Life Is a Mystery

And you hold the key to unlocking its many doors

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Living in society is like playing a game. There are usually different levels of difficulty in a simulated game. We can experiment with them as many times as we want. The beauty of being immersed in games is that we can always start fresh with a new beginning and progress from repeated trials and errors.

We can get a sense of great fulfillment and satisfaction, seeing our main character in the game go through multiple challenges and hurdles, eventually unlocking the ultimate rewards by reaching the game’s destinations.

When we play a game, we are both actors and observers, as we can temporarily detach from the storylines the persona faces in the game.

In life, we are often consumed by entanglements at specific moments. There’s too much at stake. We can be taken by anxiety, pressure, worries, and expectations such that we mainly focus on being a participant.

When we make mistakes, we can be controlled by fear and restlessness. We want to play it safe. Since we do not want to fall again, we may become timid and hesitant in the face of challenges and what is unknown. And we are inclined to freeze.

We become passive actors. We can no longer observe our actions and innermost feelings. We resist and react.

When we cannot observe our inner self, we are deeply lost. We identify with whatever is projected upon us: praise and criticism, fame, failures, successes, labels, and all the other external influences that lure us into believing that they can define us.

At this point, we can easily be subject to the impact of societal forces. Schools, governments, media, prevailing opinions, and conventions seamlessly and persistently get us in the loop of constant cultural and social programming.

Yet, we still feel a sense of unease deep within. The inner voice is still there, even though it becomes dimmer. We enter into a predicament of existence.

All we need is a conscious choice to return to the observer mode. Without this, we run the risk of constructing a borrowed identity, a derivative mode of existence that is monotonous and mechanical.

But is it possible to break away from the pervasive and external influences? Can we truly become the master of our own self?

Finding your Tao

Confucius was already fifty-one years old and had not yet heard of Tao. Then he went to see Lao Tzu, who said to him, “I hear you are a wise man from the north. Have you found the truth (Tao)?”¹

“Not yet,” said Confucius.

“How did you go about to search for it?” Asked Lao Tzu.

“I had been searching for it by studying governmental systems and institutions for five years and without avail.”

“Then, what did you do to find the truth?”

“I tried to find it in the principles of yin and yang for twelve years and again in vain.”

“You are right,” said Lao Tzu. “For if Tao could be given as a gift, everybody would have offered it as a tribute to his ruler. If Tao could be told about, everybody would have spoken to his brothers about it. If Tao could be inherited, everybody would have bequeathed it to his children and grandchildren. But no one could do it. Why? Because if you haven’t got it in you, you could not receive Tao. If the other person hasn’t got it, the truth would not penetrate him.

“What is felt in oneself cannot be received from the outside and the sage does not try to communicate it. Humanity and justice are but like roadside inns to the ancient kings, where one could stop overnight, but not stay permanently. The perfect men of ancient times travelled by the road of humanity, stopping for a night at the inn of justice, to go on and wander about in the wilds of freedom. Freedom means doing nothing (wu-wei).

“Resentment, favor, give, take, censure, advice, life and death — these eight are means for correcting a man’s character, but only one who comprehends the great process of this fluid universe without being submerged in it knows how to handle them. Therefore, it is said, ‘You rectify what can be rectified.’ When a man’s heart cannot see this, the door of his divine intelligence is shut.”

The observer

The Tao cannot be transferred or given because one has to wake up to find it by oneself. We pass on conventions, accepted ways of doing things, and popular opinions without really examining them. This is all a mechanical repetition.

When we are unaware of our entanglements with a specific environment, we are simply reacting to the cues in it. We are not observing. We are not seeing. We are identifying with the temporary, impermanent phenomena of the outside world.

To identify with the appearance of things is the cause of suffering and confusion. Confucius identifies humanity and justice and yin and yang as the only viable truth. However, he does not see that he is pursuing the material characteristics of truth or the superficial attributes. He is in pain when no one resonates with his perspective on humanity and justice, as everyone sees truth in their own ways.

The same phenomenon of identification is still going on. We identify with slogans, political and religious beliefs, external identities, and all sorts of doctrines, voluntarily willing to defend them. We are being controlled by them. We are captives.

To take the observer’s seat is to be the gatekeeper of the inner room. It allows us to stay alert to what is happening to us. That is the spiritual state of living in wu-wei. So when we hear names or ideas about humanity and justice, we try to understand and dissect them without judging and being enchanted by them.

That is freedom from adopting wu-wei. It allows us to be at ease with the spontaneous unfolding of life itself. It is about becoming aware. We can interact with all the names, ideas, and labels out there and still not identify with them. With the ability to observe, we see them come and go without attachments, without clinging to them.

This detached observer state leads us to see “the great process of this fluid universe,” the ever-transformation of things in the world. This is the fundamental spirit of Taoism. Everything simply produces and operates spontaneously by itself in the universe. Intentional and willful actions cannot change it, as they are based on the desires and aspirations to identify with the temporary and the external.

“Reversion is the action of Tao. Gentleness is the function of the Tao.”² Everything is in flux in the universe. Growth and decay, rise and fall, life and death, progress and regress, all in a process of transformation.

“The ten thousand things are really one. We look on some as beautiful because they are rare or unearthly; we look on others as ugly because they are foul and rotten. But the foul and rotten may turn into the rare and unearthly, and the rare and unearthly may turn into the foul and rotten.”³

What is right in one context becomes wrong in another, what is proper in one situation becomes improper in another, what is joy can turn into pain, what is sorrow and suffering transforms into understanding and inner peace. When we are captured by the immediate reality, we lose the clarity to see the possibilities within the natural order of things. When we stop observing and start corresponding to one facet of perceived reality, we become the unconscious participant again.

In this sense, adaptation becomes the only viable solution for us. To adapt requires us to assume the observer role when necessary. Amidst the beautiful mysteries of living, no one can give us a magic formula or a method. We must discover and see it by ourselves.

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1. The story is based on the original text in Chuang Tzu, Chapter 14, “The Turning of Heaven.” For this pose, I referenced Lin Yutang’s adaptation. See Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of Laotse, (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2009), 261-262.

2. Ibid., 151.

3. Burton Watson, “Knowledge Wandered North,” in The Complete Works of Zhuangzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 177.