...[l]ay aside all your philosophical, religious, and political opinions, and [to] become almost like an infant, knowing nothing. Nothing, that is, except what you actually hear, see, feel, and smell. Take it that you are not going anywhere but here, and that there never was, is, or will be any other time than now. Simply be aware of what actually is without giving it names and without judging it, for you are now feeling out reality itself instead of ideas and opinions about it. There is no point in trying to suppress the babble of words and ideas that goes on in most adult brains, so if it won't stop, let it go on as it will, and listen to it as if it were the sound of traffic or the clucking of hens. 

Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear; let your eyes see whatever they want to see; let your mind think whatever it wants to think; let your lungs breathe in their own rhythm. Do not expect any special result, for in this wordless and idealess state, where can there be past or future, and where any notion of purpose? 

Tao: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts

Tao and Desire

Buddhists and Taoists alike speak of the sage as one who has no desires, though the latter also speak of him as one whose "joy and anger occur as naturally as the four seasons," and here may lie a clue to the problem. For is it even possible not to desire? Trying to get rid of desire is, surely, desiring not to desire. Any project to suppress desire would obviously be contrary to the spirit of wu-wei, and implies that "I" am some separate potency which can either subdue desire or be subdued by it. Wu-wei is to roll with experiences and feelings as they come and go, like a ball on a mountain stream, though actually there is no ball apart from the convolutions and wiggles of the stream itself. This is called "flowing with the moment," though it can happen only when it is clear that there is nothing else to do, since there is no experience which is not now. This now-streaming (nunc fluens) is the Tao itself, and when this is clear innumerable problems vanish. For so long as there is the notion of ourselves as something different from the Tao, all kinds of tensions build up as between "me" on the one hand, and "experiences" on the other. No action, no force (wei) will get rid of this tension arising from the duality of the knower and the known, just as one cannot blow away the night. Light, or intuitive understanding, alone will dissipate the darkness. As with the ball in the stream, there is no resistance to the up when now going up, and no resistance to the down when now going down. To resist is to get seasick. 

Tao: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts

yang and yin

The key to the relationship between yang and yin is called hsiang sheng mutual arising or inseparability. As Lao-tzu puts it: 

When everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;
When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil;
"To be" and "not to be" arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realised;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited;...
Before and after are in mutual sequence.

They are thus like the different, but inseparable, sides of a coin, the poles of a magnet, or pulse and interval in any vibration. There is never the ultimate possibility that either one will win over the other, for they are more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting. But it is difficult in our logic to see that being and nonbeing are mutually generative and mutually supportive, for it is the great and imaginary terror of Western man that nothingness will be the permanent end of the universe. We do not easily grasp the point that the void is creative, and that being comes from nonbeing as sound comes from silence and light from space. 

Thirty spokes unit at the wheel's hub;
It is the centre hole [literally, "from their not being"] that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the shape within that makes it useful.
Cut out doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there. 

Tao: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts

Taoist saw the Power of Heaven as both masculine and feminine, as symbolised by the Taoist T'ai Chi - the circle divided by a curved line into light and dark, or male and female, halves. Heavenly Power at work in the natural world, however - what Lao-Tse called "The Mother of Ten Thousand Things" - has always been seen by Taoists as mostly feminine in its actions. It is gentle like flowing water. It is humble and generous, like a fertile valley, feeding all who come to it. It is hidden, subtle, and mysterious, like a landscape glimpsed through mist. It takes no sides, grants no authority. It cannot be influenced or appeased by sacrifices and rituals. In dispensing justice, as in all things, it operates with a light touch, an invisible hand. As Lao-tse put it, "Heaven's net has wide meshes, but nothing slips through." Shying away from displays of arrogance and egotism, it communicates its deepest secrets not to high government officials, pompous scholars, or wealthy landowners, but to penniless monks, little children, animals and "fools". If it can be said to be biased in any way, it is in favour of the humble, the weak, the small."

The Te of Piglet, Benjamin Hoff