Rest as Resistance: Taoism and the Inner Practice of Nonviolence in Winter
In this end-of-year episode of Nonviolence Radio, we reflect briefly on the long arc of nonviolence—its strengths, its strains, and the importance of staying grounded during a season that can feel heavy and uncertain. The heart of the program is a deeply nourishing conversation with John Blue, a Taoist monk and doctor of Chinese medicine, who invites listeners into the inner practice of nonviolence through the lens of Taoism. Drawing on themes of wintering, harmony, and wu wei—“doing non-doing”—John explores how rest, stillness, and attentiveness to natural cycles are not retreats from the work of justice, but essential sources of clarity, resilience, and renewal. As political and social pressures mount, this episode offers a timely reminder that rest itself can be a form of resistance.
Transcript, with gratitude to Elizabeth High
Stephanie Van Hook: Greetings and good morning, everybody. This is another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I'm here in the studio with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler,and we're from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California. And our goal for this show, our vision, is to help share the larger vision, culture, people, history, science of nonviolence and keep you inspired to understand that really good things are happening in our world and that we all have a power inside of us that we can use to make transformation and change, not only the world outside of us, but the world within us. And today's show is really going to center on this end of year as we are in mid-December now. And it's coming up on this time of seasons changing, holidays, coldness. And then we have the whole political spectrum and everything that's happening there. And so how do we find our center of grounding and balance in this time. And we'll bring on our friend John Blue to talk a little bit about some Taoist practices that we can better understand ourselves through here in this wintering time. And before that, Michael and I wanted to do a bit of a retrospective dual interview of each other and share some nonviolence news in Michael's Nonviolence Report. So, Michael, enough of me talking.
Michael Nagler: No, you just go right on.
Stephanie: Okay, all right. I'll just keep going. So we were coming to the studio today, and you were noticing that the road that we take every day that we come to the studio every other Friday seemed longer today in some way. And it was the same road as always. And I just thought that here's another really good metaphor for the work of peace and nonviolence, that we know that the road really isn't that long. In fact, studies show that when you choose nonviolent resistance over other forms of resistance, your campaigns are actually faster. And what's the exact statistic?
Michael: Approximately nine years for a violent regime change and approximately three years for a nonviolent one.
Stephanie: Gotcha. See, that's amazing! And so applying that to our road; so we know in our mind that this is going to take – we're on the same road, we know where we're going, we know how to get there, we've done it, but it just seemed longer today. And I think that's really part of this winter phase that we're in, too, that sometimes things seem like they're longer even when they're not. Sometimes things seem like they're harder even when they're the same as they've been. How do we inspire each other to just see that we're going to make it? We're going to get to the end of the road. We're going to get to where we're going and to enjoy the path along the way. As we know, nonviolence is not just about reaching the goal. It's about every step of the way as well.
Michael: Let me remind us of the famous quote of Gandhi on this very topic, which is, “full effort is full victory.” It's interesting that he wasn't goal-oriented in his inner posture toward life, but the fact is he accomplished more goals than almost anybody that I can think of in history. It’s an interesting example of sometimes you have to give up something in the sense that, stop clinging to it, stop demanding “this has got to work out the way I want it to,” and then you end up being more effective. So that's kind of the same thing that you were saying but in a different angle, Stephanie, about the road. You never know how long it is. You never know when you're going to get to the end. The important thing is to do it right.
The other concept of Gandhi's that's important here is swadeshi, meaning take care of the circle that you can control.This has actually been a great comfort to me because like almost all of us, I feel so helpless in the face of the rising authoritarianism, which seems so orders of magnitude greater than anything I can possibly influence. But if I can influence the circle that I do have control over and do it right there, Gandhi's principle was then that circle will expand.
Stephanie: Yeah, interesting. And that's going to look different for everybody, which is really interesting. I like this concept of swadeshi, which generally translates out of Sanskrit into localism.
Michael: Yeah, swadeshi literally means your own land.
Stephanie: Yeah. So we came up with some questions to interview each other with, and I wonder if you brought those with you today, Michael, or should I get it started?
