Secular Approaches to the Nondual

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Secular Approaches to the Nondual
(A background document for the poster session presentation at the
Science and Nonduality Conference, October, 16, 2015, San Jose, CA)
Mike Levenhagen, Ph.D., University of Washington, Bothell
There are a number of secular references or activities that appear to lead to a nondual
state of affairs.
1. FLOW  
Flow is perhaps the most widely known idea among those presented here in this paper.
Flow has been described as   being “in the moment,” “in tune,” “in the groove,” “wired
in,” “in the zone,” “centered,” and so on. Flow has been noted in sports, art, religion,
spirituality, education, gaming, and other pursuits. People have reported feelings of
spontaneous joy, complete immersion, almost mindless concentration in a given activity.
People in flow state have reported no self-consciousness, and a sense of personal
control or agency in situations, motivated by intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic
rewards. Flow states have been most often found in solitary endeavors aimed at self-
improvement. Cognition in flow states has been referred to as “operational thinking” as
opposed to “discursive thinking.”
    Most of the writing about flow says that it arises when one’s skill is perfectly suited to
a challenge. Three conditions for flow are: (i) clear goals and progress; (ii) clear and
immediate feedback; and (iii) a balance between challenges and skills (otherwise
boredom or anxiousness ensues). To sustain the balance referred to in (iii) may imply
greater and greater challenges, spiraling complexity, increasing skill levels (see mastery
below), and increasing risks.     In some endeavors (e.g., climbing), this may lead to
over-reaching with grave consequences.
   
2. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRESENCE  
Being psychologically present means to be alive, “there.” It refers to being physically
involved, emotionally connected, and cognitively vigilant.
The literature in psychological presence makes frequent reference to authenticity—a full,
honest expression of one’s feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Authenticity requires an
integrated whole self that brings the depths of a personal self into role performances.
That, in turn, requires personal vulnerability, risk-taking, and experiencing conflict and
portraying it constructively.    
There are 4 dimensions of psychological presence:

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 Attentiveness: being open to others, not disabled by anxiety, where defenses
are managed.  
 Connection: the notion of empathy is key here—a sense of giving and
receiving.  
 Integration: people who are psychological present are physically, emotionally,
and intellectually grounded; actors can call up different facets of the self as
needed, and that means that they can switch temperaments as situations might
demand. 
 Task- or role-focused: one’s personality is channeled through a role being
played; neither personality nor role assumes dominance.    
Psychological presence can be identified in others in the following ways (see Navarro’s,
Katz’s, or Eckman’s works)    .
 Physically, people are planted—they are there for the interaction (intrinsically, not
extrinsically-oriented); physically they stand their ground. 
 Psychologically present people exhibit eye contact about 60%-85% of the time;
they hold the other person “there”; they see who the other person is; they exhibit
useful non-verbal gestures that communicate. 
 They can perform all the speech acts competently: they know how to make
promises, offers, requests, declarations, and assertions; their speech exhibits
cadence, sing-song tones, laughter, softness now and then, and their voices are
filled with personality and personal values. 
 They can follow conversations; they make sense of another’s talk; they ask
questions; they are constantly in search of the object of conversation rather than
intellectualizing the topic of a conversation; they do not nitpick. 
 They are authentic: they work with their honest emotions in context of a task
situation and in the role that they find themselves in; they do not dismiss or avoid
emotion; they wear no obvious masks; they do not “act out”; they display what
they are feeling and thinking.   
Why doesn’t psychological presence show up more in people?    
 People present a multitude of voices, ideas, energies, and feelings. This leads to
confusion and inconsistency; hence, people cycle in and out of psychological
presence, and their theories-in-use about their “selves” split their personhoods
from the roles they find themselves in.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes. (Walt Whitman)
   People feel vulnerable when they show their “real” selves.
 Being psychologically present can be exhausting for people. Being vigilant with
constant attention can lead to burnout.
 It takes determination and courage to be psychologically present.
 
