Wu Wei
2007-05-07
If you didn't already know, I minored in Religious Studies. Now, while it's not necessarily narrowed down on paper, I did focus mostly on Asian Religion, more specifically Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. With that being said, I'd like to briefly describe the concept of Wu Wei. Hopefully this will be the first of many many posts on such subjects.
The simplest definition of Wu Wei (pronounced woo way) is knowing when to act and when not to act. Wu may be translated as not have; Wei may be translated as do, act, serve as, govern. Quite literally it means "without action." Wu Wei is a fundamental tenant of the Taoist school of thought. The aim of wu wei is to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium, or alignment with the Tao, and, as a result, obtain an irresistible form of "soft and invisible" power.
In the context of my life, I like to use the simplest definition of knowing when to act and when not to act. This is something that a lot of people do not give much thought. Why do things happen as they do? Is there a reason that that person told you that thing at that particular time?
The concept of wu wei is not necessarily that you put a whole lot of thought, time, or energy into knowing when to act or when not to act, but rather that you have become one with the Tao enough so that you just know.
I like to think that I know when to act and when not to act, without much effort. Sometimes though this doesn't work out as well as I'd like, especially since I seem to like to talk a lot. It's my mouth that usually gets me in trouble. So do we pay attention to the particular way in which things fall in our lives? Are the things in our life that we conceive in our lives to be ironic, really just the natural order of things? Ever consider what would happen if that particular thing didn't happen at that particular time? or if that person had said something different? or if you had gone a different direction?
I'd like to touch on some of these idea's in relation to the Taoist, Buddhist, and Hindu schools of thought. This is just the beginning.
4 comments:
Good point SL. While wu wei is not epitomized in the idea of the butterfly effect, but that idea is very similar. The tiny things that snowball into the reality of our lives. The little rifts that makes the rivers and streams flow.
I like it! Very much! I know just enough about Eastern thought to be really dangerous - this happens when you get your knowledge from a mishmash of THE ART OF WAR and THE TAO OF POOH. So please, sensei, lead me along the gentle path.
In the book I am reading The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden “In the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, it’s believed that reality can exist only where our mind creates a focus. In fact, the wisdom suggests that both the world of pure form and that of the formless result from a mode of consciousness called, subjective imagination. While any experience certainly seems real enough to us, it’s only when we direct our attention while we’re having a feeling about the object of our focus that a possible reality becomes that real experience. Except for a slight variation in the language this Ancient tradition sounds a lot like 20th century quantum theory.”
"According to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the universe exists as an infinite number of overlapping possibilities. They’re all there in a kind of quantum soup with no precise location or state of being until something happens to lock one of the possibilities into place. That something is a person’s awareness the simple act of observation"
So we make things real when we focus in on the one thing and then all other possibilities go away and that one thing becomes real to us.
"Last night, while I lay thinking here,
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:"
-Shel Silverstein
Now obviously Wu Wei is not meant in the negative sense of worrying about the uncontrollable, but I thought it fit. I frequently wonder "what if" and also "if only...I wonder."
Is this similar to the "butterfly effect?" Not the bad movie, but the concept? That one small change can bring about a huge difference?