Certain ends are best accomplished without the use of conscious means
Revisiting this right after re-reading The Lathe of Heaven turns up a lot of resonances, especially re: conscious and subconscious. Instead of Haber’s typical “ends justify the means,” you have the concept of ends without means altogether.
All this can be interpreted as referring to the power of p’u—the capacity of the unconscious mind to do work. The man who struggles to carve a piece of jade will mar it, but if he lets his hands guide themselves, the work is easy and perfect. Search our brain for the forgotten word and it never comes; do not search and it comes at once. Let the childless couple adopt a child and they will soon conceive their own. Certain ends are best accomplished without the use of conscious means.
The theme here of “ends without means” takes us back to the power of inaction. The Taoist who acts by inaction provides in the ordinary person’s view a prime example of obtaining one’s ends without the use of means. His “perfect activity leaves no track behind.”
Yet such a rational explanation does not seem to be enough. It is too much confined to the behavioural, ethical level of Tao. At the mystical level it is necessary to attribute this “perfect activity” at least in part to a power which, though natural, is unrecognized by Western science. —Holmes Welch, Taoism: The Parting of the Way
- previously: flow, don’t force
- see also: like a flower blooming, it happens when it’s time