Following the Dao of Water

Jan 16

It’s been a while since I have written a longer blog post, and there have been good and bad reasons for that. There has been, and continues to be, a lot to digest in the world, and in my personal life as well. The last year has been pretty challenging for me, to put it politely, for a reason I could have never predicted, and I have many times felt like I have reached the end of my resources, physical, emotional, spiritual, and material. And yet, like the swimmer in the story below, I keep bopping back up for air. And, so far at least, I have managed to survive every one of my personal equivalents of the maelstroms described below, by diving head first into the very center (yes, I can’t help it, it’s what I do) and surrendering to the whirling swirling force at its center, to find myself get spit out along with the waves just before I drown. I am not sure I have escaped as gracefully as our hero in the story below, but I can definitely relate to getting out of freezing water and pounding waves, and running around singing in bliss, as my neighbors will tell you, after my own naked icy water swims and dips in our local Puget Sound. And not to worry, this time of the year I do wear a wool hat and tend to keep my head above the water….

But let’s not make light of the current moment or the gravity of the horrendous suffering so many people are experiencing, from Ukraine to Los Angeles to the Middle East to some of my immediate neighbors. The wisdom of my favorite Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi is so precious for this time! How do we manage to get through each day without getting suffocated or burned or incapacitated by fear? What good does it do for the world or myself if I get so upset, speaking from personal experience here a couple of days after the election, that I back my truck into the car parked behind me or growl at my friend while chopping onions for the soup kitchen? Whether the universe forces us to learn to walk through fire without getting burned in a literal sense, as too many people are having to do right now in LA, or metaphorically, Zhuangzi tells us to sit down, take a breath, and share some stories. This is such a hugely important message for me. There is no technical skill, no amazing whiz kid solution, no daring heroic action that my intellect can come up with to extricate me from the current situation I am in. The harder I fight and the stronger I push and the more I get wrapped up in my ego’s need to act, to try and shape forces that are obviously far bigger than anything I could ever dream of affecting, the faster I will panic, drown, burn, suffocate, and end up as toast. We all know this, or at least those of us who are fortunate enough to have been exposed to traditional Chinese philosophy. and Daoist writings in particular. The stories below are a beautiful illustration of this universal truth, the “transformative power of Yin” (in my late soul sister Lillian Bridges’ potent phrase), the art of “non-purposive action” (wuwei 無為) or letting things be and trusting that they will naturally, spontaneously, do what they are supposed to do (ziran 自然). Another one of Lillian’s favorite pieces of advice to me was to “trust in divine timing.” Bingo!

I am German and only a generation removed from the horrors of the Nazi regime and the Second World War. No need to tattoo this on my forehead, it’s part of who I am, for better or for worse, like the mountains that the swimmer mentions as his origin in the story below. So every cell in my being is screaming that I cannot stand by and watch passively when every historian and scholar of fascism that I respect is sending off red flag warnings about the state of the world, and the US in particular. I’ve got my eyes wide open and cannot close them, even if I wanted to. From my local perspective as a fierce protector of my beloved animals on my budding farmstead, to the global one as a friend, colleague, and teacher with a whole lot of connections to innocent people suffering immensely due to war, terror, climate change, and other natural and human-made disasters, this question of how we walk through fire without burning is one that we all perhaps should take a bit more seriously, at least those of us who have been lucky enough to be spared the literal experience so far. Because once we are in that fire, as the Yellow Emperor (freely cited) reminds us, it’s too late to fix the broken fire engine.

Ultimately, Zhuangzi’s goal with this chapter is to dá shēng 達生, to “penetrate the mysteries of life,” in my admittedly free translation of this potent phrase. I have been so lucky in my own process here over the past few months to have Leo Lok by my side, my podcasting partner and recently co-teacher in a course on “Nurturing Our Nature.” Every time the proverbial shit has hit the fan in my personal life, directly affecting my ability to work and teach and write and sleep and milk my goats, Leo has reminded me with his infinite kindness, compassion, courage, and wisdom how lucky I am to have this opportunity for deep spiritual growth and inner transformation, through the challenges that the universe is presenting me with at any given moment. At my age in my 50s, I can accept the truth of his wise counsel and can see in hindsight how every dark time in my life has spurred me into a new level of being, like the transformation from the chrysalis to the butterfly. I can even muster some playful curiosity to observe from the outside how I change in my response from one round to the next. But this old butterfly also feels tired and battered, probably like many of you, with tender wings damaged by too many wild storms and injuries. So how do we escape the next blaze or cold spell the universe sends our way, with those tired wings of ours? Well, the answer is we don’t. And that has got to be okay.

