms of martial arts in China go back to the Xia dynasty more than four thousand years ago, but there is not much evidence to support this claim, and it is suspected that these forms of martial arts were only combat oriented.
Nevertheless, the foundation of spiritually oriented Asian martial arts in its original form lay in trying to cultivate an effortless mind all the time. This is still the primary focus of spiritually oriented martial arts today: being in the zone is thought of as a state of consciousness we can be in constantly. But the problem for Yang Zhu, and for many martial artists, was that excessive effort was still required to get even close to the effortless state of consciousness. The sense of someone “doing” martial arts was still there, which essentially eclipses the main objective of the craft, which is to transform our character.
It is this sense of “I,” the acquired personality, that is the primary focus in the East, because our true nature and reality can only be experienced when the “I” has vanished. The effortless mind of being in the zone is not something we can actively seek to attain, because this requires effort. Being in the zone is an art that is evoked by essentially doing nothing to attain it. From this perspective, even effort is cleansed of trying and striving, because the sense of “I” is not there. This art and wisdom goes back further than the original martial artists and craftsmen. This book focuses on revealing the origins and history of the effortless mind, as well as on how to apply this art and science to our lives. I will go back to the basis of zone thinking in order to reveal an art of being in the effortless mind all the time, as my book is an attempt to explain that the zone we usually only experience briefly is actually our true natural mind. This wisdom goes back to an ancient sage of the East and a classical text attributed to him over two thousand five hundred years ago.
THE HEART OF LIFE
Though the spiritual texts and literature of all religions and wisdom traditions may be vast, many appear to skirt around the essential teaching that masters lived and avoid saying how we can apply their teachings to our lives. This is especially true in the case of that ancient master of China Lao-tzu (Wade-Giles, Lao-tzu; Pinyin, Laozi). From the time at which it is assumed that Lao-tzu lived (the sixth century BCE) until the present day, we know of only a few rare beings who have lived and revealed the mysterious depth of his teachings. One of them was the great sage Chuang-tzu (369–286 BCE: Wade-Giles Chuang-tzu; Pinyin Zhuangzi). Many spiritual seekers, martial artists, and teachers are fixated on “eating the menu”—talking about or dancing around the main meal instead of tasting it; that is, not going directly to the heart of things. But going to the heart of things was the primary focus of Chuang-tzu. And this heart of things, according to him, is the mysterious “Tao of the Absolute,” which is centered on aligning to the source and substance of this ever-changing universe, rather than the “Tao of things,” which is focused on the temporary fluctuations of change that we usually seek to shape according to our own interests.
The Tao (道: Wade-Giles Tao, Pinyin Dao) of the Absolute is analogous to the Hindu Brahman and the Buddhist Tathata, and to the original concept of God in the monotheistic religions. Yet neither Lao-tzu nor Chuang-tzu is saying that the Tao cannot be known through the Tao of things. On the contrary, they both understood that the eternal presence of Tao courses through the veins of the entire phenomenal world, producing a metaphysical path that gives us a sense of guidance and order in relation to the universe within our ordinary lives. But they are attempting to explain that we become attracted only to the movement of energy within life, rather than to the source of our energy, which is the indescribable stillness at the heart of the human being and the universe. As a result, we have developed numerous methods of practice to explore this movement of energy through our bodies, such as the Chinese arts of qigong and t’ai chi, the Indian practice of hatha yoga, and the modern movement culture spreading across the globe. The problem with practical movement methods such as these is they can delay our quest for a liberated mind (enlightenment) if the practice becomes a habitual crutch.
A movement method becomes a habitual crutch when it is not backed up and supported by time spent in stillness. No real transformation of mind happens without regularly stilling the mind. This is evident with martial artists, hatha yogis, and movement practitioners who incorrectly believe that they have control of the mind because they have control of their bodies. But we discover that, although they have good control of their bodies, their minds still run amok and have not essentially transformed. The essential principle of martial arts, hatha yoga, and any movement method is that the practice is supposed to transform our character into being more humble and respectful, which reorients our focus to within ourselves, thus cleansing us of our wrong perception of self, others, and the world. The point of these practices is to be conscious of the inner world and reach the spiritual sphere. Without the exploration of stillness, the Tao of the Absolute, the spiritual sphere becomes a mirage, because practitioners become intoxicated with the outer world of materiality and with the feats they can achieve physically. And yet this perception is in stark contrast to the wisdom of Lao-tzu, on which the philosophy of martial arts and numerous movement methods are built.
