Taoism vs. External Locus of Control

[Birdoftruth]

[trailmaker]

[Aetherous]

Wei wu wei just means you aren't sloppy in what you do. An example could be a great painter. They don't need to focus on how to mix paints, how to use a brush, or how to portray their mental image to the canvas...they just do it and it flows through them.

 

Laziness would mean lack of flow, which is the opposite of wu wei.

[balance.]

Much of what is taught in taosim emphasizes a return to basics.. a disintegration of the unnecessary and superfluous constructions that we've built up over the years since we were children. We've adopted these unnecessary constructions in order to live and behave more effectively within the world around us, but these steps that we've (largely unconsciously) taken serve only to separate us further from the true, unadulterated nature each of us embodied when we were babies... The spiritual path is largely about stripping these additional layers away so we can realize our true, Buddah Nature.

 

One of the first steps we take once we begin to walk down whatever spiritual path we've chosen is to move from the high-chested breathing most adults have adopted over the years and return to the deep belly breathing we did naturally as babies. Such a return to basics would be seen as effortlessness/non-doing/non-action simply because this is most natural thing for us... and the high-chested, shallow breathing that we find ourselves doing as we grow up is actually an additional step and would be seen as with-effort... simply because it separates us from natural, effortless action.

 

So, Effortlessness etc. means (in my experience) that these are things that we do innately and so should require no special effort to accomplish.. somewhere along the lines of Yoda's great maxim, "There is no try" and Nike's "Just do it." Over-intellectualization of the process (whatever that may be) can create energetic roadblocks that prevent the unhampered blossoming of action and subsequently robs whatever task you've undertaken of its natural, spontaneous, truthful and unadulterated flow... I feel intent plays a very important role as well.

 

Laziness is most certainly not non-doing or effortlessness... Negligence might be a better descriptor... My feeling is that Scotty did a good job of summing that up.

 

 

I hope this meandering reply was at least moderately helpful.

 

 

balance.

Edited June 14, 2010 by balance.