3. HOT VS. COLD COGNITION
    Cold Cognition refers to mental-rational, conscious, discursive thinking. It tends to

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focus on content and process: viz., “knowing what.” Most people mean this kind of
cognition when they think about mind or what mind does. When people talk about
intellect and analytical thinking, cold cognition is usually what they are referring to.
Cold cognition is explicit, deliberate, effortful, rational, driven by a sense of autonomy,
willpower, and individualism. Cold cognition tends to be slow and oriented to objective
reality and extrinsic rewards (and measurements). This kind of cognition seems
particularly dualistic and exhibits an archaic hedonism (self-interested in a narcissistic
sense rather than a stoic sense).
    Cold cognition also tends to be flexible, adaptive, digital or polar (e.g., with
unambiguous and sure consequences), and often exhibits complex modeling. Cold
cognition tends to rely upon language--most often the very basis for new-knowledge
acquisition.
Cold cognition, however, also exhibits limited capacity (in terms of processing power and
memory, what some economists have called “bounded rationality”). It also provides the
basis for free riding, deception, excess desire, artifice, guile, hypocrisy, and strategy.    
“Hot Cognition,” on the other hand, is more about “know-how.” Hot cognition is tacit and
practical, and resists formalization. Hot cognition tends to be spontaneous, natural, and
largely unconscious (instinctual). It is fast, semi-automatic, and effortless, often showing
up ostensibly as habits, feelings, emotions, and instincts. Hot cognition appears more
analog (with fuzzy continuums) than digital, and it seems to arise out of experiences,
intuition, and expertise. Hot cognition also presents more holistic approaches in the form
of emotions, images, or reflections. (It’s been claimed that culture and the arts are
mechanisms for social cohesion that rely upon hot cognition.)    
Here are some processes that have been distinguished in studies of hot vs. cold
cognition.
Downregulation: those activities that seem to allow the control regions of the brain to
become somewhat disengaged (e.g., in dancing, playing, meditation, drunkenness).
Downregulation makes people less inhibited, more authentic, less guileful, and more
forthright about their feelings. Such activities seem to rely upon a short-term suspension
of ego maintenance. (Important business deals in the Far East are often accompanied
by heavy drinking as a social mechanism by which to discover the character of the
persons with which a deal is being made.)
 
High Formality [my term]: one can occupy the conscious mind by focusing closely on the
details of movement (say, carefully forming letters on a piece of paper, paying close
attention to pushing keys on the keyboard, careful and deliberate brush strokes on
canvas) that can open access to one’s unconsciousness for expression.     “What
shows up” in one’s art is often surprising and unexplainable from a rational perspective.
Thin-slicing: intuitive “gut feelings” can quickly result from narrow windows of experience
or very few observations, implying some sort of unconscious pattern discernment.    
Categorical inflexibility: This seems to point to a contemporary human tendency to be
dominated by “mind”: that is, letting the rational mind dominate other avenues of
wisdom (emotions, stories, instinct, etc.). Learning consensus-based conceptualizations

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of objects can limit one’s ability to witness reality in novel, creative, and open-ended
ways.    
Trying Not To Try: an infuriating conundrum that any meditator has experienced.
There is no ‘try’ or ‘not try.’ There is only do. (Yoda)
Improper application of rationality without hot cognition: unconscious hot cognition
(emotions, habits, tacit or implicit skills) plays a much greater role in human behavior
than commonly believed. Many argue that it is the emotional self that motivates and
directs the rational self.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio argues that somatic markers accompany most all
representations that one has of the world. He believes that objects in the world are
tightly linked to feelings of all sorts regarding what is good, bad, urgent, appropriate, etc.
He claims his research shows that the conscious mind, ungrounded by the wisdom of
the body, is remarkably incapable of taking care of business in daily life. Specifically,
people with certain injuries at the center of processing emotions in the brain may well be
able to pass IQ tests, process math, undertake abstract reasoning, and refer to memory,
but when it comes to making life decisions, those brain damaged people are barely
capable of functioning. They cannot make simple choices or take into account the future
consequences of decisions. Disembodied reason (reason alone, without the feelings that
arise out of the body) is incapable of guiding human behavior—especially when it comes
to moral issues, says Damasio, (see also Haidt). Being in the real world requires
spontaneity, un-self-consciousness, automatic-processing “hot cognition.”     Hence,
one should seek to find ways to be relaxed yet vigilant (that is, living in “hot cognition”).
One should be ready to call on cold cognition if one gets into trouble.
Paul Ekman and Joe Navarro write that bodies instinctively communicate truer signals of
people’s intentions and beliefs (the subtext) than what they profess verbally (the text).
One can watch Woody Allen’s eyebrows; how people position their feet or their eyes
when confronted; or how emotions are expressed in people’s faces (oftentimes unknown
and uncontrollably by those who present them). Indeed, many signals given out by the
body appear to be impossible to mimic by poseurs. (See also Strasberg method acting.)
One must “be there” and in the moment to express subjective truth.
Societies do not want people with extra cold cognition sneaking around backstage with
nefarious plans, especially in a world of excessive individualism, alienation, and
materialism. Communities would seem to be well served by people who exhibit no gaps
between their actions and their intentions or motivations. This could be an indication of
what’s called “engagement” in business studies.
 4. ENGAGEMENT
    Engagement has been a popular topic in organizational studies. Practicing managers
want to know how to engage people so that they are emotionally connected to the
workplace (and so organizations can take advantage of it).   
Over 12 years of surveys, Gallup has consistently reported that 70% of the workforce in
the U.S. is either unengaged (only suiting up and showing up, and nothing more) or
disengaged (actively attempting to sabotage the operations of the organization). Only