Nowhere within the beautiful verses of Lao-tzu’s classic text the Tao Te Ching does he suggest that liberation is a bodily adventure of practice and discipline instead of a psychological freedom. Actually Lao-tzu does not teach any physical or mental exercise in the very small fragments of text he left behind. That only began with Yang Zhu’s interpretation of Lao-tzu’s philosophy.
The mysterious nature of Lao-tzu’s lucid wisdom is the very reason why a multitude of interpretations of the inner meaning have surfaced. In fact, this is the genius of Lao-tzu’s philosophy, because the Tao Te Ching has no definite interpretation. This is the reason why the Tao referred to in the text could be molded to suit martial arts, other spiritual practices, or even business and war.
Though it may appear that I am criticizing martial artists, hatha yogis, movement practitioners, and spiritual practices somewhat, I am not; to get to the heart of things we need to discuss the things that have developed around Lao-tzu’s wisdom since his time. In fact, I am always actively engaged in various forms of spiritual cultivation in my daily life, and I am also an avid admirer of those who have mastered this art of cultivation, especially martial artists, hatha yogis, and movement practitioners. But what I am trying to explain, in a sense, is a mirror of Lao-tzu’s understanding, which is that any method of martial or spiritual practice is a means rather than an end. This end, which is eclipsed by our spiritual practice, is the psychological liberation of enlightenment. In Zen and the Psychology of Transformation, French psychotherapist Hubert Benoit explains this confusion between our attempts toward realization (enlightenment; satori in Japanese, moksha in Sanskrit) and the actuality of the experience:
The error which consists in considering realisation as the success of a training is epitomised in the adhesion given by so many men to systematic methods: the conception of this or that “ideal,” yogas of one kind or another, “moral systems” proclaiming that such automatisms should be installed and such others eliminated, in short any kind of discipline to which one attributes an intrinsic efficacity for realisation. The error is not in doing and putting to the test what these methods require, the error does not consist in following these methods; it consists in believing that these methods can result by themselves in satori as roads issue at the end of a journey.
But this advice is hard to understand in the right way. If I see in it a condemnation of training I am mistaken, for this condemnation does not free me from evaluation; it only results in an inversion of training. In this false understanding I would train myself to train myself no longer, which would change nothing; I would be believing, without escaping from my error, in the efficacity for realisation of a counter-training which would still be a training. Zen tells us not to lay a finger on life: “Leave things as they may be.” It is not for me to modify directly my habits of training myself. It is only indirectly that I can obtain the disappearance of these habits, by means of my understanding, ever more profound, that these attempts at training, which I continue to make, have in themselves no efficacity for realisation. It is a question, in short, of obtaining the devalorisation of these compensations which are my attempts at training; and this implies the defeat of the attempts and the correct interpretation of this defeat. I am not obliged to concern myself with the defeat; that will flow from the very nature of things; but I am concerned with the correct interpretation of this defeat. If I believe in the intrinsic efficacity of a discipline, I attribute its failure to all kinds of things but not to the discipline itself; so that it does not devalorise itself. If, on the contrary, I have understood the intrinsic inefficacity of the discipline, while not by any means forbidding myself to practice it if I feel the need to do so, a profound lassitude will develop little by little in me which will detach me from this discipline in a real transcendence.
