Surrendering from contrived actions.

Unmoving movement.

The wisdom of the Four Nobel Truths is present in understanding the causal relationship between attachment and suffering. All suffering arises from clinging and resistance. 

Bodhidharma spoke of this relationship in his Discourse on the Twofold Entrance to the Tao. He understood the Tao to be the animating essence of life and death. The Tao was Bodhidharma’s code for the primordial mind that lacks discrimination and opposition. Here is what he said:

“Everyone who has a body is an heir to suffering and a stranger to peace. Having comprehended this point, the wise are detached from all things of the phenomenal world, with their minds free of desires and craving. As the Scripture has it, ‘All sufferings spring from attachment; true joy arises from detachment.’ To know clearly the bliss of detachment is to walk on the path of the Tao. This is ‘the rule of non-attachment.’”

To be non-attached is to experience release—yielding heaviness and receiving lightness, like removing an obstruction from flowing water. Once removed, the water flows naturally and nourishes all things.

A key principle in realizing our oneness with the Tao is wu-wei, or “non-doing.” Wu-wei refers to behavior that arises from a sense of integration with our source, others, and our environment. Wu-wei is not motivated by a sense of separateness, or egotistical motives. It is the action that is spontaneous, effortless, and naturally reflects our connectedness. It is the experience of going with the grain or swimming with the current. 

The contemporary expression, going with the flow, is an excellent expression of this fundamental principle, which in its most basic form refers to behavior occurring in response to the flow of integrated life. Thus to engage wu-wei means to surrender or give oneself over to the ubiquitous, flow of a mind at peace: the birthplace of The Buddha. 

But importantly, it refers to an experience of getting out of the way and surrendering to the movement of something beyond our comprehension. Our body moves but it seems to function without us moving it. In the Platform Sutra, Dajian Huineng (the sixth and last patriarch of Chan) reported on a conversation between two monks regarding the movement of a flag. One said the wind moved the flag. The other said no, it was the flag moving independently of the wind. Huineng said you’re both wrong. It was the mind/Tao that moved. When the primordial mind moves We remain silent and unmoving.

Lao Tzu expressed this yielding as giving up and getting. He expressed wu-wei this way in stanza nineteen of the Tao Te Ching:

“Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better for everyone.
Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and love.
Give up ingenuity, renounce profit,
And bandits and thieves will disappear.
These three are outward forms alone; they are not sufficient in themselves.
It is more important
To see the simplicity,
To realize one’s true nature,
To cast off selfishness
And temper desire.”

The action of non-action.

“To act” presumes an actor. It would be absurd to speak of action otherwise. Action must therefore consider the source—this actor doing the acting to understand action. In a normal sense, action entails the will (volition) the capability of conscious choice to do one thing and deny another. And that volition is a reflection; the vote of the actor. To say “I desire” is an expression of such a will—the desire preceding action. But we must take a serious look at how we understand this one who acts to explore the motive.

In Buddhism (as well as Taoism) this matter is taken seriously. We all have a sense-of-self (the actor) which is constantly agitated, wounded and hungry. There is never enough to fill the belly of this actor, nor fences tall enough to guard what the self desires and possesses. The ego is never satisfied.

The Forty-Eighth stanza of the Tao Te Ching says: “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.”

Compare this to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:26-27: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

These views came from different times and places, yet they speak of the same faith dimension—trust that our lives are important and not lacking. Lao Tzu understood the source of the ultimate self as the Tao. Jesus understood that same source as “your heavenly father” but they were speaking of the same well-spring: The source of non-action which functions through our being. We (our bodies and our minds) are the arms and legs of the Tao/Our heavenly father. And when our action is thus centered, our action will not be our own. Lao Tzu referred to this as wu-wei or non-action since the will of ego is not involved.