Wu Wei: The Powerful Path of Non-Action
What the sages of the East can teach us about effort, strategy, and observation.
The thing about Eastern philosophies is that they are full of contradictions, but unlike in Western philosophies, contradictions are not seen as problems to solve. Rather, contradictions are embraced as illuminating — because well, reality is full of contradictions. Take this passage from the Tao Te Ching, probably the most contradictory of all Eastern works:
Look, and it can’t be seen.
Listen, and it can’t be heard.
Reach, and it can’t be grasped.Above, it isn’t bright.
Below, it isn’t dark.
Seamless, unnamable.
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.
Heavy, right? And seemingly going back and forth contradicting itself. But with passages like this, the Eastern sages showed that they were onto something: life is full of contradictions, and the Eastern masters realized this. So rather than writing long paragraphs trying to reconcile these contradictions, the great minds of the East practiced a form of analysis more like poetry: put the contradictions together, and let them be — in words on the page — to allow us to reconcile them ourselves in that act of thinking that can’t be put into…
