Daoism is a tradition that formed from something out of nothing. Like most mystical traditions, it began spontaneously from an unknown source, arising from the atypical experience of reality of certain people. It was only much later that it later grew into a “thing,” a system with structured practices and ideological concepts.
Daoism arose from the remnants of a time when people were more embodied and immersed in their experiential reality, prior to a shift toward a mental-rational orientation. In the midst of this historical shift, there were people trying to preserve the old way of being and experiencing the world. This old way, has also been referred to as the “feminine way” of Daoism due to its focus on subjective experience, an emphasis on the precognitive gnosis of the heart instead of the mind, and an experience of the creative source of the universe (the Dao) as being inseparable from everyday lived experience.
In the course of this transition from the "feminine” to the "masculine" way, what was once spontaneously arising mystical experience started to become more conceptually defined and ordered as ideological concepts and specific qi cultivation techniques. With the success of systematized agricultural practice, the people in early China likely wondered how they could create similar success in personal development. People wanted to understand more about how they could work to reliably stack the odds in their favor, rather than relying on providence alone.
Thus, the well-known phrases of Daoism, wúwéi (無為), meaning to be guided by emptiness, and zìrán (自然), meaning to be naturally or spontaneously so, were aphorisms related to reinforcing the value of the ancient way of being in the world, at a time where this way was receding. The philosophical calls to return to "the Way," or "the Dào" 道 in early Chinese writings echoed the idea that people were losing the old way, and is discussed in many early sources, including Suwen 1.2 of the Neijing and the Huainanzi.
ETYMOLOGICAL DISCUSSION
In my own studies of East Asian Medicine and philosophy, I have found that going back to the early etymology of Chinese characters inspires a much more nuanced understanding of terms that tend to become rigidly confined when translated into English. In the case of wuwei and ziran, this is especially so, and I hope that these etymological explorations will be helpful for anyone who studies East Asian culture, as well as for those whose world’s are intertwined with this culture through academia, acupuncture and East Asian Medicine, qigong 氣工, taiji 太極, or the internal arts, neigong 內工.
Wuwei 無為
Wúwéi is often translated as “non-doing” or “non-interference” and consists of the character wú 無, meaning "emptiness" paired with wéi 為, meaning "to perform an action, do something, or to serve as (something)."
The Bronze Script version of 無 wú is a picture of a person using a pole to carry two plants have been pulled up from the ground, or harvested (Figure 1). There are a few important concepts embedded within this simple image. The first is that the image is depicting what happens in autumn----fully mature plants are harvested from the soil, thus creating barren ground. On the wheel of the year, autumn symbolizes the time when things are in the process of decay within the continuous cycle of creation-destruction that is observed in the annual cycle of the seasons. The second important aspect is that the person is balancing the plants on opposite ends of a pole. Lastly, and more nuanced, is the fact that the person is not holding the pole with their hands, but that pole is being supported by their heart. Altogether, I interpret this as a process that analogous to autumn, balances opposition within the heart. In my own experience, this image reminds me of an energetic-alchemical process that can occur within the space of the heart. For me, this occurred as part of a large spiritual awakening, one in which, over the span of nearly a decade, the sources of my emotional reactivity, or triggering, from wounds held on nonphysical levels from past traumatic experience, were processed and detoxified as an overall energetic field clearing, analogous to the clearing of fields in autumn. The release of these emotional wounds, which I began to directly experience and perceive internally as being held at an immaterial level in the body as consolidated energetic "cysts," generated the most significant healing for me on all levels (physical, mental, emotional). The deepest wounds from past traumatic experiences were held and released from the area of the space within my heart, and were the most painful wounds to process and occurred at the end of this very long, very painful emotional detoxification cycle. This alchemical process within the heart was articulated by the Sufi poet, Rumi, as:
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.” (Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī & Barks, 2010)
為 wéi is the image of a hand above a four-legged land animal, with the Bronze and Seal versions being distinctly an elephant (due to the presence of a trunk). In all of the versions, the image is one of the animal being guided, fed or touched (Figure 2). This character has been associated with the ancient story of the blind men and the elephant, which was adopted by multiple cultures after its origination in early Indian folklore. In this tale, four blind men each feel a different part of an elephant… one feels the trunk, another the leg, etc… and therefore each perceives something completely different, even though in actuality, they are feeling the same thing. It’s a parable for describing the way that although we perceive reality through a vast spectrum of observable differences, beyond our individual perception, everything is really interconnected, and therefore one. In many of the old characters, the hand is placed at the trunk, as if a phantom hand is feeding the elephant, which relates to the way that the Dao, the creative matrix of the universe, is associated with nourishing everything mysteriously and naturally, like an attentive parent.
