It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body. Nothing is done because the doer has wholeheartedly vanished into the deed the fuel has been completely transformed into flame. Less and less do you need to force things, The game plays the game the poem writes the poem we can’t tell the dancer from the dance. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. Nothing could be further from the truth.Ī good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. The misperception may arise from his insistence on wei wu wei, literally “doing not-doing,” which has been seen as passivity. People usually think of Lao-tzu as a hermit, a dropout from society, dwelling serenely in some mountain hut, unvisited except perhaps by the occasional traveler arriving from a ’60s joke to ask, “What is the meaning of life?” But it’s clear from his teachings that he deeply cared about society, if society means the welfare of one’s fellow human beings his book is, among other things, a treatise on the art of government, whether of a country or of a child. All he left us is his book: the classic manual on the art of living, written in a style of gemlike lucidity, radiant with humor and grace and largeheartedness and deep wisdom: one of the wonders of the world. Like an Iroquois woodsman, he left no traces.
Even the meaning of his name is uncertain (the most likely interpretations: “the Old Master” or, more picturesquely, “the Old Boy”). But all the information that has come down to us is highly suspect. He may have been an older contemporary of Confucius (551-479 BCE) and may have held the position of archive-keeper in one of the petty kingdoms of the time. Since it is already well known by its Chinese title, I have let that stand.Ībout Lao-tzu there is practically nothing to be said. Tao Te Ching (pronounced, more or less, Dow Deh Jing) can be translated as The Book of the Immanence of the Way or The Book of the Way and of How It Manifests Itself in the World or, simply, The Book of the Way.
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