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WU Wei
Life unfolds between moments of doing something and moments of doing nothing.
One is the opposite of the other in the same dimension of external appearances. Life seems to pendulate between the polarities of activity and rest. But that is just the surface.
There is a third doing belonging to another dimension: Non-doing at the core of both doing something and doing nothing. This non-doing is the secret bridge to life’s dimension that in its becoming and disappearing, arising and fading, is independent of whether we do something or do nothing. From the depths of this other dimension of life, or of Life (with capital L) if you so want, the law of Being manifests as one of the most essentially human characteristics – presence. Whether we do something or do nothing, presence is the way Being manifests beyond just automatic and mindless existence, and it remains unshakably linked to its lawful principles of non-doing. That path, that way of Being as presence is the essential non-doing within both doing something and doing nothing. In Chinese culture, this is called Wu Wei.
Doing something and doing nothing become wholesome and sacred acts only then, when they don’t impede the manifestation of Being coming from the depths Life. Whether we act selfishly or selflessly, being too wrapped up in our busyness runs the risk of impeding Being from becoming manifest as presence in our lives. It seems obvious how busyness impedes the radiant blossoming of presence; it is trickier to realize how doing nothing may impede presence just as much, when it is filled with inner unrest.
Non-doing is the expression of presence emerging from the stillness of Being. This stillness is not the absence of movement, but our learned capacity to get out of nature’s dynamically unfolding ways. Stillness is therefore always there to be tapped into when we know-how, right in the midst of life’s bustling catastrophe. Conversely, in life’s quiet moments of doing nothing, non-doing is also the expression of a profound connection to the irrepressible, creative, and dynamic source of life. In other words, non-doing is both a vast space of stillness amid chaos and an intimate connection to the ever-creative and dynamic source of life.
Being is beyond doing something and doing nothing, and therefore often seen as the transcendent dimension of existence. Our collective calling to becoming fully human during our existence, beyond the animalistic fulfillment of needs for survival, is precisely about making sure that nothing gets in the way of the subtle, quiet, but the powerful human impulse to reveal the presence of Being. To this end, it behooves us to develop and practice non-doing within all our many active and receptive doing activities, and consistently orient ourselves towards its powerful energy that serves as a beacon, measure, direction, and meaning for our lives. When rooted in non-doing, the lively and life-affirming dynamic of our human essence is protected from the suffocating busyness of our goal-oriented doing.
We typically practice non-doing in our formal meditation sittings. Through meditation, we remain open to the initiatory core of all doing and behaving. In Wu Wei, we maintain an accepting openness towards life’s mystery, which yearns for expression and human testimony.
When Wu Wei directs action, there is ease and relaxation, because our ego steps aside to allow our true self to be in charge. This true self is not a unified entity in us, but rather our moment-by-moment attitude when we can get out of life’s spontaneous, dynamically unfolding ways. This free and easy non-doing amid the busy market place we call Wu Wei, also carries the living word of our communications. Speaking in accordance with the presence of Being means speaking from the depth of stillness as the resonance board for our words’ deeper meanings. Words with power come from silence. Right speech that is attuned to whom we speak with, sounds loudly with the silence that is so characteristic of presence in Being. Conversely, the word of Being falls silent amidst the yapping and chatter of mindless gossip.
If all this sounds theoretical or philosophical to you, let me give a recent example from an email I just received from one of my students. She writes: “Regarding the four steps of our transformation algorithm meditation practice, letting oneself go and surrender to the flow of the breath, how do I surrender and trust the flow to carry me, if (based on my life experience) I no longer believe in the ‘benevolence of the Universe’?” This a question that typically arises when as I described above one is stuck in ‘the suffocating business of goal-oriented doing’, which severs our connection to ‘non-doing as the lively and life-affirming dynamic of our human essence’. To the extent this student is alienated from Being, what she fails to realize is that this state of alienation is a huge opportunity and one of the royal roads to accessing the mystery of Being.
The first step is to understand that when she says she no longer believes in the benevolence of the universe, what she is really saying is that her problem-solving, goal-oriented mind no longer believes. In other words, she is saying something of crucial importance without knowing that she is saying it – and that is that she has reached the limit of what the problem-solving mind can handle, understand, and process. To put it differently, she has reached the limits of the ‘doing-something-and-doing-nothing’ dimension. This is good news she can rejoice in – on one hand, that is. On the other hand, the scary leap starts now: It is the leap that entails a relinquishing of this limited sense of meaning the problem-solving mind creates, and surrender to what from the problem-solving mind’s point of view appears as the universe’s utter malevolence, destructiveness, meaninglessness, forsakenness, and absurdity. It is a leap into the void with the seemingly real expectation of falling to one’s demise. This is why wise men and women say that when you die before you die, you will not die when you die. It is a leap of faith without a shred of trust, or maybe if lucky, a shred of trust that comes from the encouraging words of the many teachers who have taken this journey before you. This infinite void without reassurances appears to be so dark, destructive and absurd, because the problem-solving mind, which we allowed to dominate our sense of reality over a whole lifetime, has no reference points for it. No words, no concepts, no narratives, not even any sensory experiences apply to what this apparent void is all about.
