A Science of Wu Wei?

[Taoist Texts]

On 11/30/2018 at 1:08 AM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

Unless someone wants to claim that the section in bold is such a bad translation as to be completely misleading, and then I hope to back that up with a cogent argument, the text seems to be quite clear and

On 11/30/2018 at 1:08 AM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

 

the "work" of the sage is done in a way that no one cane see.

i am actually interested in this part. How can the 'work' be not seen? Is he an invisible sage or something?

[rideforever]

Wandelaar if you don't mind me saying so you seem to want intellectual understandings of things, meaning you want an  understanding that comes from a certain portion of your mind .... which is not connected to the Real.  And this, like thousands of years of philosophy in the head, cannot come up with any answers, so you will be endlessly without an answer.
This part of the mind is not awakened, it just process endless millions of thoughts like a machine with nobody sitting at the control.
And one should not allow oneself to be like this.
One must awaken until each thought is precious and felt with the body heart and awakened mind simultaneously.

Otherwise the thinking is like a lawnmower endlessly mowing grass that never stops and never finds anything.

 

As part of the growth into the Real, the dantien becomes awakened and then becomes another centre of ourselves that "feels" energetic flows and truths in life, and our identity operates from 2 or more centres that blends the information together into our identity.   That is why the cook carves up the Ox, and feels the difficult places before they arrive ... he feels from the Dantien the energy flows.   And his mind has returned to the Real.

[wandelaar]

@ rideforever

 

I think the power of rational thought is greatly underestimated. A substantial part of the Tao Te Ching can be understood by rationally thinking it through. But I agree that rational thought is powerless without feelings, intuition, etc. As to chi, I have started another topic about that:

 

[Eric Woon]

No source. It is purely out of my personal research. This is not going to give it any credibility, right?

Btw, I am a researcher in Pre-Qin dynasty Chinese language and history (from 2400B.C. to early Western Han dynasty).

[OldDog]

I have been following this discussion with some interest. Through the going back and laying a foundation of what can be meant by li, I have gained new insight on wuwei and ziran.

 

I have come to see that each thing manifest in the world has its own li and a potential to reach its fullest expression. That the way of the sage (a realized person) is to act in such a way as to not violate the li of the thing on which he is acting or the things around him. This, of necessity, means that the sage takes little action and when he does act he acts without intent (ulterior) of his own and, where possible, in such a manner as to facilitate (assist) in the expression of the li of others. In this manner, the wu in wuwei might best be understood to mean emptiness of intent. 

 

As for ziran, the self-so-ness of a thing can be understood as the li of a thing. It is interesting to note two things in this discussion. One that there is no restriction on the scale of li. Everything has li, from a piece of raw jade to a piece of uncarved wood to man and mankind to the universe. Second, that nothing as yet has been said about the relationship between the various li, beyond the notion of wuwei. It would seem this has some fairly significant implications. For example, can one li violate another or is there an implied harmony of all the various li? Indeed, are there even various li or is there just a grand li in which all things participate?

 

I don't anticipate that much more analysis of li, wuwei and ziran will be understaken, since this was provided and groundwork for a discussion into neiye, which I am looking forward to. 

 

Most enjoyable and enlightening discussion so far. 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

7 hours ago, wandelaar said:

@ Zhongyongdaoist

 

What I am after in this topic is a scientific understanding of wu wei. That is a way of approaching things and a form of acting that is somewhat similar to flow but with a Taoist twist to it. It could be that - as you say - ancient texts like the Tao Te Ching presuppose that absolutely everything will turn out fine if the ruler would just avoid interfering with the Tao. But I don't believe in such fairy tales as an actual possibility, there will always be conflicts of interest and difficult choices to be made both for a ruler and for the common people. You may call that reductionism if you like. But to me being called a (New Age) holist would be much more upsetting.

 

I would also be upset at "being called a (New Age) holist", I might jokingly call myself an old age holist, but more accurately, I am a Rationalist with no fundamental ontological commitments, but whose "working model" of reality has been "Platonist" since around 1980.