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30% of personnel in organizations are working toward their organizations’ stated
purposes. Gallup estimates the losses from unengagement and disengagement to be
about $450B-$550B / year in the U.S. Gallup supports these claims with 160 million
data points from its surveys from around the world.
    Engagement (according to Gallup) revolves around passion, complete absorption,
emotion, self-expression, “activation”, being “plugged-in,” creativity, personal voice,
authenticity, non-defensive communication, playfulness, and “ethical behaviors.” The
behaviors exhibited by engaged personnel have been described as neither sacrificing a
role for a self, nor the self for a role.
Engagement also relates to personal connections with the cultural elements of work
communities, innovation, and improvisation.    
5. IMPROVISATION 
Improvisation appears to tap an infinite number of repertoires residing in the
unconscious. Improvisation is intuition-in-action or perhaps pure style. Improvisation also
seems to be connected to notions of expertise and a state of “mindfulness.”1
 
It’s been said there are 5 different stages of competence.
 The first stage (if one were a competent teacher in the area) is, “you watch me
do it.” Here, the student is considered naïve.
 The second stage is, “I (the teacher) watch you do it.” Here, the student is
considered a novice.
 The third stage is, “you do it alone, and then I’ll monitor the outcomes in some
fashion.” This is the stage that most of us find ourselves in most activities. (Now
the student is considered competent.)
 The fourth stage is, “as you do the work / task, you add your personality
(imprimatur) to it.” Others identify your work stylistically as [your name]‘s work.
“Oh, yeah, that’s Joe’s work.” This fourth stage is known as virtuosity.
 The fifth stage, mastery, is, “when you do the work, you do it differently each and
every time—never the same way twice.” A master can start anywhere and finish
anywhere in the work / task under many conditions. Understanding or knowledge
no longer shows up as content or process. Instead, mastery is an in-the-
moment, creative, unique expression. Competence shifts knowledge of content
and process to simply presence.
Mastery appears to reside in the unconscious. When mastery is shown, it is the
expression of one’s unconscious.    
Style comes through expressions of the smallest details of movement, mind, and
speech. Style comes through every mark one makes. They are manifestations through
1 “Mindfulness” is an unfortunate misnomer. The actual phenomenon or experience of “mindfulness” is much closer to
w hat Buddhists have technically referred to as “emptiness.” One’s mind is not full in the sense that it is fullof the
consideration of an object of attention, but instead empty of “cold cognition” regarding an object of attention. Employing
here a linguistic model of subject – verb – object (“I – see – that”), mindfulness w ould appear to be a state of experience
of only a gerund of being--i.e., dropping the I and the that--leaving only seeing. (See also wu-wei below .)