Michael: Yeah. One of the—there are two really great peace researchers who are pioneers of the enterprise of peace research and writing in English. One was Johan Galtung from Norway. I'll be talking more about that in a bit, I think. And the other was Kenneth Boulding, who was a Quaker from the UK, and he developed a concept called strengths and strains. That is, in every situation in which we find ourselves, and Gandhi also practiced this, we need to look at what are we up against and what have we to bring to work on it? What are our resources, our strengths, and what are the difficulties that we face, the strains? And I think both are becoming acute. That is, nonviolence is growing apace. You obliquely referenced Erica Chenoweth at Harvard. who did the studies and wrote a book with Maria Stephan called “Why Civil Resistance Works.”
Stephanie: Say it again.
Michael: “Why Civil Resistance Works.”
Stephanie: Why?
Michael: Because it cleaves closer to the underlying nature of human longing. We don't want a world of violence. We are constantly entangled in one but we don't ultimately want it. So that's part of the power of nonviolence. It reaches through those conditioned responses of ours to our underlying desire and that's why suddenly the road can turn out to be shorter than you thought.
Stephanie: So what about it? So strengths and strains, so should we talk about that?
Michael: Okay, here's a strength item. Actually, it's both, and I'm getting this from Waging Nonviolence, which is a very useful website. And this is a direct quote from them. “A new wave of resistance to the Trump administration is here.” And here's the sentence that really stuck out for me. ”More people are organizing and taking to the streets in the U.S. this year than at any point in history.” So that's a potential plus. I stick in that word “potential” because in the field of nonviolent action and peace research, we are coming to recognize that taking to the streets is at best a first step. At worst, you can blow off steam, release all the energy that you should have used for creative, constructive work, and go back home. Same old. But at best, it's an opportunity to show how strong you are and make connections with other people and build networks. But as I say, that's a first step.
So, this statement from Waging Nonviolence goes on. “More people are taking to the streets in the US this year than at any point in history. But many media outlets are missing the boat or worse, they are actually misrepresenting the story.” So this is a really critical area. We talk about the ”reference public” in the field of nonviolence. You carry out a small act like the one I was referring to a little while ago. But the world is watching in a sense and the interpretation of your act to the world is known as the media. And when you don't have them on your side, then you really are fighting an uphill battle.
So here's an example of that. There's a campaign called Lift the Ban campaign. And they had an action recently in which, there's a quote, “nobody taking action under the Lift the Ban campaign acted violently, despite over 650 arrests, which were called ‘terror arrests,’ everyone took pride in our nonviolent stance. Nonviolence is our strength and it is the foundational principle on which we act. We are actively opposed to violence. We must thank the wonderful nonviolence team for their incredible trainings,” important element there, “and sign holders for adhering to the group agreement.” Now, this is an important practice because transitioning to being a nonviolent person is not easily done. It's something that's rare in this world. But people can make an agreement to be nonviolent in the course of a particular campaign. It's what we call strategic nonviolence. It's not as deep or as powerful as principled nonviolence. But it often is a step in that direction. And this is an example of that. People acting nonviolently and taking “pride in our nonviolent stance,” the recognition, “that nonviolence is our strength and is the foundational principle on which we act.”
And this just, it warmed my heart so much, Steph, because I've been in this business for a long time. And when I started, you never saw comments like this. Or if you did, they were tucked away in the speeches of Martin Luther King or Gandhi. But it now seems to be percolating into public awareness that nonviolence is our strength. It's what makes us who we are. And I think if that awareness grows, nothing can stop us. We will have the strength to confront the enormous problems that are building up.
I've been struggling to understand why there is an authoritarian trend in the world and I think it's because our system of what's called reductive materialism and we're going to be talking throughout this year about the science of nonviolence, that system is breaking down. So it's really the end of an era and people are not perfectly aware where the new era is going to come from. So they reach for some pseudo-security that comes from authoritarianism. I don't know if I'm right about that analysis,: but it is for sure that authoritarianism is growing, and it's for sure that the awareness is growing that nonviolence is the only way to confront it. I know that was one of the last statements of a very dear friend of mine, the late Daniel Ellsberg, where he said nonviolence is the only thing left.
Stephanie: That makes me think as well that part of the work that – I remember when I first started working with you at Metta, there was a sign that was a video game or it was a movie. It said, “real ain't pretty.” And it was these real tough guys. And you pulled out your flip phone at the time, I mean, that was that far back. And you tried to shoot a little picture of that on this teeny little phone with a terrible camera in order to use it for your presentation.
Michael: It was a terrible motto too.
Stephanie: Okay. So because – but it was interesting that that's where your mind was. That's where you were focused. It was startling to me to have someone…That was just in my peripheral vision, and for you, it was an affront on your sense of dignity and all that is good in the world that “real isn't pretty.” Because the real is beauty itself. What is real is the deepest part of our interconnected nature. Real is pretty. And real is gorgeous.
And so… Over the years, better understanding that what is really happening is there's a battle with reality itself, truth, which is fundamental for nonviolence, satyagraha, sat meaning good, true, the real. And that now with AI and the internet, we're being trained like little creatures that are with these overlords, these AI overlords, teaching us to no longer distinguish between what is real and what isn't real and then to be gaslit by politicians about what's happening, what's not happening. It seems like that's really the strain is that we're losing, and it's been happening for a long time, but a grip on the very nature of reality.
Michael: Yeah.Let me give you another example of that. It's a small one, but it's like many others. I watched a very interesting interview yesterday with Norman Finkelstein. He's a professor, I think at Columbia, I'm not sure. And he said that he had pretty big classes of about 100 students and he used to – about 24 students would be in the A range. I can relate to this as a professor myself who gave out probably a million grades in my career. And he used to give out about 24 A's. Now he has exactly the same standards. but he will give out at most two because students have become less articulate, which means that they can think less clearly, which means exactly as you were just saying, that they are more susceptible to control by authorities who rarely have their best interests at heart. So that's a strain, all right. That is a problem. And I think anything we can do to help clarity in speech and in thought will give us a greater control over our own lives, greater freedom.
Stephanie: It's been a long year. And there's been some really interesting nonviolence figures that have come up during this time from the very beginning of the year with Reverend Budde talking to, preaching at Trump at the beginning at his inaugural service, which was amazing. It really instilled faith and hope in people that people are going to resist even at the risk of themselves. And then you see what’s still going on with the Gaza situation and the genocide and the flotillas going and this climate activist, Greta Thunberg, joining these flotillas, two of them, and making those really deep interconnections between what's happening with war and
what's happening to people and what's happening with the climate,
understanding that it's not just one area; to all of the people in Chicago and New York and L.A. and Portland who are just resisting ICE anywhere they see them. And it's been such a beautiful year of resistance. So I want to say the strength is that people are starting to realize that there's something that they can do. There's something that they have a calling and you don't have to be in a grand position. You can just be in your neighborhood. Or if you do have a pulpit or you do have a social media following, that you can use that.
Michael: Yeah. And that is they are dispelling the central myth of authoritarianism, which is that you are helpless.
Stephanie: I like that.
Michael: Yeah, they really want, authoritarians want you to feel that you're helpless, and that means that their power has no limit. So when a Harriet Tubman wakes up one morning and says, “I'm not a slave,” that's all the breakthrough that you need. There is another interesting example of this:
There are action circles now which are developing, and the topic is called “Protecting Children from Gun Violence,” and then “Protecting Children from Gun Violence: Imagining a New World.” And this immediately reminded me of a conversation that I overheard on a bus one day between a Danish tourist and an American. And the whole concept, the question that they were discussing was what do you do about gun violence and
how do you control the guns and you register them and so forth. And the Danish person said, which of course I just was thrilled to hear, he said,
“we don't need guns in Denmark.” And then the American said, this stuck with me these many years, the American said, “oh,I don't believe that.” It was impossible for him to imagine a new world, to imagine a world in which people are not locked into grim competition with one another and therefore that they do not need weapons to protect themselves. And the only way to protect themselves being to deter or destroy other people.
