K'ung Fu-tse hurried up to him. "You would have to be a ghost to survive that," he said, "but you seem to be a man, instead. What secret power do you have?"
"Nothing special," the old man replied. "I began to leam while very young, and grew up practicing it. Now I am certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don't struggle against the water's superior power. That's all."
When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made—or imagined—by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard.
Not like Pooh, the most effortless Bear we've ever seen.
"Just how do you do it, Pooh?"
"Do what?" asked Pooh.
"Become so Effortless."
"I don't do much of anything," he said.
"But all those things of yours get done."
"They just sort of happen," he said.
"Wait a minute. That reminds me of something from the Tao Te Ching," I said, reaching for a book. "Here it is—chapter thirty-seven. Translated, it reads something like, 'Tao does not do, but nothing is not done.'"
"That sounds like a Riddle," said Pooh.
"It means that Tao doesn't force or interfere with things, but lets them work in their own way, to produce results naturally. Then whatever needs to be done is done."
"I see," said Pooh.
"In Chinese, the principle would be Wei Wu Wei— Do Without Doing.' From Wei Wu Wei comes Tzu Jan, 'Self So.' That means that things happen by themselves, spontaneously."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
For a basic example of the Pooh Way, let's recall something that happened in The House at Pooh Corner when Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Roo were playing Poohsticks. They'd dropped their sticks off the bridge into the river, and had gone to the other side to see whose stick would come out first.
And they'd been waiting quite a while when out floated . . .
Eeyore. Eeyore?
"I didn't know you were playing," said Roo.
"I'm not," said Eeyore.
"Eeyore, what are you doing there?" said Rabbit.
"I'll give you three guesses. Digging holes in the ground? Wrong. Leaping from branch to branch of a young oak-tree? Wrong. Waiting for somebody to help me out of the river? Right. Give Rabbit time, and he'll always get the answer."
Then Pooh got an idea. They could drop some stones into the river, the stones would make waves, and the waves would wash Eeyore over to the river bank. Rabbit thought it was a good idea. Eeyore didn't.
"Supposing we hit him by mistake?" said Piglet anxiously.
"Or supposing you missed him by mistake," said Eeyore. "Think of all the possibilities, Piglet, before you settle down to enjoy yourselves."
But Pooh had got the biggest stone he could carry, and was leaning over the bridge, holding it in his paws.
"I'm not throwing it, I'm dropping it, Eeyore," he explained. "And then I can't miss...I mean I can't hit you. Could you stop turning round for a moment, because it muddles me rather?"
"No," said Eeyore. "I like turning round."
Rabbit began to feel that it was time he took command.
"Now, Pooh," he said, "when I say 'Now!' you can drop it. Eeyore, when I say 'Now!' Pooh will drop his stone."
"Thank you very much, Rabbit, but I expect I shall know."
"Are you ready, Pooh? Piglet, give Pooh a little more room. Get back a bit there, Roo, Are you ready?"
"No," said Eeyore.
"Now!"
said Rabbit.
Pooh dropped his stone. There was a loud splash, and Eeyore disappeared....
It was an anxious moment for the watchers on the bridge. They looked and looked . . . and even the sight of Piglet's stick coming out a little in front of Rabbit's didn't cheer them up as much as you would have expected. And then, just as Pooh was beginning to think that he must have chosen the wrong stone or the wrong river or the wrong day for his Idea, something grey showed for a moment by the river bank . . . and it got slowly bigger and bigger... and at last it was Eeyore coming out.
With a shout they rushed off the bridge, and pushed and pulled at him; and soon he was standing among them again on dry land.
"Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!" said Piglet, feeling him.
Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.
"Well done, Pooh," said Rabbit kindly. "That was a good idea of ours."
Cleverness, as usual, takes all the credit it possibly can. But it's not the Clever Mind that's responsible when things work out. It's the mind that sees what's in front of it, and follows the nature of things.
When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don't belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn't try. It doesn't think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn't appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done.
"Having trouble, Piglet?"
"The lid on this jar is stuck," gasped Piglet. "Yes, it . . . is, isn't it. Here, Pooh, you open it."