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which “the Self” expresses IT-self. Every self is an intricate design of individuality,
personally and transpersonally. There would seem to be nothing random about anyone.
Randomness seems impossible.    
A great deal of attention in the literature on improvisation emphasizes practice:
“practice, practice, practice.” But it’s not “practice making perfect.” That kind of practice
looks more like “professionalism”--that is, rigid forms of skill acquisition and formalized
education.     In improvisation, practice is play, and play is practice.
Play is not what a player does, but how a player does it. It is different than game. Play is
more of an attitude than a defined activity with rules, playing field, or participants (game).
All creative acts are forms of play. Practice, properly performed, is without objective or
goal, just play, where there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose. “Funktionlust” (Ger.)
looks similar: the pleasure of doing or producing an effect, as opposed to attaining an
effect or having something.
When practice no longer feels like play, a player (an artist) is supposed to quit practice
until it has become play again.
  Improvisational practice is patient and thorough. It often looks to so many people like
ritual. But, ritual itself is a form of concentration and love. Playing or preparing with the
instruments or tools of one’s activities is ritualistic. All artists and players adore their
instruments. Players follow their rituals to invoke the muse, to clear obscurations and
doubts from their minds, to open capacities, concentrate, intensify, tune-in, tune-up, turn-
on, stabilize him or herself for the challenge that lies ahead. An instrument (even a body)
“played,” is a dance with that object. Writing, for example, is an art for a person who
adores language, where the purpose is not to make a point but to provoke an
imaginative or imaginary state.
Concentrating on close-order technique (e.g., with the body, gravity, balance, a writing
instrument, a drum) leaves room for inspiration to sneak through the barrier between the
unconscious and the conscious unimpeded. It is then that “the player” disappears; all
that’s left is simply playing--playing seemingly playing itself.     The entire system of
player-instrument-audience-environment is one indivisible, interactive totality. When that
relationship is realized, even concepts of mastery or control become meaningless.
For art to appear, the player must disappear. Practice is art, as meditation is
enlightenment, as climbing is the mountain.     Of course, as all meditators and artists
can attest, they get stuck or blocked in their personal development of their art or work.
Stuckness occurs when a player puts too much effort into his or her practice. Creative
despair, being hopelessly stuck, is simply a symptom that a player is throwing everything
she has into her effort. The artistic or psychic crisis could indicate a looming spiritual
transition.
Losing sight of playfulness, work or art becomes ponderous and stiff. Any player may
devise a plan of action or an agenda, but when approaching the moment of truth in
performance, he or she needs to throw them away. Instead, a player should become
what he or she is doing (“out ‘I’ go, and there is only the work”). The noun becomes a
verb through a samadhi—an absorption in a fascination of textures, resistances,
nuances, limitations. A player needs to let go, relax, do nothing, just let things happen
(Jung, Tilopa).

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So many things in life look to be improvisational, but most people don’t think about them
that way. Ordinary speech is improvisational. Every conversation is a form of jazz.
Conversation is not meeting another halfway but developing something new to both—a
dialogue. Riding a bike is improvisational—where effortless “control” comes through
balance and continual adjustment to continuous change. The closer one looks, the more
that everything in life looks improvisational, spontaneous, a synaptic summation, a
balance and combination of multivariate complexities in a single flash. Zing. Pop!
Radiance crackling with energies.   
There are a few particular techniques in improvisation worth noting.    
Galumphing Anthropologists have found that “galumphing” is a prime characteristic of
higher life forms. Galumphing (e.g., the exaggerated walk of models on runways) is
rambunctious, inexhaustible, seemingly useless elaboration, an ornamentation of
activity, profligate, excessive, exaggerated, uneconomical, and guaranteeing an over-
supply of requisite variety. (See also “Shakti”). It is pure style. Also referred to as
“technique to burn,” this form of play sharpens the capacity to deal with an ever-
changing world--referred to by some as impermanence. (Watch Brad Pitt’s portrayal in
the movie, 12 Monkeys.)
    Entrainment Focusing on making small impeccable acts entrains the body, speech,
and mind into a single stream of activity. Have a person start a beat, have a second
person add a second beat to it, and then add a third person with a new beat into the mix.
Every player must listen closely and adjust constantly to keep the pulse, but mostly it’s
nonstop, in-the-moment adjustments, push-and-pull. One has to relax to stay with it.
Being slightly off from one another makes finding each other exciting. People feel carried
away or carried inward by rhythmic, mantic, qualities of music, poetry, theatre, and
ritual.     Entrainment creates trance states.
When composing messages or tunes, simply focusing on hitting the keys on a keyboard
or piano one at a time, drawing the perfect letter with pen and paper, or getting up from
the chair to go to the kitchen as if perfecting the choreography of a dance, one can make
movements flawlessly, gracefully, stylistically. This kind of relaxed yet mindful [see
footnote 1] attention to detail, using small and impeccable acts, can occupy the working
or discursive mind completely to allow one’s unconscious creativity to seep through the
conscious mind to express itself.    
Structure can ignite creative spontaneity. Limits can provide artists and players with
something to work with and against. But it’s not like art or beautiful work is thought up in
consciousness to be expressed by the hand or feet or mouth. A player’s feet or hands or
voice may surprise him or her, as if appendages were creating and solving problems on
their own. Players can almost hear an audible click when feeling and form slip into one
another to become one. It creates a surge of energy, the recognition of an old feeling
that has never surfaced into consciousness before.
We don’t learn . . . we remember. (Plato)
Eduction is a drawing-out of a thing or pattern from reality, something that a player
somewhat already knows. It is an assimilation of an outside pattern—and an
accommodation to it. Eduction is the never-ending dialogue between making and