Etymological gestalt of wuwei
When paired together, wuwei thus describes a process at the level of the heart that clears something away, so that one can be fed directly by something greater. It points to the innocence and curiosity that are necessary to open to experiences that are outside of what we have been taught are possible, things that differ from our preconceived notions. It speaks to what the Zen Buddhists referred to as beginner's mind and echoes their emphasis on emptiness.
The pragmatism of emptiness in the spiritual awakening process could be an article of its own, but briefly, what can happen is that concepts that are held in the mind can start to reify out into your reality in strange and inconvenient ways. For example, you may begin to see what is in your mind reflected in your day-to-day reality like a mirror. Through this process, you begin to see what you are holding onto conceptually so that you can see the inaccuracy, ridiculousness, or even the toxicity of certain ideas or concepts, so that you can let them go permanently. Once the delusions, illusions, and toxic aspects of your acquired identity are vetted out, then the external manifestations of those concepts also subside. This can all be very confusing when it starts to happen and it took me an embarrassingly long time to (1) realize what was happening, to (2) accept it as true/possible, and then to (3) become actively engaged in the process to help expedite things. My stubbornness led to a lot of extra pain and suffering, but it also engraved certain lessons and resulted in true wisdom based on direct experience, rather than rooted in recycled ideological concepts.
With emptiness, the precognitive, arational knowing of the heart as direct insight or spontaneous intuition is invited to come to the fore instead of what is held in the mind. And, in my own experience, this emptiness can be a fruit of the process of awakening, equally as much as a seed that is intentionally planted. For many years, I practiced trying to stay as empty as possible, not just at a prescribed time at meditation, but throughout the day. I got really good clearing my mind of unnecessary thoughts and certain fruits resulted from this. But later, I had a different experience of what what I'll refer to as "inspired emptiness." I began to have the experience of "something else" that seemed to be able to dissolve my ability to think. The emptiness would occur without intention. I would try earnestly to generate a thought, but nothing would appear. It happens regularly now, usually when I'm being roped into some self-deprecating thought loop, or when I feel as though I've been abandoned by Source for one reason or another, often when things are at a really challenging point in life. I now consider these experiences of inspired emptiness as one of the ways that God seems to like to wink at me. Things like this have led me to the conclusion that there is really something "other" that loves and guides all of us, just like the mysterious hand above the elephant----that I am not just a personal super-conscious manifesting all of reality. I also don't think that this "other" is really separate, as it seems to pervade absolutely everything, including the self, but it also seems to enjoy playing separate. It may be one of its favorite games... along with hide and reveal.
Symbolically, the older 無 wū character mirrors the imagery of the card in the Western tarot known as the Hanged Man, where the image is similarly of a person hanging from their feet on a cross. The cross is ubiquitously used as an esoteric symbol for the heart. I associate the Hanged Man card with the times in life when I have been given a course correction by the universe. These are times where it feels as though all of my willful efforts to steer the ship of life in the direction that I want it to go will not make the ship budge, regardless of any good intentions and hard work. At these times, it's as if the universe has me by the feet and won't let me go anywhere, at least not anywhere that my egoistic mind thinks that it should be going. In this way, it speaks to the continuum of freewill and fate. We are given freewill over the things that are within our control, but freewill is always, often inconveniently, tempered by fate. And, I think that speaks to the overall gestalt of wuwei, that in letting go of mental ideations of the way we think things should be, that we can be held and supported by the universe. And when we do this, we may find that we are naturally guided and steered by something else in the form of our natural inclinations, intuition, or providence.
Ziran 自然
Zìrán is often translated as “naturally so” and consists of the character 自 zì, which is most often used alone to refer to the self or oneself, with 然 rán, meaning "to burn" or as an adverb used to describe something that is "right" or "correct."
The earlier images of the character 自 zì is not of a person's head and nose, as the SWJZ suggests, rather it is a flying insect, most likely a bee, based on the stripes and presence of a proboscis (Figure 3 below). One of the unique things about bees is that they buzz, or vibrate. One of the things that can happen with mystical experience, is that there will be strong vibrations or buzzing sensations that arise. I noticed it first in my heart early in the process of awakening and regularly experience this buzzing spontaneously in various places throughout my body.
