Wu Wei, or Action in Awareness

To act without expecting anything, without losing oneself in what one does: this is the meaning of Lao-Tzu's Wu Wei, which the Bhagavad Gita knows under another name. The Path simply calls it service. Neither charity nor virtue, it consists in keeping, at the heart of the most ordinary tasks, part of one's attention turned toward the essential.

A pretty river in a beautiful morning landscape, with large flat stones placed across to cross with dry feet. — Service allows us to move through each day in awareness

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Wu Wei, or Action in Awareness

Service, or Meditation in Action

"Without leaving my house, I know the universe. Without looking out my window, I see the ways of heaven. The farther one goes, the less one learns. The sage reaches the goal without walking. He knows without learning. And he accomplishes great things without acting."

At first glance, this saying of Lao-Tzu may raise a smile. One pictures an old sage sitting motionless, eyes half-closed, lost in a contemplation that looks a lot like sleep. But non-action means something quite different from stillness.

Non-action, Wu Wei, is a notion dear to Lao-Tzu and to Taoism, and it is also found in the Bhagavad Gita, under another name. It is often understood as renouncing the fruit of one's actions, and that is not wrong: "Strive to act while renouncing the fruits of your deeds, and do not believe yourself to be the origin of their consequences," says one of the verses of the Gita, in substance.

But this renunciation is not first and foremost a moral effort, a discipline one imposes on oneself. It is the consequence of a simpler fact: attention does not leave its center. Whoever knows the cause of illusion enjoys the pleasures of the world without losing oneself in them. Losing oneself, here, does not mean acting wrongly; it means becoming confused with what one does, expecting from it a self-image, a confirmation, a result that would fill a lack.

A verse from the Bhaktimàrga sums this up plainly: "Non-action is not doing nothing." What Lao-Tzu called by that name, what the Gita called karma-yoga, action detached from its fruit, The Spiritual Path calls service, one of the practices of the sadhana, along with satsang and meditation.

Neither Charity nor Virtue

A previous text described formal meditation as a turning of the senses inward, in order to see, hear and feel the essence of one's deepest self. Service is, in a way, its exact opposite, and yet its perfect complement: it takes nothing away from the world, it asks no one to stop working, speaking or acting; it consists in keeping, in the midst of any activity, part of one's attention turned toward the Holy-Name, or Shabda Brahman, that presence active in all things, and therefore also within oneself.

A common misunderstanding must be addressed here. Service, as The Spiritual Path understands it, is not doing someone a favor, even though doing favors remains, in itself, a good thing; nor is it a method for becoming a better person, however desirable that may be.

The aim of Yoga-Originel is neither virtue nor kindness toward others, precious as they are; it is to deepen awareness of the moment, and of the fundamental harmony that fills it.

A Cistercian monk ploughs, sweeps, knits, and yet his mind remains in prayer. Outwardly, nothing distinguishes him from a man performing the same gestures without that attention. The gesture stays the same: the plough moves forward, the broom glides, the stitches take shape. What changes cannot be seen; it is a way of doing, a state of consciousness. The thing done matters less than the way it is done.

Stepping Stones in the Torrent

One might object that attention divided in this way risks distracting from the work, or from inner presence. Experience says otherwise. Far from scattering attention, this presence held in the background gathers it; the gesture becomes more precise, less hampered by the mind and its complications.

One image captures well what service brings to a day: large stones laid across a stream allow one to cross without getting wet or being swept away by the current. The moments spent in awareness of the Holy-Name, over the course of an ordinary day, are like those stones. One does not leave the torrent of tasks and obligations; one simply learns to set one's foot on what, within oneself, is stable and constant, in a world where everything moves and changes ceaselessly.

A spiritual life does not require leaving the world. Service is its simplest, most everyday demonstration: there is not, on one side, an ordinary life made of tasks to accomplish, and on the other, a spiritual life reserved for special moments. There is only one life, and the same gesture, repeated by two different people, can be a chore for one and a path for the other.

Where Realization Takes Root

Service is right action. A scene from the film Diva, in which Gorodish initiates a young man into what he calls "the Zen of buttering bread," offers an image of it: by repeating the same gesture again and again, soon there is no longer any knife, bread or butter; all that remains is a movement repeating itself. Without naming it, that scene was already describing service. Action held in awareness of the Holy-Name more naturally becomes right action, and right action finds its moment of its own accord, what the Greeks called kairos.

Meditation gathers an energy that would otherwise scatter in the noise and confusion of the day. Service sets that energy in motion. It is in service, more than in meditation itself, that the act becomes right, in the right place, at the right moment.

Little by little, the stones draw closer together. The moments spent in the Holy-Name become more frequent and longer, until the day shifts from a dotted line to a continuous one. Never leaving this awareness, from waking to sleeping: that is Realization.

The text devoted to meditation noted that one does not always come to one's cushion in the same frame of mind; some days, dharana, the phase of concentration, goes on without reaching dhyana, deep meditation. By keeping the day connected to the Holy-Name, service prepares precisely for that evening sitting: less scattered when sitting down, one enters it more easily. Service is the place of Realization and the antechamber of meditation.

This text was inspired by a chapter from the essay: "The Fundamental Experience".

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