Only once we have dared to take the leap, which is, in fact, another way of saying that we dared to show up, live fully and manifest presence in Being, only then do we discover a most astonishing reality – what we thought was the universe’s benevolence was nothing more than our little ego’s rationalization that when we thrive and have no pain, no illness, and no death, we think the universe is benevolent. When calamities occur, we think it is bad. What meager nonsense! We discover something of untold beauty, namely that whatever happens, whether we are young or old, fresh or decrepit, smooth or wrinkled, healthy or sick, alive or about to die, an incredible, nameless sense of peace and love awaits us to be discovered, and that we are not just part of the universe, but we are, have always been, and will always be this universe unfolding, filled with love and awe-inspiring beauty. It is impossible to properly describe this awakening when we open ourselves up to this new dimension – as they say in Zen, we can only talk about the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. For those inclined to read sacred texts, read the story of Job in the Bible, or the story of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, just to name two among many, and you’ll know what I am trying to write about.
Back to my student: How do you take that leap? You have to embrace the stark and painful darkness of absurdity and meaninglessness with curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love while making sure you consistently use your meditation tools and psychotherapy, if necessary, the proper way. Most people shy away from that precipice, often because they simply don’t have the tools to meet their mind’s depth, they don’t have the patience and dedication to walk that path, or they don’t have a teacher experienced enough to guide them through. Having a teacher with experience is essential because without him or her one can easily shatter under the barrage of dangerous weapons of our mind’s bad neighborhoods. Not surprisingly Jesus said: “Many are called, but few are chosen!” Who does not want that kind of liberation independent from circumstance? Yet who is prepared to put in the necessary training to make that more probable?
Just a short aside, resist the idea that liberation from suffering is absolute, perfect, and a painless paradise. Instead, it is about a journey without end, a journey that in its endless unfolding is the goal, an abiding equanimity and peace in the middle of the busy marketplace with all its pleasures and pains. It is Wu Wei.
The practice of non-doing is a practice in taking oneself back, in undoing and unlearning. It is a retreat from identification with the external appearances of reality, which threaten to overstretch, or even break the golden thread that binds us to our transcendental essence. This retreat from the world of appearances is at the same time a turning towards and tuning into the depths of Being and presence, and therefore by no means a withdrawal from life, but a deepening of our access to life’s full context and splendor.
Living that way is an art, which requires the intentional effort of dedicated practice we commit ourselves to when we decide to walk the path of freedom. When we become experienced in the art of non-doing, everything we encounter in life radiates with the power of Life and its transcendental dimension that is awaiting to be discovered. We then recognize how the multitude of life forms and things in the universe are each individual and unique space- and time-bound manifestations of timeless and nameless Being. To live a life of initiation means to dedicate ourselves to recognize life as endless transformation, in which we lovingly manifest through presence and deeds the timeless principles of sacred Being.
Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
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More Blog Posts
Forgetting that we have a mind.
Before you worry about symptoms such as depression and anxiety and how to improve or get rid of them, before you get your blood boiling arguing with people who can't deal with anything beyond their own viewpoint, before you develop and become ensconced in your own opinions, before you vilify who disagrees with you, before you shake your head wondering how seemingly obvious facts cannot be agreed upon, before you assume you have no blind spots, before you despair that crowds never learn from history, before you become bitter at humanity's collective stupidity, before you get passionate about religion, mythology, and archetypes, before all that, wouldn't it make sense to inquire into the source of all of it - these symptoms, views, opinions, thoughts, actions, distortions and, frankly, miseries?
While it does not take rocket science to realize that the source of it all is the embodied human mind, for most, embarking on its exploration is at best a big challenge, at worst insurmountable, non-sensical or incomprehensible. How many times have you heard nonsense like “I don’t believe in psychology”, as if the existence of the moon were a matter of belief? How often do patients enter their physician’s office complaining of being anxious or depressed, and are sent home with a prescription without one question that would try to understand how their mind creates such suffering? Many people, including professionals who should know better, live and act as if they had no mind.