 

Based on my analysis of the problems which face modern physics, I believe that  a strong case could be made for the reintroduction of formal causes and that they could be modeled a hyper dimensional "forms" which guide the symmetry breaking that leads to the experience of "common sense" reality.  Naturally this model could also be used to lay the foundations of a fundamentally scientific understanding of "such fairy tales", if by science you actually mean those doctrines which have been explored experimentally modeled mathematically, and can actually be considered to be the source of modern science and technology, and which is different from "modern materialism", which is a set of dogma's that was not the result of scientific investigation, but rather of the revival of Epicureanism in a religious setting by Pierre Gassendi where it made significant inroads into Seventeenth Century Protestant thought within this religious framework, and where it was part of the religious beliefs of such people as Newton, Locke and Boyle, deeply religious Christians of a nonconformists, in its original meaning, orientation.  It was also adopted by such libertine rakes as John Wilmont, the second Earl of Rochester, hardly a person who made any significant contributions to the foundations of experimental science.  I could go on and trace its development through the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, through Diderot and the Baron D'Holbach and Karl Marx and the "left Hegelians", but that would take us as far afield as ancient Chinese Cosmology.  In short as much as "materialism" may have become an accepted dogma among late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century scientists, such materialism was never a part of experimental science, but rather a norm that became imposed on scientific investigation for extra scientific reasons.  All of which can be shown by suitable citations of accepted scholarly works in  the history of science and philosophy.

 

I have taken the time out for the above to make my  own position as clear as I can in a short space since it is a rather unusual one, and definitely not "new age holism", however strange it may otherwise seem.  With that in mind if you are not interested in an approach that could lay the foundations for a Twenty-first Century scientific understanding of wuwei, but rather only concerned with reductionist interpretations rooted in the Nineteenth Century, I will be happy to be free of the responsibility of finishing my discussion and absent myself from this thread.

 

ZYD

[wandelaar]

@ Zhongyongdaoist

 

Please go ahead with your expositions!

 

It has become clear to me that they don't answer to my original purpose with this topic, but they are interesting nevertheless.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

15 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

On 11/29/2018 at 1:08 PM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

Unless someone wants to claim that the section in bold is such a bad translation as to be completely misleading, and then I hope to back that up with a cogent argument, the text seems to be quite clear and

Quote

 

the "work" of the sage is done in a way that no one cane see.

i am actually interested in this part. How can the 'work' be not seen? Is he an invisible sage or something?

 

Well, maybe he could be invisible if he wanted, but his influence is not visible except in those affected by it, but since he does not draw attention to himself and his influence is like gravity or for that matter like light itself, the source of all visibility, is invisible and only in many ways a deduction from its effects.  The sage through his self cultivation has achieved the realization of the li of Dao and as such like the sun which radiates the light which is necessary for the growth of plants radiates another Light which penetrates many things, and helps those who are open to its influence in ways that they may not know and perhaps could not even imagine.  In order to examine this I will have to return to discussing the Neiye, something which I will do in my next post.

 

8 hours ago, wandelaar said:

@ Zhongyongdaoist

 

Please go ahead with your expositions!

 

It has become clear to me that they don't answer to my original purpose with this topic, but they are interesting nevertheless.

 

As long as you find my posts interesting, and I hope that others do also, I will continue.

 

12 hours ago, Eric Woon said:

No source. It is purely out of my personal research. This is not going to give it any credibility, right?

Btw, I am a researcher in Pre-Qin dynasty Chinese language and history (from 2400B.C. to early Western Han dynasty).

 

For those interested Mr. Woon has discussed his ideas at some length in his introductory post, where among other people responding to his proposed interpretations, dawei our admin, has asked the type of questions that I would ask.  Since his ideas about wuwei are examined there, I don't see much point in discussing them in detail here.

 

ZYD

[Eric Woon]

Please allow me to serve you another boomerang. This is chapter 41. There are 10 characters 大。According to the Chinese Han dictionary, there are three ways to pronounce it, da, dai, tai. May I ask which is the correct one to apply in this chapter? The actual pronunciation for this character since the Xia dynasty to Song Dynasty is tai. From the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty it is read as da. Since then, the character 太 was used to replace 大. For example, 太阳 sun. 太贵 too expensive. 太美了 very beautiful.    

