From The Way of Chuang-Tzu, translated/assembled by Thomas Merton.
The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.
It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything.
The safe is quiet because he is not moved,
Not because he wills to be quiet.
Still water is like glass.
You can look in it and see the bristles on your chin.
It is a perfect level;
A carpenter could use it.
If water is so clear, so level,
How much more the spirit of man?
The heart of the wise man is tranquil.
It is the mirror of heaven and earth
The glass of everything.
Emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness,
Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.
This is perfect Tao. Wise men find here.
Their resting place.
Resting, they are empty.From emptiness comes the unconditioned.
From this, the conditioned, the individual things.
So from the sage’s emptiness, stillness arises:
From stillness, action. From action, attainment.
From their stillness comes their non-action, which is also action
And is, therefore, their attainment.
For stillness is joy. Joy is free from care
Fruitful in long years.
Joy does all things without concern;
For emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness,
Silence and non-action
Are the root of all things.
Or, as another sage said, “You’ve got to know when to hold, know when to fold, know when to walk away, know when to run.”
I once wrote a recommendation to a client of mine, in the executive summary saying, “It is much easier to not do anything than to do something stupid.” That was in reference to their plan to embark on a complicated project that was probably going to fail – a very large WiFi deployment when the technology was still new and expensive; back in the WEP days. As it happened, they invested a huge amount of money in Cisco WiFi gear, which had to be replaced in bulk when the standards switched after WEP failed so spectacularly. My original recommendation was to wait 5 years while doing a limited, experimental, deployment on the basis that in 5 years the technology would be much better and cost half as much. I bumped into my point of contact from the client at an event in Dallas years after, and he said my report was the most unusual thing they had ever seen. I’m still proud of that, I think.
Nice translation. Here are a few more crude nuggets from The Art of War (via wikiquote), possibly relevant:
— “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
— “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
— “What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”
— “He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.”
— “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
— “A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates.”
— “Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life. Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.”
consciousness razor@#1:
That’s of of my favorite books. It reminds me of Tao Te Ching in its specific non-specificness. It’s written by an expert for experts, because that is the level of understanding expected, but an expert would not seek vague confirmations in an ancient text.
“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are.
Nothing gives you interior lines like taking up a good position and waiting.
Thanks for sharing that, Marcus. It’s beautiful and I’ve kept it aside to read again.
The thinking in our modern, capitalist world is the opposite of this, and it makes the quiet contentment of the tao seem like radical philosophy in these times.
Do the thoughts and feelings of “the troops” figure in?
or are the “generals” and “rulers” the only ones who matter?
I think one can glean its wisdom, or one can be analytical, but not both.
—
What’s quoted in the OP is worse than that characterisation.
e.g. “The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.”
Either a contradiction, or a bad translation. And it doesn’t get any better.
chigau@#4:
Do the thoughts and feelings of “the troops” figure in?
or are the “generals” and “rulers” the only ones who matter?
A good question. Historically, they do not. They are lost behind the banner of their leader, and are treated as servants of the leader’s agenda.
John Keegan made his mark as a historian with his book The Face of Battle in which he tries to describe the experience of individual soldiers in the grunting and screaming press. His main thesis was that the old way of doing military history ignores the experience of the soldiers and talks about the forces on the field in a unitary manner, i.e.: “then, the French line began to collapse” – well, what did that feel like? It was important to the battle and it was important to the soldiers involved. I think it’s an interesting and worthwhile exercise but I don’t think he won his point.
John Morales@#5:
Either a contradiction, or a bad translation. And it doesn’t get any better.
The real world is full of contradictions. In thought and action that may appear to be considered or balanced. You may want your cake and to eat it, too, so you only eat half.
Marcus @#7
Sure, but this isn’t an argument for why humans ought to intentionally make meaningless statements or intentionally obfuscate the words we say. Nor is it an argument for why we ought to appreciate “profane sounding” words that upon more careful analysis turn out to say nothing. For me statements like “the non-action of the wise man is not inaction” make no sense. Granted, I am clearly not the target audience for such writings. I can only assume that other people can extract some ideas from such texts that seem meaningless to me.
John Morales@#5:
I too feel there’s a measure of willful obscurity and not entirely meaningful paradox, and that we might be ooh-ing and aah-ing in the right places because we recognize a pattern, and not necessarily because we get a deep understanding. That said, there is deep insight there, so I’m willing to forgive the gratuitous abstruseness.
Like all great insight, it’s kind of obvious in retrospect. And I suspect the wise advice is hard to follow. “Don’t attack out of spite and/or anger”, “if you’re where you want to be, stay there”, “don’t touch your face”…
Many books have been written (in Chinese) to attempt to explain the concept of “wu wei”, so it’s not exactly surprisingly that the literal English translation (“non-action”), in isolation and in an entirely different cultural context, is not readily understandable to people who have not made any study of the topic.
The Book of Chuang-Tzu is much closer to poetry than it is to an engineering manual, and is not particularly rewarding of simple, literal readings.
Dunc@#11:
The Book of Chuang-Tzu is much closer to poetry than it is to an engineering manual
Awesome!
Mysticism vastly amuses me.
I guess this is a bit like Buddhism, where the desire is to not have desire.
(Since I don’t desire to not have desire, I’ve already succeeded!)
Dunc:
It’s sufficiently rewarding; the inanity is duly exposed upon even a cursory examination.
(Is the connotation supposed to be that it is particularly rewarding of complex, metaphorical readings? Make your own shit up?)
@5, regarding “The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.”
I don’t find that a difficult sentiment to parse. Someone lacking experience in a situation can result in a poor decision or no action at all because they have no idea how to select an appropriate decision. On the other hand, someone with plenty of experience in the situation may very well know the best decision to take it to do nothing and wait for a while (for a variety of reasons, perhaps to integrate more evidence, perhaps because they know their actions will only compound harm). In this sense, perhaps a better translation of the ‘inaction’ would be ‘indecision’, but the meaning of the present translation seems quite obvious to me.
Poetry tends to be fairly imprecise, and my own interpretation is certainly not immune to criticism, but I just don’t see how this one was difficult to make into a sensible interpretation.
John Morales@#14:
Is the connotation supposed to be that it is particularly rewarding of complex, metaphorical readings?
Some books are intended to trigger your own thoughts, and to perhaps direct them without laying out a road-map. For example The Art of War is a bit cryptic in spots, and obvious in others – it’s not that the author was trying to be vague so much as that they’re trying to stimulate the reader to think about a complex problem in ways that are perhaps different from their usual approach. In that sense, yes, it’s “make your own shit up.”
Mysticism vastly amuses me.
I’m glad you’re easily amused. I don’t find you particularly amusing, but I’m pretty particular.
Sam N@#15:
In this sense, perhaps a better translation of the ‘inaction’ would be ‘indecision’, but the meaning of the present translation seems quite obvious to me.
I tend to drop straight into specifics – “waiting for the situation to develop” is not exactly inaction, but it may appear to be to a neutral observer.
Fair enough, I gather it’s supposed to be a (verbose) koan.
I take non-action (or inaction) to mean whatever you do when you don’t fall for action bias. Or, as I said, “if you’re where you want to be, stay there”. I hope I’m not too far off.