The mind is the source of all subjective phenomena and experiences, and we are astoundingly unaware of it. Our mind’s task is to ensure survival and the propagation of our species, not to ensure we live our best life. To this end, it needs to be efficient, rather than concerned about maximizing its potential. Efficiency results by pairing down information processing to the bare minimum. Embedded in the way mind functions are mechanisms that cause reality distortions, delusions, wild beliefs, and a profound obliviousness of one’s own ignorance. Whether we like it or not, our mind drives our lives like our heart pumps blood through our veins. The universe's natural processes have caused us to evolve that way, and for better or worse, we are stuck with a mind that functions sub-optimally as it creates profound reality distortions that seem at first blush to have successfully allowed us to multiply and propagate towards earth dominance. In the long run, however, it turns out that humanity may end up stampeding dangerously close to extinction. To thrive both individually and as a species we must come to terms with our rather dangerous mind and train ourselves to use it beyond its basic survival mode by accessing its inherent potential evolution has graciously also built into it. That takes work, training, effort and patience.
Our human mind provides the capacity for reflection. The mirror reflects what’s in front of it, meaning that as reality beams itself onto the mirror’s surface, the mirror beams it back to us as an image we can then examine from the outside. Notice how what gets examined by looking at the mirror is not reality itself, but an image of it. Our brain provides a similar process in the form of consciousness, whereby it maps reality in a virtual form we then can observe and manipulate. However, while the mirror reflects reality exactly as it is, the virtual reality consciousness creates is not only a map of reality, but that map is modified into a new creation. The brain as mapper functions as our central relationship organ that enables us to reflexively develop a relationship to reality and ourselves by having access to a virtual, mapped and modified reality we can ponder and manipulate. This is how we are self-aware.
As an aside, the mind is more than the creator of a virtual adaptation of reality we can reflexively relate to and have a relationship with. It can transcend self-awareness, and knowingly experience reality and awareness without the detour of mapped mirroring duality. That is the shift from observation to being, from knowing we exist in a universe to realizing we are the universe. More about that in another context.
The eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina, but you don’t see it. You have the impression of enjoying a seamless field of vision without two black holes in the middle, even though the holes are there. The brain manages to fill in the missing information to make the field seem seamless. Extrapolate that to the whole brain to realize that to function effectively for everyday survival our brain adapts our field of consciousness in two ways: It fills what’s missing to provide a sense of continuity and simplifies available information to not overwhelm you. It hides blind spots from you to provide continuity and withholds information to ensure efficiency. Both these mechanisms distort reality to ensure survival, while simultaneously laying the foundations for ignorance and suffering.
We each have many blind spots, but the core blind spot affecting us all is the proclivity to live as if we had no mind. We use our minds without realizing the extent to which our experience of reality is created by our mind. Without our conscious knowledge our brain creates the reality we experience. We don’t notice that the reality we experience is our brain’s creation. We mistake our brain’s constructions for reality. This results in a dangerous situation, in which we ignore the fact that our experience is subjectively constructed. We mistakenly believe that what we see and experience is automatically true, and because it seems true it seems real, and because it seems real it cannot be changed. Our primordial blind spot towards the brain’s constructions robs us of freedom of choice, of the power of clear view, wise discernment, and respectfully compassionate mutual understanding.
Our mind’s constructions seem so real that we hold on to them for dear life and want to shove them down other people’s throats without exploring their veracity. We get strongly identified with what we believe we know, emotions take over, and the capacity to hear each other vanishes. Identification with mind processes is the single most destructive problem in the way humans use their minds. Emotions suffocate the mind’s spaciousness to freely consider, question, doubt and explore, and before we know it, we are in conflict. If we cannot agree on facts, emotions drive us to use force to impose our views instead of inquiring more deeply into the divergent realities, and if necessary, compromising to try to resolve complexities. Force can take the form of yelling and screaming at each other, or legal and physical action.
The reality our mind constructs and we can have a relationship with, is in fact threefold. We first have objective reality, which is what happens in the universe independent of whether we know about it or there is anyone around to witness it. This reality consists of energy flow that is independent of how our brains and minds construct reality, and therefore as far from information as energy flow can get. The black death virus killed thousands of people without them knowing what viruses are or being able to see them. Although this is the easiest reality to agree upon, like in the case of flat-earthers, emotions still manage to cause distortions of objective facts.
Subjective reality is our own private experience nobody else has access to. This energy flow is entirely within as a construction by our own brain and mind. Although it is largely independent of objective reality, it is profoundly shaped by interactions with others. Even if everyone denies that I am in pain, if I experience pain, it is totally real for me. That is a difficult reality to agree upon, because seeing it from the outside requires trust and our capacity for empathy.