 

Henceforth, if you were to replace the character 大 with 太，you will read all the ten characters in chapter 41 with a totally different meaning. For example, 大方 is not two separate characters, pointing to "big square". Actually it is a two-character phrase which gives us two meaning, generous or expert. Please key in 大方 in www.zdic.net and you will get the answers.  Btw, 大方 as in Putonghua is read as da fang. However, in the older Chinese languages such as Cantonese (created around the early Western Han dynasty), it is read as dai fong and Hakka (the oldest Chinese dialect, perhaps since the Xia dynasty or earlier), it is read as  tai fong! Btw, the Cantonese and Hakka pronunciations for 大 are dai and tai, respectively. 

 

Edited December 2, 2018 by Eric Woon
Added "Btw, the Cantonese and Hakka pronunciations for 大 are dai and tai, respectively. "

[Eric Woon]

This is the link for 大

http://www.zdic.net/z/17/js/5927.htm 

 

This is the link for 大方

http://www.zdic.net/c/7/23/54713.htm

[OldDog]

14 hours ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

As long as you find my posts interesting, and I hope that others do also, I will continue.

 

Please do.

[voidisyinyang]

On 12/1/2018 at 5:09 AM, Taoist Texts said:

i am actually interested in this part. How can the 'work' be not seen? Is he an invisible sage or something?

I have definitely had the experience of the qigong master doing long distance healing on me. It is a shen laser energy. No you can't see it unless you're third eye is also open. When I did the intensive meditation with a 7 day fast in 2000 then I saw the actual "yuan shen" that the qigong master created to heal people and to heal ghosts also. But if you can't see it - then it feels like a laser burning or else like an electromagnetic buzzing sensation that is very strong.

[voidisyinyang]

On 12/1/2018 at 5:28 AM, rideforever said:

Wandelaar if you don't mind me saying so you seem to want intellectual understandings of things, meaning you want an  understanding that comes from a certain portion of your mind .... which is not connected to the Real.  And this, like thousands of years of philosophy in the head, cannot come up with any answers, so you will be endlessly without an answer.
This part of the mind is not awakened, it just process endless millions of thoughts like a machine with nobody sitting at the control.
And one should not allow oneself to be like this.
One must awaken until each thought is precious and felt with the body heart and awakened mind simultaneously.

Otherwise the thinking is like a lawnmower endlessly mowing grass that never stops and never finds anything.

 

As part of the growth into the Real, the dantien becomes awakened and then becomes another centre of ourselves that "feels" energetic flows and truths in life, and our identity operates from 2 or more centres that blends the information together into our identity.   That is why the cook carves up the Ox, and feels the difficult places before they arrive ... he feels from the Dantien the energy flows.   And his mind has returned to the Real.

 

yes when he said that he can feel the energy of this thoughts darting around in his mind - that is just his LEFT brain - it's a conceptual mind left brain blockage. So he needs to do more standing active exercise to get his thigh muscles sore and his legs shaking 7 to 9 times per second. That will activate his deep right side vagus nerve - the reptilian vagus nerve - that is the kundalini energy - and it goes up to the right brain and then clears out the left brain. The left side vagus nerve does NOT connect to the right side of the brain but the right side vagus nerve DOES connect to the left side of the brain. So just trying to rely on left side conceptual mind yoga is never going to be strong enough to clear out the left brain blockages.

 

He can read my free pdf for details. I would reply to him directly but he chooses instead to "self censor." haha. That is a left-brain attempt to be in denial. I call it the Alchemy of DeNile.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I'm sorry to be so long to getting back to this thread, but in terms of what I was looking at, it was starting to expand in a lot of interesting directions, most of which would be interesting expansions, but way beyond what I had originally intended, and worthy of its own exposition.  Also I had also been putting off things that needed attention and I finally had to take care of them.  So I spent several hours yesterday going back to review what I was working on a week ago and after thinking about it will probably work on a separate discussion of it and will try to wrap up what I started here soon and should be able to start posting the conclusion of this by midweek, it still may take two or three posts to conclude.