Satori, as we know, is not the crowning of an ultimate success but of an ultimate defeat. The consciousness of always having been free appears in us when we have exhausted all the attempts, all the training, that we believe may be capable of liberating us. If the disciplines could not be paths resulting in satori, that does not mean that they may not be paths to be followed; they are paths leading to blind-alleys, all leading to a unique and ultimate blind-alley; but they are to be followed just because satori cannot be obtained unless we have come up against the end of this last blind alley. They are to be followed with the theoretical understanding that they lead nowhere, so that experience may transform this theoretical understanding into total understanding, into this clear vision which is the arrival in the blind-alley and which lays us open to satori.1
We are more attracted to the practice of spiritual cultivation than to what the practice is supposed to reveal. We are not willing to accept the ultimate defeat humbly, as Benoit puts it. As a result, we continue to exhibit gross spiritual pride toward our so-called attainments. This attitude can be directed toward practice of any kind. This psychological tendency is known as eating the menu. In Effortless Living I am not interested in discussing the contents of the menu with you, even though we may trace over them to better understand the meal. This book is concerned with taking you beyond the menu to finally taste the ineffable mystery of Lao-tzu’s sublime dinner.
THE FUNDAMENTAL CHINESE PHILOSOPHY OF WU-WEI
In order to taste the delicious meal Lao-tzu provided for humanity, we need to understand the core tenet of almost all Chinese philosophical systems. This foundational pillar of Chinese philosophy is found within the classics of Eastern thought, notably the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, the Chuang-tzu, attributed to Chuang-tzu, and even the Indian text the Bhagavad Gita.
The core pillar of these classics, in China especially, is believed to originate from Lao-tzu, and it is his essential teaching that is veiled within the mystery of the Chinese word wu-wei (無為: Wade-Giles wu-wei, Pinyin wu-wei) (see figure I.1), which is the core of Chinese philosophy and a predominant principle in Eastern thought. This word is shrouded in misinterpretation. The main confusion arises from the Confucian translation of wei-wu-wei, which literally means “doing nondoing.” This interpretation is built on Confucius’s philosophy of trying to install the eternal Tao and its virtue into our character as if it were some external agency. This is the completely opposite perspective to Lao-tzu’s teaching of naturalness. Translated into English, wu-wei means “nondoing,” “nonaction,” or “effortless action.” These translations are literally correct and lead us to the intuitive and ultimate psychological experience of wu-wei. This effortless psychological experience means “not forcing” or “allowing,” a state of “intelligent spontaneity.” The Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton describes wu-wei transparently in his book The Way of Chuang Tzu:
Figure I.1. Wu-wei—nondoing / not forcing / effortless action By Dao Stew
The true character of wu wei is not mere inactivity but perfect action—because it is act without activity. In other words, it is action not carried out independently of Heaven and earth and in conflict with the dynamism of the whole, but in perfect harmony with the whole. It is not mere passivity, but it is action that seems both effortless and spontaneous because performed “rightly,” in perfect accordance with our nature and with our place in the scheme of things. It is completely free because there is in it no force and no violence. It is not “conditioned” or “limited” by our own individual needs and desires, or even by our own theories and ideas.2
In alignment with Thomas Merton’s description of wu-wei is the ancient Indian story of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. The similarity comes from the Sanskrit nishkam karma, which means to remain active but be inwardly effortless, without any need of being rewarded for the fruits of labor. Krishna wants Arjuna to be so effortless that his actions are completely selfless and the sense of “I” has dissolved. The Bhagavad Gita states this in two key verses:
To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.
Fixed in yoga, do thy work, O Winner of wealth (Arjuna), abandoning attachment, with an even mind in success and failure, for evenness of mind is called yoga.3
In the cosmic sphere of energy, wu-wei is the feminine (passive/receptive/Earth) principle of the universe. Psychologically within a human, it is the attribute of humility, which is more of an ontological or cosmic humility than the unctuousness of Uriah Heep in Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield. The wu-wei at the core of Lao-tzu’s philosophy is not something we can understand by intellectual discourse or attain by rigorous practice. On the contrary, the depth of wu-wei is only revealed to us when we are humble enough to let go of controlling our lives and instead live by its spontaneous principle. When we do not force or try to control life, wu-wei is experienced within our consciousness. It is hidden within the depth of our psyche as the formless Way of Tao beyond conventional thought and definite interpretation. Wu-wei is not something we can categorically explain or point to as an object of knowledge. Wu-wei is the truth that can be known through experience but cannot be given a form to appease the intellect.
