Everyday Daoist Way-Making

#daoism #wuwei #wuzhi #wuyu #ziran

Making Life Significant 
(by cultivating "Wu"-forms and zìrán)

"Those who intentionally seek the Dào, enter a relationship with the Dào."
(From Daodejing Ch 23, my translation,
故從事于道者，同于道
gù cóngshì yú dào zhě,
tóng yú dào.)

I love Ames and Hall's subtitle for their translation of the Daodejing: "Making Life Significant."

Seeking the Dào is not only about connecting through meditation and Qigong. It's also about participating in the Dào's manifold interpenetration of those around us, about how we conduct our lives as we walk that Path.

Fourth-Century BCE Daoist sage Lieh Yü-Ko's Liezi.'s Book 1, "Cosmogony," says it this way:
"It is Heaven's function to produce life and to spread a canopy over it. It is Earth's function to form material bodies and to support them. It is the Sage's function to teach others and to influence them for good. It is the function of created things to conform to their proper nature" (translation by Lionel Giles, p. 6).

These days, we interpret "Sage" as anyone seeking to cultivate the qualities of being Daoist.

So how do we influence for the good? Ames and Hall offer this counsel for the aspiring Daoist:
"[I]t is precisely in the elevation of the routine and ordinary business of the day, rather than in some ephemeral and transitory 'momentous' events, that the profound meanings of a life are to be realized" (48).

Enter the Wu-forms, strategies for cultivating how to make our lives significant as a Daoist:
* wúwéi 
    not being coercive in how one acts, in what one does

* wùzhī
       not interfering as one goes about one's business, not insisting on or resorting to rules or laws to justify what one knows

* wùyù
    not being obsessively possessive of things that distract us from the Path

Ames and Hall clarify how these nonconfrontational guidelines are all about being deferential toward others in day-to-day living: "It is necessary to put oneself in the place of what is to be acted in accordance with, what is to be known, or what is to be desired, and thus incorporate this perspective into one’s own disposition" (37).

Another useful practice is to cultivate zìrán, (“self-so-ing,” or “what is spontaneously so"):
"Spontaneity must be clearly distinguished from randomness and impetuosity. In fact, far from being 'uncaused,' it is the novelty made possible by a cultivated disposition.....
"Spontaneous action is a mirroring response. As such, it is action that...one’s own actions promote the interests and well-being both of oneself and of the other" (Ames and Hall 22-23).

These rituals of daily interaction with others are as much a part of participatory Way-Making as any devotion we observe through meditation and Qigong. In other words, these strategies define how Daoists seek to live and interact in the world.

The next post explores the notorious but nonetheless invaluable Jijing--the so-called I Ching.


 

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