Tao Te Ching on the Radio

As we wait for election returns, how about something completely different.  Yesterday, while out driving around, a story about the Tao Te Ching popped up on All Things Considered.  Nothing earth shattering, just a guy, a writer, Henry Alford, not a sinologist or specialist, who finds a certain wisdom in the old book.  In the very short segment, he gets to a very important Taoist idea:

By the end of the book, though, it's clear — to me at least — that it's not advocating inaction, it's advocating preparedness. It's saying that whenever a state of affairs reaches its peak, the opposite of that state of affairs is ready to take its place.

     I think he gets this half right.  Wu-wei does not demand complete inaction.  But "preparedness" may not be the best way to express what it is getting at.  I would say something like "awareness."  In order to see "nothing's own doing," or what should not be done, one has to open oneself, to be aware in a heightened and unobstructed manner, of what is unfolding in Way.  Indeed, that sort of awareness might be the primary "lesson" of the Tao Te Ching.  See what is there and what is not there in order to apprehend what not to do.  Otherwise how can we live up to that line from passage 11:

Presence gives things there value but absence makes them work.

    You have to be aware of what is present and what is absent.

    Anyway, just wanted to make note of Taoism on the radio, since it doesn't happen that often.

Comments

[gmoke]

Based upon my experience with martial arts, I'd say wu-wei is primarily about relaxation. If you confront somebody with muscle, you present a lever arm that can be used to take your balance. If you respond to pressure with extension from your center, you can take that pressure and use it to throw your partner. Your muscles have to be relaxed to be flexible and connected to your center in order to have power. With those attributes, relaxation, flexibility, integrity, change becomes a dance like a skier heading down the mountain or a surfer riding a wave. If you're lucky, you become the mountain or the wave, are the Way itself with no separation between individual consciousness and phenomenological reality.