The bee is also in one of the earliest images for the Dao, but is paired with the crossroads of 行 xíng. Thus, when the sprout (right image of Dao 道, Figure 4 below) or flower (left image) are considered, the pictograph may be pointing to a similar mystical experience of something that sprouts, or flowers, and behaves like a bee. The "bee" also relates to the felt sensation of energetic movement patterns and the way that a ball of qi feels when it moves around the body, especially within the pathways of the meridians. It would be easy to see how people would have likened this phenomena to a little bee buzzing around the body.
The Bronze graph of 然 rán is of a bird that has been pierced by a fiery arrow through the central axis. In later pictographs, the image is of a moon that is in the hand of a person above a fire (Figure 5 below). The image of the bird that has been pierced down its central axis correlates to the mystical experience of the sensation of fire rising up through the spine, as with the uprising of "kundalini" energy, or consolidated jīng 精. When kundalini energy is experienced as heat, it is said to be the solar/masculine/fiery pingala aspect. Its dual aspect is lunar/feminine/cold. The awakening of kundalini is not merely a yogic phenomenon, but is a common spiritual experience that is depicted in the symbolism and art of multiple religions and cultures. But it can be experienced by anyone, regardless of religion or culture, or the absence thereof.
Birds are commonly used in older Chinese characters to depict the sensation of subtle energetic currents, especially energy that is more associated with spiritual phenomena, such as the "masculine" and "feminine" streams that are commonly experienced coming down through the "crown" of the head or up through the "root" of the perineum, or the feet. When the energy rises from the feminine stream at the root, or 1st chakra, there is also typically a sensation of heat that moves up through the body. There is a little more on this in my translation of Chapter 8 of the Huainanzi, which I think similarly portrays these twin energetic streams as birds in the characters 雌 cí and 雄 xíong.
The Seal Script image with the yin symbols sitting above the yang symbol similarly depicts the experiential sensation of burning in the body. The image represents the neigong phase of "transforming the yin into yang," or "water into fire." These aphorisms are preserved in modern Daoist cultivation, but the experience of these phenomena can also manifest spontaneously. The experiences of the internal generation of heat as result of mystical alchemical experience are mirrored by intentional energetic cultivation practices.
Etymological gestalt of ziran
So, when the two characters of ziran as the bumblebee and a "yin fire" are paired together, the interpretation is of specific energetic phenomena that commonly results from mystical experience or spiritual awakening. With these added interpretations, the translation of "ziran" of "spontaneously so" points to things that people naturally experience when they begin to have the veil dissolve between their own consciousness and that mysterious something else, between lover and beloved. I find these two specific mystical experiences portrayed in various ways in many cultures, traditions, and the major religions through imagery or writings related to the sacredness of the heart, or mythology related to kundalini. But again, this could be an entire article all on its own, so I'll leave it at that.
In many ways, the process of awakening is analogous to marriage----the courting, unveiling, and sometimes painful, frustrating, and rewarding attempts at understanding something other than ourselves through real intimacy. Part of the union includes the experience of a genuine, unconditional love that human-human love seems to always strive toward, but fall short of, at least in my experience. I think it may be the reason why most mystics find more comfort in mountains and monasteries than households. Although, I am keeping my mind and heart open to possibilities that defy my own limited past experience up until this point.
PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION
The nonsectarian origins of Daoism
All of the concepts that were given names and then incorporated into the various traditional and religious systems of Daoism, were originally focused on a direct relationship with the universe that did not require an intermediary in the form of any tradition or religion. In fact, some of the cultivation techniques that have been taught and passed down through lineage systems may have evolved as a way to mimic the alchemical processes that happened naturally and spontaneously for many people without apparent rhyme, reason, or most paradoxically, without having “worked” for them. When you look at the images of the Daoist cultivation map of the Nèiīingtù (內经图) or the internal practices of intentionally moving qi through the spaces in the body, the dāntiáns 丹田, all of these maps outline processes that can arise naturally, of their own accord, during a spontaneous spiritual awakening, or that alternatively can be cultivated through intentional practice. However, although both types of experiences have similarities, spontaneous experience and energetic cultivation are not experientially the same.