THE PARADOX OF LANGUAGE
Wu-wei is the eternal aphorism of Lao-tzu and of Taoism and the martial-arts culture that was established after his life. This aphorism is not limited to intellectual knowledge, because it always reflects different aspects of yourself back to you according to your stage of conscious growth. To try and teach the experience of or interpret wu-wei is to lose sight of its depth. And yet here I am, dedicating a whole book to its mystery and the ability to apply it to our lives. In the same fashion, Lao-tzu explains within the first lines of the Tao Te Ching that to try and interpret or give meaning to the Tao is to lose grasp of the Tao, but paradoxically he goes on to write eighty-one chapters. The first lines of the Tao Te Ching state:
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.4
This form of paradox is a necessary tool in many spiritual teachings and traditions, especially those of the East. The use of language necessitates the paradox because it is paradoxical by nature. With language, for example, something either “is” or “isn’t.” We all know too well that there are always two sides to every argument or opinion. Language then becomes a device for explaining the field of duality only. It is a tool for partiality, which results in ignorance of nonpartiality. Cognitive science has revealed that language cannot have the same interpretation universally among all people, as Western thinkers originally believed. What one word meant to Lao-tzu is totally different to the way you and I may understand it.
Common misconceptions are built around language, especially among those who are spiritually inclined. The way people associate their understanding with certain words, such as consciousness, mind, awareness, perception, ego, self, truth, and God, all cause much confusion, because each word has the ability to change its meaning in correspondence to the growth of the individual. This confusion occurs even among people of the same language. On top of this, there is an immense amount of misinterpretation that is lost in translation from one language to another. In any event, language itself, no matter what dialect, is an inadequate tool for describing the nature of the universe.
Lao-tzu describes the limitations of language best in the first lines of the Tao Te Ching, as we see from the passage above. Investigating language, we discover that it consists of ideas, sounds, thoughts, and words, which are structured building blocks contained within reality and are subject to its processes. Language cannot fully describe all of reality, because language is a part of that reality. Paradoxically, the microcosmic part of a human being contains the whole universe, but it is language that conceals our innate connection to, and identity with, the universe. A journey into the paradoxical nature of language can reveal this relationship between the macrocosmic universe and the microcosmic human being.
Exploring both sides of the coin of life has its benefits. We discover, as a result, the nonpartial perspective that Chuang-tzu demonstrated best. Discovering the paradoxical nature within our language and psyche reveals another “Way.” This is the doctrine of the Middle Way practiced in Buddhism, where opposites are thought to be mutual rather than in opposition. Our overstimulated intellect, which is constantly discerning between “this” and “that,” eclipses this mysterious Way with many mental sheaths. Contradiction in thought and language and the emergence of the Middle Way fly in the face of conventional logic. This perspective was embraced in ancient China with the birth of dialecticism because the Chinese use paradox, especially in language, to understand life. American psychologist Richard Nisbett articulates the essence of the paradoxical Middle Way of language and thought in his book The Geography of Thought:
The Chinese dialectic instead uses contradiction to understand relations among objects or events, to transcend or integrate apparent oppositions, or even to embrace clashing but instructive viewpoints. In the Chinese intellectual tradition there is no necessary incompatibility between the belief that A is the case and the belief that not-A is the case. On the contrary, in the spirit of the Tao or yin-yang principle, A can actually imply that not-A is also the case, or at any rate soon will be the case. Dialectical thought is in some ways the opposite of logical thought. It seeks not to decontextualize but to see things in their appropriate contexts: Events do not occur in isolation from other events, but are always embedded in a meaningful whole in which the elements are constantly changing and rearranging themselves. To think about an object or event in isolation and apply abstract rules to it is to invite extreme and mistaken conclusions. It is the Middle Way that is the goal of reasoning.5
Psychologically, the intellect is the masculine principle of the universe, or in Chinese yang (陽: Wade-Giles yang, Pinyin yang), and its habitual tendency is geared toward force and control. On the other end of the spectrum, the feminine principle of the universe, or in Chinese yin (陰: Wade-Giles yin, Pinyin yin), is the intuition and heart of our existence, which perceives reality as it is rather than what we would like it to be according to our intellect and imagination. The characteristic of the feminine yin principle is analogous to space, because space is soft, receptive, and formless, and its natural essence lies in the humility of not forcing, of allowing and receptiveness, which are all attributes of the mysterious wu-wei.