Let me be clear here: I do NOT mean to end this post on what might look like a bleak note of doom and defeat. I merely need to accept that I don’t know what the universe has in store for me, and that there are forces far greater than anything I can control that have always shaped human lives in what to us feels like good or bad ways. That is simply part of the package that we signed up for in choosing to be born in a human incarnation. As the second passage below emphasizes, we are bound to fall out of a carriage, or in my case off of many bicycles and motorcycles and horses, and get banged up by life. BUT… here Zhuangzi is offering some advice to help us avoid adding insult to injury, or complicating the healing that invariably follows by adding unnecessary mental anguish and shock to the mix. We all want somebody to blame, and it is so satisfying, in the face of a disaster and innocent suffering, to indulge in anger against a tangible target. Anger is most definitely a necessary engine for change. Regardless of whether that target deserves our anger and potential punishment when justice is done (from all the self-inflated male ego-driven buffoons currently waging wars in their relentless greed and hunger for dominance, to the fire protection and insurance agencies in LA to my local zoning office), what’s the point of justice? And who is to wield it and how does your personal emotional turmoil contribute to justice being served? Where do you want to put your precious life energy? What does it mean to “safeguard your unadulterated Qi” or “obtain completeness from Heaven,” as Zhuangzi puts it? Can I and the world afford the energy spent on worrying about falling out of the carriage or a swimmer’s fight in the whirlpools of life when ultimately we all get spit back out to safety if we just let nature do her thing and “follow the water’s Dào”?

I don’t have any answers. I have a whole lot to learn before I can even begin to try and “penetrate the mysteries of life”, that is for sure. But I have been reading the Yìjīng a lot lately, as I tend to do right before the Chinese New Year and in difficult times, and recently I got the hexagram for 隨, “to follow along,” to go with divine timing, to surrender to the flow. So that is what I am trying to do right now. I am not quite ready to end up as toast. Or if I do, I want to get there singing and strolling naked along the riverbank! So there….

Zhuangzi, “Penetrate the Mysteries of Life”

莊子《達生》

Lièzǐ asked Guānyǐn: “The person who has reached [the epitome of accomplishment] walks under water without drowning, steps on fire without getting hot, and walks high above the myriad things without trepidation. May I ask how he comes to reach this level of accomplishment?”
Guānyǐn answered: “This is a matter of safeguarding the unadulterated Qì, and is not a case of knowing special skills or being brave. Sit down! Let me tell you some stories!

列子問關尹曰：「至人潛行不窒，蹈火不熱，行乎萬物之上而不慄。請問何以至於此？」

關尹曰：「是純氣之守也，非知巧果敢之列。居！吾語女。

…

Now when a really drunk person falls out of a carriage, even though they will get hurt, they don’t die.
Their bones and joints are just like those of others, but the harm done here will be different from others. This is associated with keeping their spirit complete! Whether they are riding in the carriage or falling out of it, they are unaware! The terror of losing their life does not enter their chest, and for this reason they are not frightened by unexpected events.
If this is what it is like for somebody who has obtained completeness through liquor, how much more for somebody who has obtained completeness from Heaven! The sage hides in Heaven, and thus there is nothing that can harm them!

夫醉者之墜車，雖疾不死。

骨節與人同，而犯害與人異，其神全也，乘亦不知也，墜亦不知也，死生驚懼不入乎其胷中，是故遻物而不慴。

彼得全於酒而猶若是，而況得全於天乎！聖人藏於天，故莫之能傷也。」

…

Confucius was once gazing at the infamous Lǚliáng Mountain waterfall, a place where water drops hundreds of feet and the spray covers dozens of miles, where neither fish nor turtle nor alligator would ever be able to swim.
And yet, there he saw a brave soul swimming! Assuming that the man was in trouble and about to drown, he had his disciples run along the water’s flow in order to rescue him and pull him out. Several hundred feet downstream, the swimmer got out, shook the water out of his hair, and went off, singing and strolling along the bank!
Confucius went after him and asked: “I took you to be a ghost, but now that I look at you closely, you are human! May I ask, is there a Dào to your dance with this water?”
The swimmer responded: “Nope. I don’t have a Dào. I started out with where I come from, grew up into my true nature, and matured into my destiny. I enter straight into the center of the swirl and exit along with the churned waves. I follow the water’s Dào and do not impose any of my own actions on it. This is how I dance with it.”
Confucius said: “What do you mean by “started out with where I come from, grew up into my true nature, and matured into my destiny”?”
He answered: “Being born in the mountains and being at ease in the mountains, that is where I come from. Growing up in the water and being at ease in the water, that is my true nature. Not knowing how or why I am the way I am and yet being so, this is my destiny.”

孔子觀於呂梁，縣水三十仞，流沫四十里，黿鼉魚龞之所不能游也。

見一丈夫游之，以為有苦而欲死也，使弟子並流而拯之。數百步而出，被髮行歌而游於塘下。

孔子從而問焉，曰：「吾以子為鬼，察子則人也。請問蹈水有道乎？」

曰：「亡，吾無道。吾始乎故，長乎性，成乎命。與齊俱入，與汩偕出，從水之道而不為私焉。此吾所以蹈之也。」

孔子曰：「何謂始乎故，長乎性，成乎命？」

曰：「吾生於陵而安於陵，故也；長於水而安於水，性也；不知吾所以然而然，命也。」

And now, I hope you leave me a comment or two (: