Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard …. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”

Soft, humble, and dark are the primary forms and closer to the Way. Hence, sages return to the original: a block of wood.

Dao takes on the character of water, seeks openings and seams, follows the natural shape of the world to go from where it is to where it isn’t. What is prized is not confrontation, force, dominance, hacking at the problem like a butcher of ordinary skill, but patience, insight, acceptance, to overcome by not contending, to do by not doing.

A person at one with the flow of Tao appears to do things effortlessly.