Our conditioned tendency toward hyperintellectualism veils and obscures the truth discovered beneath its parameters. This is not to say that the intellect is a problem that we need to eradicate. On the contrary, it is an important part of our existence, but the problem is that we have overemphasized the intellect. This keeps us in memories of the past and in the imagination or projection of the future, while never being in the reality of the present moment.
Our suffering as a species comes from the incorrect perception of living in the past through our attachment to memories that then shape our future. The phantoms of past and future are only of use to the intellect, because it gives individuals the idea that they are in control of their lives. Yet, as an individual grows, he begins to understand that no matter how grandiose his attempts at control, life always has a way of changing those plans. And in doing so, life also destroys the individual’s imagined ability to control the future outcome. This mentality of forcing ourselves upon life is the socially accepted practice of modern civilization. An individual’s attempt to control life according to her own beliefs, and as a result to force this perspective upon others, is the beginning of tyranny. Lao-tzu’s essential teaching of wu-wei, on the other hand, illustrates the futility of our attempts to control life. He emphasizes that it is only when you give up forcing or controlling anything that you begin to get the kind of control you always wanted, but never knew existed.
The experience of wu-wei unlocks this mystery when our life comes into accord with not forcing ourselves upon any aspect of life. Our consciousness becomes transparent and reflective, like a still body of water, when we experience the depth of wu-wei, and even if this water is disturbed by insurmountable waves, they often settle quite quickly, because we move with the current instead of opposing it.
Understanding and following the mystery of wu-wei does not mean that you lose your intellectual faculties. Instead, your intellectual life and the apparent use of force begin to be refined into a changeful openness toward life. Actually our intellectual life begins to thrive when we relinquish the habit of force. The use of force begins to lose its velocity when the intellect softens and marinates in the effortless heart of wu-wei. But we never fully discard the use of intellect, which brings us back to the paradox of Lao-tzu’s wisdom. The reason he continues to write eighty-one chapters of the Tao Te Ching after explaining within the first few lines that the mystery of the Tao cannot be intellectually understood is that intellect and force are the apparatus of language. They are only a cloak to dress the real world of no force, the effortless wu-wei. The art of wu-wei is shining through the intellectual landscape of words within Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching. His words veil the truth, yet the words are necessary symbols to transform your consciousness from ignorance into the field of that unspeakable reality which Lao-tzu called Tao.
Effortless Living is an audacious attempt to explain Lao-tzu’s essential wisdom for the benefit of the modern world. But be mindful that this book is not going to give you a categorical explanation of what the experience of wu-wei is. That onus and responsibility are yours. They are determined by how much you want a liberated mind. What Effortless Living will attempt to explain is the inner meaning of wu-wei and the art of living it. It is entirely up to you to digest and assimilate Effortless Living so that Lao-tzu’s essential wisdom is brought to life through your own experience. The essential teaching of wu-wei can only be known if the individual is sincere in surrendering control and, as a result, giving his life over to something much bigger than himself.
Tao is That which is bigger than our personal lives. Its depth of understanding is vast. Wu-wei is the fragrance of Tao. It is the spiritual attitude that is expressed and lived by many adepts, gurus, masters, saints, sages, shamans, and yogis. When we discover the flow of Tao moving within our own lives, as a sage does, we begin to be receptive to where our experience in life is leading us. We cease clinging to the experiences of the past and instead become rejuvenated in the present. The future becomes nothing more than a mirage, as the pure transparency and reflectivity of our consciousness begins to be absorbed in the feminine womb of the Tao.
When you don’t force yourself upon life, you discover that you are life. All our vain attempts to control life result from the way we are raised, because our culture and society influence us to believe that we do not belong to the world. We are taught to feel like aliens in this world, like in a great cosmic joke with no punch line. We are raised to believe that we exist in a hostile universe, so we ought to fear one another and never trust anyone. This ideology is bringing the human race to its knees. At the rate of speed that we are polarizing ourselves, it is hard to imagine there will be any remnants of higher, conscious life on this planet a thousand years from now. Our lack of trust is destroying our civilization and also causing a huge dent in the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms.