Stephanie: Wow. And just a word of caution for all of our listeners that if you have a conversation around Michael Nagler, he might listen in and use it in our next broadcast. So be careful what you say.
Michael: Yeah. It's like the next time I walk into a restaurant, I'm going to see deadly silence. Everybody's staring at me.
I want to also uplift Jessica Craven. We are blessed with really good commentators in the public sphere these days. Jessica Craven is one of the very best. And back on December 7th, the day that will live in infamy, she had like more than 30 inspiring successes that she listed off. Most of them we would consider nonviolent. And she said, "...this is a difficult, brutal time. It is hard indeed to witness what is happening and not want to check out. To pretend it's all a dream, hide under some cover until it's all over. But those of us in this community,” (this growing community of nonviolence) “of course, have made a different decision to check in, no matter how uncomfortable or sad or anxious it makes us, and simply do something. Because that is what love, justice, and peace demand.” And it has been shown incidentally in some of the very good science around nonviolence and human behavior that when we get up and do something, again, not talking about how effective it is, what an impact it has, but when we act, we feel empowered. So, again, our sense of paralysis or non-paralysis is in our control.
Stephanie: And we must receive some sort of inner communication about that, too, of when it's time for us to get involved and that we're social beings. And so when we start feeling out of tune with others, we feel it. We understand something's happening, something's off, and we try to correct it. And I think it's the same thing for when there's injustice, it's not a natural state of our world. And so we receive a call and an inner understanding that we need to adjust, we need to change something, we need to act, we need to do something. It's an inner understanding and inner calling. And hopefully in this next segment of our show, when we talk with our friend John Blue, about Taoism and centering and that listening during this
wintering period too; people will be listening to hear what their calling is too. So what else do you have for us, Michael?
Michael: Well, quite a few things. I want to reach out to a woman by the name of Viola Fletcher. She recently passed at the age of 111. There's a target that we could strive for. And the reason Viola's passing was noticed is that she is one of the last known survivors of the Tulsa race massacre that happened in, I believe, the 20s. And so one of her comments was, “I believe we must acknowledge America's sins. It's the least we can do.”
I would say it's the first step to acknowledge our sins. Then we've got to move over to our strengths and our capacities and go on from there. I want to also leave us with a few resources to strengthen and empower ourselves. One is a weekly broadcast called Resist and RisingTogether.
And they furnish good news and progress from the resistance. And another one is People Power United. And I just want to share one item from their recent list, which has just come in, that in Charlotte, North Carolina, you talked about resisting ICE a minute ago, Stephanie; a tidal wave of 30,000 students hit the streets with sheer numbers and zero hesitation. And the commentator concludes by saying, “this is a generation refusing to be controlled.” And that is a very positive sign.
Stephanie: Absolutely. What else do you have for us, Michael?
Michael: Well, last week, there was a… not last week, a while back, there was a Peace Operations Review Week. And as anybody who's been listening to this program knows, I am very fond of unarmed civilian peacekeeping, which I participated in the early stages of planning and fundraising for back about 20, 25 years ago now. And I remember at that stage, we said that we were not nearly strong enough yet to go into Israel-Palestine, but someday we would be. And in fact, that day has dawned. Groups are now working with resistors from the region, and they always do that, they always involve local people, in the West Bank in particular, and looking over the fence at Gaza. Here's one of the reports from that review week. “In the absence of a U.N. peacekeeping mission,” note, in the absence of a U.N. peacekeeping mission, “civilians in Mindanao in the southern Philippines built one of the most structured and effective civilian-led systems in a conflict zone. Their experience,” I'm still quoting here, “their experience offers perhaps one of the clearest evidence base that unarmed civilians can lead on core elements traditionally mandated to international peace operations,” I would say “traditionally mandated to war operations.” But to resume the quote, “mandated to international peace operations, namely monitoring ceasefires, deterring violence, and directly protecting communities from the threat of violence.
Protection is broader than armed security,” they say. “Civilians in the Philippines reflecting on their experiences,” again, even that is an interesting point to have the learning curve and evaluation of experiences and going forward stronger and wiser, “they have defined security as freedom to farm, return home, resolve disputes peacefully, and live without fear.” This is what we used to call in the field “total security.” So this is a terrific example of how an outside intervention comes in, creates an opportunity for people on the ground to get together, break out of the delusion of helplessness and form their own peace institutions and then the outsiders can back out and leave things much better than they found
them. And that’s just the exact opposite of a military incursion. And so everything that we hoped for this institution of unarmed civilian
peacekeeping is coming true and I am very happy about that.
Stephanie: That's a really wonderful note. That's really beautiful. For those of you just tuning in, you're listening to Nonviolence Radio. Michael and I have just been discussing some of the strengths and strains of nonviolence and really just reflecting and talking to each other about it, geeking out about nonviolence throughout this past 2025 together a bit, ending on a really positive note about the hopeful developments in especially unarmed civilian protection work. And that's really wonderful. Now, I wanted to keep this show as creating a space for remembering. We always talk about concepts and theories of how nonviolence works in this kind of resistance practice. We do that a lot. We don't dedicate very many shows to the inner work, the inner practice of nonviolence, and so we're lucky to have our friend with us today, John Blue. He is a doctor of Chinese medicine and a Taoist monk. He also says he's a student of the Metta Center, which is very sweet. And he's here to talk to us today about Taoism and what we can learn from Taoism during this end of year and wintering time. And I have some questions prepared for John. So first of all, John, welcome to Nonviolence Radio.
John Blue: Thank you so much, Stephanie. It's really wonderful to be here with you. And I feel very honored to take part in something that has been inspiring all of us for so many years.
Stephanie: John, it's really nice to have you. I know that you also have work that you do online trying to bring principles of peace and nonviolence on your YouTube channel. It's great. And Michael and I have both been on your show, so it's nice to bring you on to our show. John, I wanted to talk to you about Taoism. First of all, can you bring us in how Taoism came into your life? How did you get into Taoism and what have you learned from it?
John: It's a great question. In general, like many people, we begin to study medicine often because we ourselves are not very well. And because of my own background, I was not raised in a Taoist or even particularly healthy situation. Environmentally and physically, I was born a bit sick. And so very early, I started to try to seek out methods to feel better. But of course, when we don't know what we're looking for, we reach out for the things that we already think we know will work. And so, for instance, in violent situations, we reach out for more violence because we think that's what will help us. But of course, it just makes things worse. And as Michael was talking about with Nonviolent Peaceforce and Mindanao and the wonderful change that has happened there, once we begin to learn about better ways about this truth force that happens in the world, we start to reach toward that and then things start to heal.
And so for me, I initially reached out for medicine through typical channels and by studying violence within the martial arts. And fortunately, just because of the way the world worked out and because I had very kind people in my life, they slowly guided an obstinate John toward methods that worked a little better, that not just healed me, but made it a little easier for people to be around me and for me to integrate with the world.
And that's essentially what Taoism is. It's learning how to live in alignment with the world and the way it moves and how it actually is, rather than how we think it should be. One causes illness, one brings wellness. And so it's just another way of reframing that term satyagraha in the Gandhian principles, that clinging to truth, recognizing how things actually are, and allowing the principles of our movement to function around that allows the
community to heal. And so when we are looking at principles of communal violence and peace, we refer to those principles. And it's the exact same principles that we find when we apply them to our body. And so that's what,
for instance, within Chinese medicine, we're uncovered great doctors and philosophers over millennia, how to return toward wellness. And it's nothing special in the sense of magical techniques. It's just noticing and paying attention to the natural cycles and then allowing the cycles to guide your life rather than resisting all the time, which we all, of course, love to do, especially during the wintertime.
Stephanie: That's really interesting, John. And I know that harmony is a big common theme for us at the Metta Center and harmony is a key feature of Taoism. So can you speak to that, what harmony means when we're going through changes in our life and in political transitions, how to focus on harmony?