 

ZYD

[Zhongyongdaoist]

The Sage doesn't rule as ordinary rulers do, by buying loyalty with rewards, or gaining submission through fear of punishments, he rules by De, 德, virtue a "power" that as I have noted earlier achieves its end by bringing all things to their highest potential, this is the type of power that the Sage in his Wisdom values as he realizes that rewards only encourage greed and a grasping nature, and punishments develop obsequious and fawning behavior, which may only be front for resentment and eventual treachery.  These are species of deformity, and not the best that people can be, only a virtuous Ruler can bring out the best that people can be and realize genuine omnipotence, the real power to achieve his ends and not the faux power which the ambitious King or cruel Tyrant seeks, and this genuine omnipotence is achieved only through self-cultivation.

 

Going back to the Neiye, there are many sections of interest, but I will start with these as indicating how "omnipotence" is achieved:

 

 

Quote

Section II

 

是故民氣，杲乎如登於天，杳乎如入於淵，淖乎如在於海，卒乎如在於己。是故此氣也，不可止以力，而可安以德。不可呼以聲，而可迎以音。敬守勿失，是謂成德。德成而智出，萬物果得。

 

1 Therefore this vital energy is:

 

2 Bright!--as if ascending the heavens;

 

3 Dark!--as if entering an abyss;

 

4Vast!--as if dwelling in an ocean;

 

5 Lofty!--as if dwelling on a mountain peak.

 

6 Therefore this vital energy

 

7 Cannot be halted by force,

 

8 Yet can be secured by inner power ITe].

 

9 Cannot be summoned by speech,

 

10 Yet can be welcomed by the awareness.

 

11 Reverently hold onto it and do not lose it:

 

12 This is called "developing inner power."

 

13 When inner power develops and wisdom emerges,

 

14 The myriad things will, to the last one, be grasped.

 

This character, 德 de, "virtue", rendered as "inner power" and since in the last line,  果, guǒ, is fruit, it might almost be read as as saying that virtue allows "All the myriad things, to be plucked like fruit", an image probably intended to convey the ease with which the Sage governs, though taken at its worst it's right up there with "straw dogs".

 

Quote

Section XVIII

 

全心在中，不可蔽匿。和於形容，見於膚色。善氣迎人，親於弟兄。惡氣迎人，害於戎兵。不言之聲，疾於雷鼓。心氣之形，明於日月，察於父母。賞不足以勸善，刑不足以懲過。氣意得而天下服。心意定而天下聽。

 

1 When there is a mind that is unimpaired within you,

 

2 It cannot be hidden.

 

3 It will be known in your countenance,

 

4 And seen in your skin color.

 

5 If with this good flow of vital energy you encounter others,

 

6 They will be kinder to you than your own brethren.

 

7 But if with a bad flow of vital energy you encounter others,

 

8 They will harm you with their weapons.

 

9 [This is because] the wordless pronouncement

 

10 Is more rapid than the drumming of thunder.

 

11 The perceptible form of the mind's vital energy

 

12 Is brighter than the sun and moon,

 

13 And more apparent than the concern of parents.

 

14 Rewards are not sufficient to encourage the good;

 

15 Punishments are not sufficient to discourage the bad.

 

16 Yet once this flow of vital energy is achieved,

 

17 All under the heavens will submit.

 

18 And once the mind is made stable,

 

19 All under the heavens will listen.

 

Since as the text affirms:

14 Rewards are not sufficient to encourage the good;

 

15 Punishments are not sufficient to discourage the bad.

rewards and punishments are not an effective form of government, so the Sage Ruler who possesses the 全心, "unimpaired mind" does not rely on them but relies on 心氣之形, "The perceptible form of the mind's vital energy", what we might describe as a "charismatic" ability to influence people, based on, but I don't think limited to, visible manifestations:

3 It will be known in your countenance,

 

4 And seen in your skin color.

to achieve his goals, for once he/she has a stable mind, "All under the heavens will listen".

