Wu Wei We Go!
One of my favorite “live action” lessons I had the awareness to recognize happened while I was going tubing with friends a few summers ago. We got to some rapids and one of my friends yelled, “Hold on tight!” and everyone gripped their tubes and jostled around the rocks and a few fell into the water. Not me. I decided to sit criss-cross-applesauce in the middle of my tube and put my total trust and faith in the river to guide me safely through. As I prayed to the river I seemed as if cradled by it, floating through the rapids without being jostled at all. When I got to the end unscathed I knew that I had just experienced something amazing!
In Taoism, Wu Wei (pronounced Woo-Way) is defined as non-doing or non-action. It is not a form of laziness, and despite the literal translation, not about doing nothing at all. Rather, Wu Wei is about flowing with the current of the Tao. It is an openness to “what is,” and an acceptance of whatever the flow (or Tao) brings into our lives. Wu Wei is to be in harmony with nature, to let go of certain expectations or outcomes, and to stop acting against the natural current of life. According to Lao Tzu (the mystical writer of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism): “The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings… He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life.”
During this “live action” example, the river my friends and I rode was a manifestation of the Tao. As my friends fought the current during the turbulent rapids, they found themselves jostled around, thrown into boulders, and turned upside down. Through the practice of Wu Wei, and through openness, acceptance, and trust, I was able to flow with the current, skimming along atop the white water and directed through the boulders unscathed.
As Bruce Lee once said: “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves… Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”