What emerges when studying the history, is that with the rise of imperial power in China, the rulers who wanted to consolidate power, also wanted to be perceived as the spiritual leaders of their people. The leaders of tribal or clan communities previously were thought to arise as a result of natural virtue… in other words, they had the wisdom, abilities or traits that made them naturally better able to serve. This concept was warped by some imperial rulers into the concept of the heavenly mandate (天命 tiānmíng), or similarly in European autocracies, as the divine right of kings, which became a common tactic used by would-be rulers in many cultures, who consolidated political power by declaring that they had some type of divine privilege that gave them the exclusive right to rule. Thus, with the centralization of power, new leaders desired to gain the trust and favor of their ruled citizens through demonstration of spiritual betterment, but through a type of "force" or intentional creation, rather than relying on the unpredictability of natural timing or inherent virtue. They thought that the same teleological approach that applied to constructing kingdoms and walls also applied to the aspects of reality that are acausal and uncontrollable.
In other words, the consolidation of political power through regulation and control was mirrored by some with the consolidation of internal power through cultivation techniques aimed solely at the cultivation of personal power, rather than as a bridge to a direct connection to the Dao. With the rise of Emperor Qín ShǐHuáng (秦始皇), the first emperor of China, there came the popularization of pursuing immortality through energetic techniques and yǎngshēng (養生), preserving life, practices. But Emperor Qin’s own elaborate, but unsuccessful attempt at immortality eventually led to him turning against his advisory team after it became clear that the advice offered to him over the years was never actually going to bear fruit, resulting in the slaughtering of hundreds of people.
Again, many of the philosophical ideas of Daoism that were systematized into formal tradition and religion from centuries of evolution, were originally based on individual experience that was not tied to any particular system. Alchemy similarly, can occur spontaneously, or through directed practice, but the experience and "fruits" of each are not the same.
There is a saying that “one cannot break down the door to the divine, but the divine opens the door from the other side.” Or, as stated in the Daodejing, “Nothing done, and nothing is undone” (wúwèi ér bùwèi 無為而不為 ). In other words, there is a divine timing that no amount of willful intent to control can overcome. But, this perspective is so counterintuitive to the dominant modern perspective, where working harder is expected to produce more results faster, that much of modern "Daoist" teaching and practice has also become similarly aimed at productivity.
Likewise, the reification of techniques and certain practices also inevitably led to creating new layers of acquired-mind constructs, with set rules to follow and ways that one is supposed to be, in other words, artifice. Again, antithetical to the original intent. Paradoxically, with the reification of Daoism as religions, formal lineages and/or schools, there was also then the perceived need for spiritual intermediaries. The same trend was seen in most cultures with the entanglement of spirituality and religion, as most formal religions were established for the purpose of consolidating power the world over, and not for genuinely promoting the direct experience of spiritual integration and oneness with Source. This is still true today, but it seems to be shifting.
On wildness and cultivation - a personal exploration on pitfalls and sour fruits
Most people who choose to cultivate energy internally will have beneficial effects. But there can also be deleterious effects, even with good methods and teachers. My own experience led me to fall in love with the old school, "wild way," of experiencing qi, one in which things have opened on their own for me without having to do much. In my own time spent exploring neigong, certain forms of yoga that push qi through the body, or alternatively with using visualization to manufacture energetic experience, the results were usually sweet and sour. I did spend a lot of time with many different qigong teachers, primarily while I was in grad school for East Asian Medicine, but had to eventually cut ties with all of them. There was always been some kind of deleterious effect for me with intentional qi cultivation techniques. I realize that this may not be everyone's experience.
All of my experiences with cultivation practices led me to the conclusion that not all qi is beneficial, and that there is a wide range of how qi can feel, from downright icky to breathtakingly pleasurable. I also learned that cultivation likely works best in a body that is already in pretty good shape. You see, I came across the practices later in life, bestowed with a lot of scars, surgical ones, including a wicked scar from childbirth around Du-1 (probably TMI, but I figure it may be useful information for a good percentage of the population out there). When I intentionally cultivated qi, and it began to move, it would move to my scars, accumulate, and generate a lot of systemic stagnation heat and pain, but it would not heal the area or move through the scar. Over time, the excess heat generated from cultivation started to contribute to physical, energetic, and psychological issues. In contrast, with the energetic phenomena that has occurred in my body spontaneously through spiritual awakening, the qi feels qualitatively different, and the areas that I have scars have slowly opened up as a result of it running its course, my health has improved, and I haven't had any problems with "qi deviations," or qi running off course and producing physical symptoms. The downside, is that this process has been very slow, and it's taken years for the more substantially scarred areas to open, so the "wild way" is not for the impatient.