 

It is interesting to note that the Neiye emphasizes both speech and listening in some of its teachings, so much so that I came to the conclusion that it could be taking about a technique of "efficacious speech", a way of talking that is rooted in an inward understanding of what it is that the words are pointing to, and which the Sage understands and can connect with, giving his speech extra power to convince people to act on them.  The basis of these powers is the cultivation of shen, 神, and it seems that omnipotence is rooted in omniscience.  I will talk about that in my next post.

 

ZYD

[Orion]

What's the point of realizing and observing wu wei if you can't learn your place in it? It creates a hollowed out reality where nothing is happening to anyone. And technically that is true - there is no person experiencing anything, but you can't just jump to that and spiritually bypass the person. The person, through the experience level, has to be brought into resonance with the truth of his/her own abdication. The route can be one of utter torment or bliss, depending on the methods.

 

A good example is telling someone not to intellectualize because the mind is not connected to reality. That's not true. Reality consciousness (or wu wei) is seeing itself through a mind-body that it has illuminated with itself. The product of this in infancy is that the individuated wu wei accidentally associates with and believes it is the mind-body, resulting in the formation of "personhood", which is also the level of the experiencer. This happens to everyone born, it's unavoidable. Wu Wei isn't actually experiencing anything, only the "person" is. No person = no experience possible. Wu Wei never changes.

 

The mind, the body, the emotions, they are all an outpouring of wu wei, experiencing itself through those faculties. It's why I find a lot of the Daoist discussions rather wooden and hollow. You see people whose vitality is actually waning and their unresolved tendencies leaking out of them as they abdicate themselves to the Absolute. They do things like jing conservation and other techniques yet they won't embrace the bliss of core reality that is already inside them, and illuminates them, and IS them. They are rejecting "I" instead of acknowledging that there is a misattributed "I" and a real "I" talking. One is the personality identification, and one is core consciousness conveying reality. Most people fall into the former, few into the latter. The whole point of the correct speech and other modalities is to evoke mind-body into recognizing the source of its illumination, done by correcting the thoughts, speech and actions that reinforce misattribution. You can sit there all day meditating on Wu Wei but once the meditation ends, you get up and stub your toe, and then you get angry, and then you're back in the mind-body rabbit hole.

 

The language of the Daoist texts is also incredibly outdated and linked to lineages. You have people in the 21st century running around using old (and translated) language with the utter conviction that the undefiled word is the only way to go. And yet Daoism is steeped in right speech, right physical practice, and all the things that are meant to guide you toward the key realizations. Those things are happening NOW.

 

To me, the point of Daoism is not to abdicate the mind-body to Wu Wei, but to dwell in the very presence that is illuminating them, without misattribution, here and now. Only then can the "person" come into resonance with what already is and be self-abdicated. Please, let's use modern language? We're talking about reality consciousness illuminating a mind-body to see itself, that through misattribution believes it is the mind-body (person/experience). The point isn't to toss out the person, it is to show the person the blissful resonance of the true reality so that it no longer has to cling to its own temporary form as the only way to the truth. The point is to realize the real you that is attached to a false "you", which our language fails to differentiate because almost nobody has the recognition and most old-world spiritual systems are focused on total Absolutism.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Orion

[Wu Ming Jen]

“Wu and tao are equally the mother of all things.” Thus wu and tao are the same. So it may be said that wu wei, no action is tao wei, action by the spirit. It is in this sense that the phrase, wu wei erh wu pu wei, “there is no doing, but there is nothing undone” is to be understood. Of course, wu wei must be rendered by “spirit action,” which makes the meaning full of force. Lao Tzû says: “Heaven and earth and all things were begotten of what is; and what is is begotten of wu, the non-existent, physically, i.e. tao, the spirit.

 

Governed by the spontaneity of an uncorrupted nature. 

 

Those who act in the wu wei method are the most laborious people in the world. They are hard workers in every field. The force is full and strong with spirit in action, all things can be accomplished.

 

There are times when the best action is no action. We can best deal with a situation by not reacting to it. I learned this on Tao Bums.