John: Absolutely. Yes. And the most famous Taoist symbol is that, at least in the West, is that yin yang symbol. We see it tattooed everywhere. In California, you see it on the stickers on surfboards. And it's this quality of coming to understand the natural rhythms of life, day and night, waking and resting, summer and winter.
And if, for instance, I decided that what I really wanted was to inhale all the time, and gosh darn it, I'm never going to exhale, things don't go so well. It's not a magical principle. When people are in my clinic and I'm trying to describe Chinese medicine, they say, this secret technique is that you exhale when you need to exhale. You go to sleep when you're tired. If you're hungry, you eat. When you're not hungry, knowing sufficiency, these qualities. And if we apply those qualities and principles to the body, you end up feeling better than you would otherwise.
If you apply it to economics, knowing sufficiency, knowing balance, then things tend to work out a little bit better. And so these are universal principles that we're talking about. And only the names change when you shift them from language to language and continent to continent. But the philosophy is one of clear truth.
And for instance, when people are exhausted and they refuse to rest, or maybe easier to understand, I'm a gardener, and if I decided right now to go to the store, and all year round you can buy wildflowers these days, or some version of a flower, and I decided to take it out, I'm gonna plant it out here in the monastery, in the open air, in the wintertime. It's not going to do so well, because there is a season for each of these things. But if I did that during the summer, wonderful, no problem. The springtime, it would take off and flourish. The bees would love it. But recognizing the timing and the cycles that occur in life, that even if I want that flower to live, unless I provide some very strange and special circumstances, it's not going to do very well.
And it's the exact same thing in our own lives. If I decide that, gosh darn it,
I'm going to stay awake and I'm going to take all the stimulants in the world, slap myself and pump myself up with stress and anxiety, I'm going to stay up for days straight, the body starts to break down. Our minds and our emotions start to break down and probably our relationships as well. And simply recognizing when it's time to rest can be very difficult in our culture.
And that quality of understanding when it is time to settle and to come to stop. Within our culture in particular, it seems to be quite difficult. And so recognizing that quality in our lives and bringing that quality in can be challenging.
But the wintertime is when, at least in the northern hemisphere here right now, is when the whole of nature and the space surrounding us is telling us, hey, maybe it's time to slow down. Maybe it's time to stop. And, of course, we fight against it and rail against it. And, in fact, usually our time off, if we're fortunate enough to have time off from some of our work, not everybody, of course, is, even then, what do people do? They go out and they play twice as hard. They're like a can of soda that's been shaken up and you finally take the top off. And so instead of resting during that time during the vacation, what do they do? They invite all their family over. They drink a lot of stimulants and alcohol and things, and then they wear themselves out. And so at the end of their vacation, they need another vacation. And we live like that. Ask any person who's been to graduate school. Ask any professor that's had to deal with graduate students. And it's this habitual cycle that we're stuck in. I don't know if they could say that as a species, but in the very least as a culture, that we need to learn how to allow things to settle and stop so that we can actually heal.
Michael: John, you probably won't be surprised to hear this question from me because I'm an old language person. I had quite a few graduate students in my day. And I would like to ask you to talk a little bit about the Chinese character Tao. The simple meaning of it is way or path, is it not?
But most Chinese characters have elements in them that point to different dimensions. Run us through that.
John: That's right. Yeah. And the pictorial quality of the Chinese language is so rich. And it's really fun to spend time during the etymological cast because there's a lot of versions of the character of Tao. And by including what we call radicals, they're smaller pictures within the picture. Maybe we'll substitute one out and put another one in and it changes the nuance of the image. Maybe instead of water here, I'll include fire. What does that mean? Same word, but now it has a slightly different influence or inference. And the common character that we use for Tao, at least in this traditional Chinese character drawing, because everything is being simplified and simplified these days, is, you're exactly right. The picture of a path and somebody walking on it. And so very often people will translate the term Tao as a way, the way. And that references this quality of emphasizing practice within Taoism, of learning how to not resist. We use this term Wu Wei, which is to do non-doing, to learn how to not resist movement, to create change by getting out of the way. And it's a very special skill. And so oftentimes we talk about Taoism and the method of Taoism, that's it. It's not doing. My instructor would say, “What's the first thing we do? We don't.” And learning how to don't is a really special skill, and it's really worth practicing. And so that image of the Tao as a path that you walk is a really useful one. And of course, again, since we're speaking language here, let me throw in this very important concept within Taoism that would be a terrible thing if I skipped out, which is that very famous first line in the Tao Te Ching, which is 道可道，非常道 (Dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào). And it's that the Tao that can be Tao'd, the Tao that you can walk as a path that you can do, is not the constant Tao, it's not the Tao that is the whole of the matter. If you can name it, it's not really the Tao because the Tao itself is too big to encapsulate in a name and a concept. And so any way that we choose to translate or define it will never be the whole thing. It's just a useful finger pointing at the moon. But it is, as a language person, a lot of fun to talk about.
