6 August, 2023.

In my sitting just ended I believe I understood wu-wei as a meditation practice, and as an object of meditation (in the same way a koan might be an object of meditation—our word “object” is wholly inadequate here).  I have been seeking insight into this idea of “not-doing”  or “non-action” for many years.  In an earlier post I wondered if my part in the death of my dog might have been an instance of wu-wei, as painful as the moment was.  But this morning’s reading of David Hinton’s excellent introduction to his translation of the Tao Te Ching in his book The Four Chinese Classics was clarifying and indeed inspirational.  He treats wu-wei as a “central term [in Lao Tzu’s vision] which literally means ‘not/nothing (wu) doing (wei),’ and so ‘doing nothing’ in the sense of not interfering with the flawless and self-sufficient unfolding of tzu-jan [the ‘suchness’ of things].” Further,

Wu-wei is the movement of tzu-jan, so when we act according to wu-wei we act as the generative source. This opens to the deepest level of this philosophical complex, for wu-wei can also be read quite literally as ‘Absence (wu) doing.’ Here, wu-wei action is action directly from, or indeed as the ontological source: absence burgeoning forth into presence. This in turn invests the more straightforward reading (‘doing nothing’) with its fullest dimensions, for ‘doing nothing’ always carries the sense of ‘enacting nothing/Absence.’*

These rich ideas prompted me, without my intention, to begin my meditation soon after, smoothly and calmly, with surprisingly easy full breathing, and an immediately felt sense that any effort to meditate with calm or understanding or illumination as an object was futile, indeed cut against the very grain of the traditions in which I meditate.  Similarly, any effortful striving [my earlier definition of wei] against the entanglements of self during zazen undermines the meditation before it has started.  (With the final complication that effortful striving might be part of the tzu-jan, the “suchness,” of the human being.  Hmmm.)

            So much here to work on, and not only in meditation practice.

*Hinton, David. The Four Chinese Classics (pp. 25-6). Catapult. Kindle Edition.