I am doing some writing tonight, working on a chapter that introduces "key concepts" of Taoism and Confucianism for the book I mentioned in this post.  It’s going well; I will likely finish a draft of this chapter as the month ends, just what I wanted to do.

    Searching for references for wu-wei – "doing nothing" or "nothing’s own doing" – I re-read passage 63 of the Tao Te Ching.  It’s marvelous, especially if you are feeling overwhelmed by all the big and complicated and difficult things in life. 

If you’re nothing doing what you do,
you act without acting
and savor without savoring,

you render the small vast and the few many,
use Integrity to repay hatred,
see the complexity in simplicity,
find the vast in the minute.

The complex affairs of all beneath heaven are there in simplicity,
and the vast affairs of all beneath heaven are there in the minute.
That’s why a sage never bothers with vastness
and so becomes utterly vast.

Easy promises breed little trust,
and too much simplicity breeds too much complexity.
That’s why a sage inhabits the complexity of things
and so avoids all complexity.

 That’s all.