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sensing, something perhaps never quite seen before—but nonetheless something that is
a natural outgrowth of a player’s original nature. It is the dance of a player endlessly
projecting archetypes into the external world, sensing those projections objectively, then
subjectively amending the projections—and so on in a back-and-forth dance of mutual
causality.    
Personal creativity is baffling and paradoxical. Trying to control or break-free of self-tied
knots requires a player to distance him or herself from what he or she is already.
Improvisation is a form of surrender, but the surrender needs to be complete, genuine,
uncontrived, wholehearted, with hope and fear abandoned, with nothing to gain or lose.
Fear-based playing, on the other hand, is “trying” to play while being pre-occupied with
self. Not caring, a player plays better. Anytime a player performs an activity for an
outcome, he or she is not totally that activity.    
When Miles Davis approached the microphone, he focused into a meditative space
before playing the first note. There would often be long silences between phrases in his
playing. Keith Jarrett said of Miles that his sound came from silence that existed before
time, before the very first musician played the first note. Vladimir Horowitz exhibited
absolute stillness and concentration as he “watched his hands” play highly complex
pieces. When players have that kind of connection, they report their art / work is more
like “taking dictation.” (See Mary Watkins’ writings on the subject of artists taking
dictation from invisible guests.)
Players should put their hands on their instruments and trust them. Then material plays
itself, and it comes out as “the player’s voice.” This idea goes so far as to not even care
about being artistically good. Even that must be surrendered. As Miles said (and later
Thelonious Monk showed everyone with his music), “there are no wrong notes.” The
more a player feels as though he or she can walk away, the more powerful the playing
becomes. “Try to imagine as much as possible that someone else is doing the playing,”
says piano coach, Kenny Werner. If you do not have this kind of patience, then stop
playing. Keep it light. Let your art come to you.
In theatre, improvisation is a well-practiced art form. An improviser makes an offer: he
or she defines some part of a scene of reality in an unconstructed space to begin with.
The offer might start with an actor referring to a name, exposing a relationship, indicating
a location or a physical environment. Then an improvising partner has the responsibility
to accept the offer by building on it: . . . “yes, and . . . “. Not doing so is known as
blocking, denial, or negation, which usually prevents a scene from proceeding or
developing. Offers and acceptances are the cornerstones of improvisation in theatre.
Each back-and-forth between actors further refines a situation and its characters,
(especially important in the earliest stages of an improvisation). Physical props can be
used to help flesh-out scenes, but mime is most often used in improvisation because it
can facilitate an infinite set of possibilities spontaneously.
Working with masks is another training technique in improvisational theatre. Actors
choose a mask, put it on, and are then quickly shown their reflections by acting coaches
who hold up mirrors so that the masked actors are confronted by their masks rather than
their own faces. This is supposed to throw actors into possessions by the masks. If
actors’ own personalities sneak back into their performances, their coaches quickly show
them the mirror again in the hope that the mask will again take over the actor. Actors do
not act through masks. Instead, unconsciousness exposes itself.