Admittedly, I was sad that cultivation didn't work out well for me. I looked up to a lot of people that were really into cultivation, including a few cultivation teachers that I still respect for their wisdom and who they are as people. But in finding that cultivation wasn't the right path for me, I feel like I eventually found what is right for me, and I wanted to write this article for people that may similarly feel like black sheep.
And, while treading on both the wild and cultivated paths, I also experienced how any gifts can easily engender other sour fruits on the level of the ego or psyche. I noticed how easy it was to attribute mystical gifts or internal power to a kind of spiritual better-than-ness. I witnessed this tendency both in myself and a few other people who appeared to have adapted their gifts or the fruits of their cultivation as a way of energetically peacocking themselves----to appear or become more powerful than, or desirable to others. On the human stage this is seen in the archetype of the ego-awakened gurus and teachers, but it is a tendency that resides in everyone. And, there is a subversive harm in the form of psychological trauma that can result when these sour fruits result in a kind of spiritual narcissism, where the knowledge that everything is interconnected and one, can become twisted into a nihilistic kind of thinking, where there is no personal responsibility or genuine desire to help others.
Yet, none of these pitfalls should inspire any fear around mystical experience or internal cultivation, as any experience is always an opportunity for learning and growth. Kari Hohne skillfully illustrates this perspective with her interpretation of Hexagram 22, 賁 Bì, which she translates as Grace, and the parable of “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” The Seal Script image of 賁 bì, is of three sprouts and a single seed, which points to good fortune that arises in ways that are unexpected.
Watering the farm in winter - the process of letting go of spiritual "shoulds"
Once people get into cultivation or specific spiritual practices, there is also the tendency to start to think that these things are a requirement, rather than an option on a vast menu of possibilities, and thus some people maintain a mechanistic dedication to practices long past the point of usefulness, ignoring that internal knowing that the shelf life of the practice or participation in a particular lineage or tradition has passed. In other words, people can keep participating in things after the genuine inclination or benefit has receded. This is like watering a farm in winter, and is not often talked about, so I thought I would include a note on this here in case it's helpful. This lesson came up at a pivotal point in my journey relating to understanding the theme of wuwei, ziran and letting go. I imagine that it may be similarly counterintuitive, and evasive of conscious awareness for others.
Noticing that we've outgrown something, or that something just isn't right for us, can be especially difficult when we have invested a lot of time and energy into a certain path. The mind will likely rebel against the intuitive nudges to to leap-over or breakthrough this barrier and we can allow our logical mind to serve as the master, instead of the heart. Alan Watts articulates this concept in the excerpt below. He uses the example of meditation, but the wisdom is equally applicable to any spiritual or cultivation practice:
"And of course what is meant by a Bodhisattva... [is] that he is actively engaged in the life of the world, because he has gone beyond the illusion that nirvana is to be found away from everyday life. So what then is the point of meditation? Why meditate? Why do you have to crawl off into a hole, or go to a Zen monastery, or retire and be quiet when this is only a withdrawal? Is there anything to be said for it? Well meditation in that sense, as a practice, as a discipline, is a very curious problem, because from one point of view it's a help, and from another point of view, it's a hindrance. So I think that we have to first understand that meditation exercise is medicinal, and not a diet. The same could be said of LSD... a medicine, not a diet.
Something that is described in Zen, is that when you want to open a door, you pick up a brick and bang on the door, you don't carry the brick into the house. When you need a raft for crossing a stream, you cross the stream on the raft, but you leave the raft on the other side, you don't go carrying it around. But a lot of people, when they get into meditation, or into religion, or any kind of exploration of this sort, turn the door into a revolving door and keep on going round, and round, and round, and never get through."
Thus, neither the wild nor the cultivated path is good or bad, but either could be appropriate or inappropriate at any given time. Continuing the diet analogy from Watts, there is no one-size-fits-all diet that is good for everyone all the time. People will usually have a preference for one path and extol the virtues of that path because it's what they have found to be useful, often related to their personality, inherent constitution, or phase of life.