Then there is intersubjective reality, which is the reality of stories. This energy flow is deeply symbolic in the sense that language and stories are symbolic, therefore experienced as information flow, and a mutual co-creation with others. It is the reality that emerges through mutual narrative construction and is neither objective, nor subjective. It only exists in the interpersonal realm containing people who are willing to participate in it by accepting the shared reality. One such reality is money, but there are many others such as all collective ideas we can share. Money means nothing and has no reality unless it is shared in the interpersonal space. This is also a difficult reality to deal with, because it depends on the mutual capacity to regulate the multilayered energy flow between our intuition, our emotions and our intellect. When that occurs, empathy and clear insight become possible, allowing a degree of harmony within the intersubjective dance of energy and information flow to emerge. Any dance couple may dance a Tango, but those in conflict will not be able to present a harmonious dance.
To manage these three realities we each have a relationship with, requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional regulation many people don’t have. Much of the time, the mind remains transparent like air to our eyes, invisible or not known, yet profoundly determining how we relate to real reality and live our lives. Like children playing in a house on fire, we remain oblivious to the many ways our ignorance of mind causes suffering and destruction all around.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Silence and stupidity are the foundations of mental health.
As biological beings we function in analog mode, shifting from one physical and mental state to another, using intelligence to solve problems and consciousness to guide our intuition to make the best possible choices. In contrast to intelligence, which we also find in AI (artificial intelligence), consciousness involves both feelings and the capacity to self-reflect, resulting in the ability to resist reality and by extension suffer. Our biological organism functions naturally as a continuous energy and information flow changing with time through an infinite number of states (like the grandfather clock that shows the whole flow of time), while AI is digital, based only on two discreet states, 0 and 1, from which it organizes information (like your digital watch that only shows the exact time it is now). AI as an information processing system is completely alien to our organic nature. AI is an algorithm that like a table has no feelings and never sleeps, never needs a rest, never feels anything, and is incapable of ethical consideration (if it seems to have ethical reflections it is because it has been programmed to imitate ethical views, not because it feels anything). In social media it is programmed to make money by eliciting user engagement through emphasis on information that activates feelings in human beings, such as anger, awe, attraction, joy etc. The AI algorithm just chugs along as a soulless, emotionless information process like robots or zombies if you prefer the world of fantasy.
Humans, in turn, need rest, sleep, and the cultivation of various mental states through play, intimacy, physical activity, problem-solving, daydreaming and meditation. Within that richness of mental states lies creativity, and at the core of creativity is silence and stupidity. The cultivation of silence, and by extension unknowing, is paramount for the discovery of contexts within which all knowing is embedded. Stupidity relates to the fact that a majority of thoughts we have are crazy, non-sensical, false, deluded, unintelligible, and mysterious. Like a tree spreading millions of seeds, only a few of which will thrive into a new tree, our mind spews out millions of thoughts and fantasies, only a few of which are reflective of truth and conducive to living the good life. Nevertheless, that prolific productivity is the bedrock of creativity and requires skillful management. If we want to be healthy, we need to create a safe, private space for those thoughts to live, evolve, and be processed within the entirety of the mind. That space is the silence of contemplation and the safety of intimacy. Under the incessant barrage of the AI algorithm through social media we have been robbed of such a space, because we are swept away into the algorithmic stream of likes, dislikes, approvals, disapprovals, comparisons, competitions etc. The energy of stupidity then, is used to feed our narcissistic nature and flow unchecked into the public domain of the internet, with really nefarious results.
We are far from having developed the full potential of mind. More often than not we succumb to our internal algorithm of conditioned reflexes, behaviors, reactions and mindless activities that cause untold suffering. If mind has a choice between easy and difficult, it will always choose easy. Easy is what can be manipulated in the concrete world; it is easier to control the body and fast, for example, than to practice mind concentration. We have a certain command over the body and the external world, but not over our mind. Faced with the challenge of mind exploration, we must engage in a rigorous mind training and learn to observe it without judgment.
Most importantly, non-judgmental inquiry requires the privacy of our own intimate space with ourselves and a few chosen people we trust, where stupidity can have full latitude of manifestation. Caring for stupidity requires free private and intimate time, which should be a basic human right. Stupidity and silence are gold mines guaranteeing mental integration and expansion of awareness towards larger contexts. Once we have incorporated such mind hygiene into our lives, we are better equipped to meet the demands and responsibilities of reality, including social reality, and wisely chose what we responsibly allow into the public domain. The non-judgmental attitude of intimate and private investigation needs to give way to the discerning attitude of social manifestation and public expression. In the public domain it has catastrophic social consequences if anything goes and the first thought that enters one's mind is spewed out. Social authenticity in the public domain has nothing to do with spontaneously spewing out whatever stupidities and unformed thoughts fly through one’s mind. It is rather based on one’s capacity to cogently and responsibly express what is relevant to the demands of any life situation after having sifted through the chaos of one's thoughts. In that sense, opinions must be carefully crafted if we want a society that functions wisely.