Michael: John, I can't help pointing out here that this is so similar to what Gandhiji said about nonviolence, that it is a fundamental reality that cannot be reduced to any simplistic definition, though, of course, there are many practical tools that come out of our trying to understand it better. But it's just helpful to know that this is an elusive, eternal, transcendent principle that we're never going to be reducing to a moment or a word or an act.
Stephanie: This is sounding so wild to me in a way, you guys. I want to better understand this because as I'm listening, I'm trying to listen as if I'm hearing this for the first time or as if I've never studied, practiced. So my question is, how do I do “not doing”? Is it a thinking process? What is the – like “I want to become a Taoist” is wrong thinking. Taoism is something.
It's a perspective. It's a worldview. What is non-doing? What am I non-doing wrong here? Take it away, John.
John: It is a really good question. First, you buy the special hat. No, that's not it. The method is always what we would say is cultivating stillness. And stillness for us is not holding still, like the image of something freezing and trying to be still, but rather water, for instance. Water is always moving towards stillness. And so stillness is the complete disinhibition of repression. It's the allowance of all movement. And when that happens, what occurs is a kind of clarification, a clearing.
And so the famous example is, of course, if I took a clear glass of water, plopped it on the desk, and then I reached down, grabbed a handful of dust, and I threw it into the glass of water, what do I do? If I want to have the clear water again, do I reach in there with my fingers and try to push it down? It doesn't work so well. It just makes things worse. Do I stir it a special way? No. The thing that you do is you take it, you set it up on the table, and you sit down and you watch it for a little while. And what occurs naturally when we're not in the way is the settling, is the clarifying process. And that's the process of stillness.
And so if I want just to see things more clearly in my own life, maybe, as you say, I want to be able to see my mind more clearly. And I know that you know this as a longtime practitioner yourself. When you just allow things to come to rest, the mind starts to become clear. We begin to see the functioning of the mind. We begin to see the way the world is functioning around us more clearly. If I'm able to allow my emotions, my heart, we can say, to come to rest, then there's this sense of peace that emerges from that and a deeper understanding of my own emotional nature. And again, this is not repression that we're talking about. This is a release.
And the same happens within the body. And we know that these things are functioning correctly when, for instance, in the body, there is a kind of deep relaxation that occurs. When that deep sense of peace starts to arise, which is passive understanding, as we might say, when that quality of the mind that comes out embodies a sort of wisdom that has nothing to do with you. And these are the fruits and the flower of the correct practice. And the correct practice itself is as simple as it could possibly be. Nobody ever says it's easy, but the simplest thing in the world is to take that glass, set it off to the side, and then just watch and wait. And allow nature to do the clarifying for us. And that's the process of cultivating stillness. That's We, Wu Wei, that's “doing non-doing.”
Stephanie: And so how do we do that? How do we watch what's happening around us without feeling we're not doing anything, like we're not active, like we're not participating in some way? How do we engage with that stillness without feeling guilty as nonviolent, as people who are trying to practice nonviolence?