(Pop.)
"Thanks, Pooh," said Piglet.
"Nothing, really," said Pooh.
"How did you get that lid off?" asked Tigger.
"It's easy," said Pooh. "You just twist on it like this, until you can't twist any harder. Then you take a deep breath and, as you let it out, twist. That's all."
"Let me try that!" yelled Tigger, bouncing into the kitchen. "Where's that new jar of pickles? Ah, here it is."
"Tigger," began Piglet nervously, "I don't think you'd better——"
"Nothing to i t " said Tigger. "Just twist, and——"
CRASH!
"All right, Tigger," I said. "Get those pickles off the floor."
"Slipped out of my paw," explained Tigger.
"He tried too hard," said Pooh.
And when you try too hard, it doesn't work. Try grabbing something quickly and precisely with a tensed-up arm; then relax and try it again. Try doing something with a tense mind. The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard—one that thinks too much. The animals in the Forest don't think too much; they just Are. But with an overwhelming number of people, to misquote an old Western philosopher, it's a case of "I think, therefore I am Confused." If you compare the City with the Forest, you may begin to wonder why it's man who goes around classifying himself as The Superior Animal.
"Superior to what?" asked Pooh.
"I don't know, Pooh. I've tried to think of something, but I just can't come up with an answer."
"If people were Superior to Animals, they'd take better care of the world," said Pooh.
"That's true," I said.
But down through the centuries, man has developed a mind that separates him from the world of reality, the world of natural laws. This mind tries too hard, wears itself out, and ends up weak and sloppy. Such a mind, even if of high intelligence, is inefficient. It goes here and there, backwards and forwards, and fails to concentrate on what it's doing at the moment. It drives down the street in a fast moving car and thinks it's at the store, going over a grocery list. Then it wonders why accidents occur.
When you work with Wu Wei, you have no real accidents. Things may get a little Odd at times, but they work out. You don't have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them. For example, let's recall the Search for
Small. Small—which is short for Very Small Beetle, we were told—disappeared one day on his way around a gorse-bush. Nobody knew what happened.
So the Search was begun, and soon everyone was trying very hard to find Small. Everyone, of course, had been organized and directed by Rabbit.
Everyone, of course, except for Pooh:
Bump!
"Owl" squeaked something.
"That's funny," thought Pooh. "I said 'Ow!' with out really oo'ing."
"Help!" said a small, high voice.
"That's me again," thought Pooh. "I've had an Accident, and fallen down a well, and my voice has gone all squeaky and works before I'm ready for it, because I've done something to myself inside. Bother!"
"Help—helpl"
"There you are! I say things when I'm not trying. So it must be a very bad Accident." And then he thought that perhaps when he did try to say things he wouldn't be able to; so, to make sure, he said loudly: "A Very Bad Accident to Pooh Bear."
"Pooh!" squeaked the voice.
"It's Piglet!" cried Pooh eagerly. "Where are you?"
"Underneath," said Piglet in an underneath sort of way.
"Underneath what?"
Well, after that had been straightened out . . .
"Pooh!" he cried. "There's something climbing up your back."
"I thought there was," said Pooh.
"It's Small!" cried Piglet.
Those who do things by the Pooh Way find this sort of thing happening to them all the time. It's hard to explain, except by example, but it works. Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least they do when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, "This isn't supposed to be happening this way," and trying hard to make it happen some other way. If you're in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on, you can look back and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen . . . " Then you realize that even if you'd tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn't have done better, and if you'd really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing.
Let's take another example of Things Work Out: Eeyore's birthday party, as arranged by Pooh and Piglet.
Pooh discovered, after Eeyore told him, that it was Eeyore's birthday. So Pooh decided to give him something. He went home to get a jar of honey to use as a birthday present, and talked things over with Piglet, who decided to give Eeyore a balloon that he'd saved from a party of his own. While Piglet went to get the balloon, Pooh walked off to Eeyore's with the jar of honey.
But after a while, he began to get Hungry.
So he sat down and took the top off his jar of honey.