This dialectic between internal freedom for stupidity and silence and external responsibility for wisdom and perspective requires a difficult ingredient – the capacity to face the truth. Information and truth are not the same, and most information is not truth. We are flooded daily with plenty of information, but truth is a rare and costly kind of information integration process that requires hard work and time to be discovered. Truth is costly because it demands research and investment. Fiction and fantasy (not as literary genres) are cheap and don't require any investment; they can be made as attractive as you would like them to be. They are simplistic, deluded and disconnected from reality. Truth on the other hand is complicated and complex, often painful and unattractive, and the hallmark of our mind’s connection with reality.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Important changes to the Mindsight Intensive program 2024-25
1. Administrative introduction:
In order to accommodate divergent needs of individual students in the group, I am considering modifications in the group's process. After the first 10 weeks of the fall trimester, during which we lay foundations together as one group, we might explore the possibility of giving students the opportunity to continue through the winter and spring in one of two separate streams of their choice depending on their perceived needs. The decision to continue as one group or split into two will organically emerge from a process of discussion within the whole group when the time comes.
Here are the two streams:
- There are those who primarily feel the need to develop and consolidate the scaffolding of meditative technique as their main objective.
- Others feel generally quite confident in their mastery of meditative technique, and are therefore more focused on exploring the psychodynamic, socio-political, existential and spiritual implications of embodying the daily meditative attitude their mastery of technique affords. This includes the expansion of awareness into the modes of nothingness and emptiness.
These two interest streams are paradoxically both complementary and potentially conflicting. On one hand, mindfulness practice invites the student to cultivate beginner’s mind in a non-striving, non-hierarchical fashion. On the other hand, there is a sequential evolution of skill in one’s ability to apply meditative techniques, much like when one learns to play an instrument, creating a hierarchy of skills and stages the meditator walks through over time. Mixing students from both streams in one group is important as it allows for mutual fertilization of experience, expertise and wisdom. By the same token, this differentiation of needs sometimes requires different teaching approaches and emphases in the material that is taught. Naturally, I always endeavor to navigate those two streams within the group as a whole in a way that allows for integration of the two.
2. Long-term commitment:
Students who are interested in the Mindsight Intensive already have mindfulness experience. Therefore, they are all familiar with how challenging it is to embody mindfulness as a way of life. It is therefore assumed that everyone signing up seeks immersion into the hard work required to meet defenses and avoidances head on that can sometimes arise during practice. This can only be achieved through the long-term effort that facing our mind’s complexity deserves and demands. The program is thus structured to run through a whole academic year of thirty sessions, and students with different, more short-term needs who might want to leave after a trimester or two should not join. The work’s intensity requires group cohesion and safety, as well as a shared sense that we can count on each other to work through tough challenges and moments together.
3. Session structure:
Every session will have the following elements:
- A meditation guided by me of at least 1/2 hour.
- Time for processing individual students’ journey through the trials and tribulations of their practice. This is the difficult part, because it requires from each student to honestly take on and address difficulties, defenses and avoidances that may arise during their practice and their daily lives. Ignoring these challenges invariably causes the journey to falter and shrivel back into the automaticity of the monkey mind.
- Theoretical considerations necessary to make sense of our mind explorations presented by me, and sometimes elaborated through group exercises and processing.
4. Immersion at home:
- In every session I will suggest homework. By diligently following and practicing the homework, the student can enter a path of transformation that will automatically and effortlessly unfold.
- Before starting the program, please make sure to rearrange your schedule so that you can dedicate around an hour/day to formal mindfulness meditation practice. This may vary at times depending on both external circumstances and internal mental states, but aiming for that amount of time will ensure rewiring and transformation. Although formal practice time can occasionally be broken up throughout the day, what ensures penetration of depth (see my blog ‘Depth in Mindfulness’) is the long uninterrupted stretch of time that inevitably causes deeper conditionings and unconscious forces to emerge into the light of awareness.
- Throughout the duration of the program, students can request ad hoc individual sessions, should they feel that the available group time has not provided the opportunity to address important issues that arise. For this to be covered by OHIP, you must have been seen by me in consultation through your family physician’s referral within the last two years. If you are not a regular patient of mine, ask Reena whether you must first get your doctor’s referral to see me or not.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
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