John: That's right. It's very much, if I'm speaking, and I'm communicating a message, and I pause for a moment and I inhale before I speak again, do I feel guilty about pausing for a moment and clarifying my thought to myself and pausing and allowing my breath to recuperate so that I can speak again? Just as beings, we have to recognize that we need time to recuperate, to heal, to regenerate in order to be useful, to be, for instance,
better activists. We require that opportunity, that yin quality in order to allow that yang activity to express itself. And usually if we, for instance, get a really good night of sleep, we all know that sense of clarity and vibrancy that shows up afterward. We go, “wow, I feel so much better.” And we're much more capable of being our best selves. The ideas that would never have come to you when you were exhausted and pushing yourself suddenly are clear and present. And usually for people who are at work, for instance, they get twice as much done. then they would have if they just stayed up on it. Even businesses, for instance, are discovering that around the world when they have shorter work days and shorter work weeks and more time off and less stressful environments, they actually make more money and get more work done.
Stephanie: Oh my goodness.
John: And this is just a fact of economics. But of course, even recognizing that, the people in power are hesitant to allow that to occur because then they may lose that structure of power. And I think that this is something that Michael has talked about, that the reason that the powers that be, I think, fear nonviolence in this work so much is because they recognize that it's a dissolution of their power structure. Because when we are not exhausted and run rampant and run dry, then those natural qualities that arise within us allow us to connect and to regenerate and to create something better that doesn't require the overlord in order to be there. And that's why rest is so revolutionary, especially during critical times.
Stephanie: That is really profound, and I feel changed hearing about that in a way. It's really important to think about how powerful rest can be in a system that thrives off of our fatigue. And we only have a little bit of time left and we're not going to resist that. So I'm not going to try to fit in all of the questions I have that I would love to ask you. And Michael's raising his hand here very urgently. We want to keep talking about this. So hopefully we can continue this conversation. But for our listeners, we just have a few minutes left. Is there a simple practice or reflection that you can share that can help our listeners settle and rest this winter? We just have a few minutes.
John: I would love that. Yes. And a very good foundational practice, we call it Song Jing. Song is that sort of releasing into presence and softness of the body, not collapsing,but rather letting go of all of the extra. And jing is the kind of deep stillness that comes when we stop running our minds in circles and pushing anxiety. So there's something called the song jing breath, relaxing and stilling breath. And so for the people who are not driving, you can settle yourself comfortably, either standing or sitting wherever you are, and simply exhale through your mouth. We're just letting go. Inhaling through the nose at your own pace. You don't need to follow me. Exhaling through the mouth. And as you exhale, let go of physical tension as best you can. Again, without collapsing, just release the extra.
And then notice as you inhale that sense of peace, even if it's only 1% more peaceful and still. There is a change as you release the noise within your system. There's the silence and stillness underneath that is uncovered.
And it's useful to work your way down through your body. So depending on how much time you have in the given day, for instance, if you exhale and you soften your face, relax your jaw and around your eyes. And then you inhale and allow that sense of peace to deepen. And then when the time is right again, you exhale. Maybe you relax your shoulders, your chest, and your upper back, all the way to your fingertips. And then at some point, notice that you feel a little more peaceful. And then again as you exhale, maybe you release your belly, your back, whatever breath you've been holding on to. And then the inhalation softens you further from the inside. Exhaling, release your glutes, your thighs, all the way down to your toes. And then again, naturally that inhalation is there, allowing you to feel more. And so as you practice that basic Song Jing breath,as you soften down to your feet, feel the quality of the contact with your feet and the ground. And simply allowing that movement to soften through to the earth like you're extending roots down like a tree, how it sinks down in the wintertime. It loses its leaves perhaps and everything sinks down through the roots where it rests and restores and prepares for the spring. We can do the same thing.
Stephanie: Oh John, yeah, I wish we had so much more time. And it's so nice to bring a Taoist monk to Nonviolence Radio, John Blue. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us.
John: Thank you, my friends.
Stephanie: It's been great to have you, John Blue. We are here at Nonviolence Radio. Special shout out to our mother station, KWMR, Elizabeth High, who helps transcribe the show, you'll find it at our archives.
And that's at mettacenter.org, NonviolenceRadio.org. And to everyone out there, until the next time, take a breath and take care of one another.
Until the next time.