The wild path is about being comfortable with being perpetually lost, of traversing through the ever-changing open wilderness, whereas the "cultivated" path is about following a well-trodden road with predictable pathways and destinations. The benefit of being lost is that there is continual variety and novel experience, which leads to consistent wonder and discovery, whereas the benefit of the cultivated path is that it imparts is a sense of security, thus mirroring the benefits of agricultural cultivation in providing a fairly reliable source of food.
But one may argue that any sense of security or insecurity is always, at an absolute level, an illusion or game of the mind, as doing the same thing over and over again achieves the same results much less often than we would like to believe with most things. And, in general, the mind likes to overestimate the extent to which the past translates into the future. This is true with either path. There are people that will endeavor to follow the path of cultivation and will see results very quickly and consistently, whereas there are other people that will work equally as hard and follow the same teacher and teachings, and never get very far at all. Thus, the results of either cultivation or wildness seems to have to do more with being in the appropriate gestational matrix at a given point in time for reasons that can never really be pinned down. Again, there is an aspect of destiny, and therefore, even the cultivated path, is always intrinsically wild, it just appears otherwise for a while, until it doesn't appear that way any more.
So, even though I am discussing these two apparent paths of wildness and cultivation, neither path is really separate or at odds with the other. It's just that in order to talk about anything, we have to break it down. Separation is necessary for us to be able to communicate, to relate to the world and to one another---to love requires at least two.
In my experience, what happens when we begin to trust in the universe is that an ever-emergent, co-creative journey unfolds. And one of the things that reliably is imparted as we trod along, is an understanding that we are not really in control. And I think that is the true meaning of humility, not to be subservient or sycophantic to another person based on an imaginal hierarchy, but to understand that just like flowers and fruits ripen and blossom of their own accord without force and through their own timing, that there is a lot that is not within our control, try as we might.
However, we are given with the gift of the illusion of a little bit of control, or freewill, in our day-to-day lived experience. Perhaps this is what is meant by the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 book title translated as “genuine pretending.” The gift of spiritual experience leaves you without any doubt that there you are merely a participant, or an actor if you will, in a story that is much greater than you----one that will continue to play out after this current iteration of you is gone. Once this understanding is imparted to you through direct experience without any shred of doubt remaining, then life becomes a kind of genuine pretending, where you still have to go through the motion of doing the things of everyday life, including the sublime and the banal----experiencing ultimate oneness and bliss one minute and then suffering the emotional blows of a toddler’s tantrum the next----all the while knowing in the back of your mind that there is some mystery that is greater than all of this, and that is where you will one day return when your part in the play is over.
As I was writing this, I took an interlude to eat lunch and indulge in a new series on Netflix, and in the typical way that the numinous speaks to us through daily life, the opening monologue by Michael Douglas in the first episode of The Kominsky Method, summed things up nicely with respect to this exploration of wuwei, ziran, and the wild way of Daoism, so I’ll close with it:
“So, what is acting? When an actor acts, what are they actually doing? On one level the answer is simple, they are making believe, they are pretending. But on a much deeper level, we need to ask ourselves, what is really happening?
…
What’s really happening, and I want you to listen carefully, is that the actor is playing God, because after all what does God do? God creates.
…
So what does this mean to us? How do we take this information into our work? The answer, my dear colleagues is that like God, we must love our creations… and in the end, we must let them go, because in the end, true love, God’s love, is letting go.”
References
Chang K chih, Xu P, Lu L, Allan S. The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective. Yale University Press; 2005
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, & Barks, C. (2010). Rumi: The big red book: the great masterpiece celebrating mystical love and friendship (1st ed). HarperOne.
Pattinson, D. (2018). Bees in China: A Brief Cultural History. In R. Sterckx, M. Siebert, & D. Schäfer (Eds.), Animals through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911 (pp. 99-117). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108551571.007
SWJZ (Shuōwén Jiězì 說文解字) (Pre-Qin and Han > Etymology). (n.d.). Chinese Text Project; Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/shuo-wen-jie-zi
Watts, A. (n.d.). Accessed via "Alan Watts - Just Trust the Universe." on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mluPo9fQNI
The pictograph images of the older Chinese characters are from Richard Sears' work at Chinese Etymology. Please consider donating to help support his research.
Citation
Juniper, Evren. “Wuwei (無為) and Ziran (自然).” Universal Qi, 2022, https://www.universalqi.org/post/wuwei-and-ziran.
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