This type of neurosis has gotten to the point that on an individual level we do not even trust our own psychological states. We do not act authentically, and we confuse our identity with our social identity. In being mere shadows of who we are, we cause violence toward others, condemn anyone who opposes our opinion, and hypnotically hurt those we love. All of this is done in the name of force and control. Social and cultural norms teach us this dichotomy. To act or function any other way is, from the point of view of the status quo, absurd.
Government, organized religion, society, and culture mark the physical advent of the trust that is lacking within the individual. If individuals lose their natural essence of trust, then some form of external tyranny in the guise of a trustworthy parental figure will take its place. Individuals fail to trust themselves, and this is why a lot people ignorantly trust their government without question. In giving our power away to government, the individual begins to depend on the government as a parent, rather than seeing it in its original position—as a servant to the individual. Our lack of responsibility implies our lack of trust in ourselves.
Government is a phantom into which we invest too much energy. Individuals who sincerely trust themselves and others threaten the established order of culture, society, organized religion, and government. This threat could only become a reality if the truth of Tao is regained and a trust in life is realized. Wu-wei is the Taoist principle of trust. The trust of wu-wei threatens any governmental, social, religious, and cultural landscape. We align with our innate trust when we are not forcing and instead allow life to take place. This capacity to align with your innate trust brings you back in harmony with the entire unfolding of the cosmos. To go with the grain or with a stream, one is not bound to the past, nor does one yearn for the future.
This grain or stream conforms to a cosmic organic pattern, which is the order of how the universe functions. The organic pattern is known as li (理: Wade-Giles li, Pinyin li) in Chinese. If we look into the grain of wood, the markings of a tortoise shell, the skin of an elephant, the spiral pattern of a sunflower, our own palms, and so on, we discover the organic pattern of li, which in some cases is mathematically fixed to the Golden Ratio of the Fibonacci sequence discovered by the thirteenth-century Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci. Tao is what courses through the pattern of li, and this fundamental process beautifies our world. Before his untimely death in 1973, the British philosopher Alan Watts explained li in his last book Tao: The Watercourse Way:
The Chinese call this kind of beauty the following of li, an ideogram which referred originally to the grain in jade and wood, and which [Joseph] Needham translates as “organic pattern,” although it is more generally understood as the “reason” or “principle” of things. Li is the pattern of behavior which comes about when one is in accord with the Tao, the watercourse of nature. The patterns of moving air are of the same character, and so the Chinese idea of elegance is expressed as feng-liu, the following of wind.6
Coming into accord with li means we are coming into accord with that mysteriously eternal Tao. We cannot unite with the source of Tao unless we have given our life over to the nondoing, nonforcing, and nonreactive realm of wu-wei. Lao-tzu’s essential wisdom is nothing more than that of an individual who can follow the effortless grace of wu-wei within her mind. Everything else that has developed around Lao-tzu’s essential wisdom is a way either to get to the understanding of wu-wei or to delay our enlightenment through habitual crutches that take the form of spiritual exercises and practices. From the perspective of the ancient masters Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, enlightenment can only be realized in the ability to live wu-wei.
Almost all facets of what is perceived as Taoism since the time of Lao-tzu have turned this meditative, experiential way into a structure of control, hence not wu-wei. Within part 1 of Effortless Living, I will give a critical analysis of the difference between the religion of Taoism, which was built around the teachings of Lao-tzu with his essential wisdom of wu-wei and which gave birth to the martial and spiritual sphere of Chinese thought, and Confucian thinking. In part 2, I will explain the science of bringing the virtue of an effortless mind to society and culture, which could transform our concept of government into something much greater. We will also explore the power we possess from gaining the ability to trust and live spontaneously, which are the core components for the practice of being in the zone. In part 3 it all comes together to provide us the depth to live the art of an effortless mind. Effortless Living will reveal that if we choose to follow this humble path paved before us by Lao-tzu, then we will gain the individual liberation that many people believe comes from the liberation of society. This individual liberation, according to Lao-tzu, is what secretly transforms and liberates the world. The practice of wu-wei is the vehicle we use to realize our innate freedom. This book may give us a chance to rediscover the art of effortless living, wu-wei.