"Lucky I brought this with me," he thought.
"Many a bear going out on a warm day like this would never have thought of bringing a little something with him." And he began to eat.
"Now let me see," he thought, as he took his last lick of the inside of the jar, "where was I going? Ah, yes, Eeyore." He got up slowly.
And then, suddenly, he remembered. He had eaten Eeyore's birthday present!
Well, most of it, anyway. Fortunately, he still had the jar. And since he was passing by the Hundred Acre Wood, he went in to see Owl and had him write "A Happy Birthday" on it. After all, it was a nice jar, even with nothing in it.
While all this was happening, Piglet had gone back to his own house to get Eeyore's balloon. He held it very tightly against himself, so that it shouldn't blow away, and he ran as fast as he could so as to get to Eeyore before Pooh did; for he thought that he would like to be the first one to give a present, just as if he had thought of it without being told by anybody.
And running along, and thinking how pleased Eeyore would be, he didn't look where he was going... and suddenly he put his foot in a rabbit hole, and fell down flat on his face.
BANG!!!???***!!!
Yes, well, after Piglet fell on Eeyore's balloon, it wasn't so . . . well, it was more . . . that is, it was . . .
"Balloon?"
said Eeyore. "You did say balloon? One of those big coloured things you blow up? Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and there we are?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid—I'm very sorry, Eeyore—but when I was running along to bring it to you, I fell down."
"Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I expect. You didn't hurt yourself, Little Piglet?"
"No, but I—I—oh, Eeyore, I burst the balloon!"
There was a very long silence.
"My balloon?" said Eeyore at last.
Piglet nodded.
"My birthday balloon?"
"Yes, Eeyore," said Piglet sniffing a little. "Here it is. With—with many happy returns of the day." And he gave Eeyore the small piece of damp rag.
"Is this it?" said Eeyore, a little surprised.
Piglet nodded.
"My present?"
Piglet nodded again.
"The balloon?"
And just then, Pooh arrived.
"I've brought you a little present," said Pooh excitedly.
"I've had it," said Eeyore.
Pooh had now splashed across the stream to Eeyore, and Piglet was sitting a little way off, his head in his paws, snuffling to himself.
"It's a Useful Pot," said Pooh. "Here it is. And it's got 'A Very Happy Birthday with love from Pooh' written on it. That's what all that writing is. And it's for putting things in. There!"
Then Eeyore discovered that, since the balloon was no longer as big as Piglet, it could easily be put away in the Useful Pot and taken out whenever it was needed, which certainly can't be done with the typical Unmanageable Balloon . . .
"I'm very glad," said Pooh happily, "that I thought of giving you a Useful Pot to put things in."
"I'm very glad," said Piglet happily, "that I thought of giving you Something to put in a Useful Pot."
But Eeyore wasn't listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting it back again, as happy as could be.
So it all worked out.
At its highest level, Wu Wei is indefinable and practically invisible, because it has become a reflex action. In the words of Chuang-tse, the mind of Wu Wei "flows like water, reflects like a mirror, and responds like an echo."
Just like Pooh. "Ahem. I say, 'Just like Pooh.'"
"Wh—what?" said Pooh, waking up suddenly and falling out of the chair. "What's like who?"
"What flows like water, reflects like a mirror, and responds like an echo?"
"Oh, a Riddle," said Pooh. "How many guesses do I get?"
"Oh, I don't know. Let's just see what happens."
"What could it be?" he mumbled. "Flows like water . .
Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn't the best time to do this. I'd better go that way." Like that.
When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That's just natural. It's only strange when you don't listen.
One of the most convenient things about this Sensitivity to Circumstances is that you don't have to make so many difficult decisions. Instead, you can let them make themselves.
For example, in The House at Pooh Comer, Pooh was wandering around one day trying to decide whom he wanted to visit. He could go see Eeyore, whom he hadn't seen since yesterday, or Owl, whom he hadn't seen since the day before yesterday, or Kanga, Roo, and Tigger, all of whom he hadn't seen for quite a while. How did he decide? He sat down on a rock in the middle of the stream and sang a song.