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Masks have a long history of use in sacred rituals in primitive societies. Masks express
wisdom about self, Gods, internal or external forces, and nature that cannot be
conceptualized or verbally articulated. Mask work tends to lead into trances.
6. TRANCE
The meaning and use of the word trance suffer from many definitions and applications.
They include enchantment, states of mind where voluntary action appear to be missing,
deep sleep, love, infatuation, possession, out-of-body experiences, rapture or ecstasy,
altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, and extreme dissociation. In general these
states are contrasted to states of normal waking consciousness. Some researchers
believe that trance is the result of a shift in how mind filters internal or external
information.
Trance can be induced by paying close attention to any physical (modality) sense (taste,
touch, smell, etc.) that repeats itself: e.g., chanting, mantras, dance, mudras, story-
telling, breathing, symmetries, strobe lights, perfumes, tastes, ingestion (drugs or
otherwise), disciplines (yoga, meditation), dreams, prayer, as well as various other
experiences (trauma, sleep deprivation, narcosis, fever, sensory deprivation).
Trance has also been associated with ritual, preparation, visualization, or practicing with
the tools in one’s trade or art as forms of entrainment.
Some psychologists say that trance is a common everyday occurrence. Trance shows
up when waiting for trains, reading, listening, and being involved in strenuous activities—
wherever or whenever one is immersed in an activity, whenever attention is fixated, or
when a person appears obsessed. People tend to be oblivious to their trance states
until something re-stabilizes their attention back to (conventional, consensual) normal
reality. Common experiences of wonder, engrossment, and confusion can be trance.
Psychologists such as Milton Erickson argue that all states of consciousness (waking or
not) qualify as trances.
Trances supposedly connect the conscious mind with the unconscious mind--not
through conventional language but through archetypes and symbols that create
openings, opportunities, metaphors, contradictions, paradoxes, artifacts, etc. Trances
can arise when meaning is ambiguous, complex, or expressed through patterns (e.g.,
alliteration, sounds) that lull consciousness, or through interruptive declarations (“HA!”)
that are meant to propel consciousness into non-conceptual spaces.
Notions for which people have no mental space are places where trances can be
generated. For example, in the middle of cognitively chunked experiences that are
performed as single operations (e.g., tying shoelaces, shaking hands, kissing),
interruptions can initiate trances. If singular automatic behaviors can be diverted or
frozen midway, a person can experience trance and stay there until something gives
new direction or a person snaps out of it. Erickson claims that any habitual pattern that
is interrupted unexpectedly will cause a light trance. Other interruptions can engineer
sudden and violent trances momentarily--as when one takes one more or one less step
on a stair than is needed.

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Trance also supposedly shows up among creative artists who have claimed to receive
their inspiration from imaginative, invisible guests in conversations. Unbridled fantasy,
through internal dialogues in so-called psychotic states, hallucinations, or multiple
personalities—from unconscious to conscious awareness—appear available to artists
who are unafraid observers. Mary Watkins’ work (2002) in this area of phenomena is so
replete with its references to well-known artists, novelists, and composers that the
imaginary dialogues with invisible guests might look more like weak norms than
exceptions.    
7. WU-WEI
The way [Great Tao] is not difficult;
just avoid picking and choosing. (Seng Tsan).
Wu-wei (pronounced, “ou-way”) is a Chinese notion that is most concerned with virtue.
“Wu” translates as non-being; so wu-wei is the being of non-being or the action of non-
action. The Tao (“the way”) is meant to provide a path to virtue and morality. How one
does that (using wu-wei, anyway) has been a topic of controversy among four different
Chinese masters who wrote about it spread over two millennia.
As a secular scholar, Confucius was first to refer to wu-wei, and he argued that wu-wei
would result from much practice, training, and time by studying proper responses to
social situations (manners, civilities, dress, music types, decision making, etc.).
Confucius taught his students to carve and polish their behaviors in order to be at-ease
(One) within China’s social world.
Laozi was up next, and he took an opposite view. Virtue could best be found not
through the artifice of practice and polishing one’s being and character, but by simply
letting-go. Perfection already exists in everything; nothing needs changing. Artifice
(social learning) simply puts up veils in front of one’s true being. Like Michelangelo,
Laozi claimed that beauty, truth, and ethics are already present to be discovered within
any object or being. They simply need uncovering.
The third and fourth masters (Mencius then Zhuangzi) who wrote about wu-wei
continued the vacillation between trying and not trying (although not so starkly as
Confucius or Laozi). Zhuangzi’s final guidance was to try and not try--but not too hard.
Wu-wei exposes a number of paradoxes. One conundrum arises among the notions of
virtue and altruism. One cannot be truly altruistic or virtuous if one holds an intention to
be altruistic or virtuous. The very effort of trying means that one cannot be fully or purely
altruistic or virtuous. Moreover, one becomes oriented to achieving virtue or altruism.
Virtue is supposed to be its own reward; virtue is simply supposed to “feel right,”
effortless.
The Chinese (and later the Japanese) built their religious systems around virtues of
naturalness and spontaneity. A “felt success” in life for them was linked to “de,” (as in
The Tao de Ching). De is typically translated as charisma or charismatic power—a
radiance that others detect when one is completely absorbed, completely at-ease, in a
state of un-self-consciousness and spontaneity. These are indications of wu-wei.

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De has a relaxing effect on others. Its power is like the North Star; one simply remains
in one’s place, invisible, dwelling in dark valleys, and pulling everyone else into order.
When a person has de, people like, trust, and are relaxed around him or her.
In practice, de appears to show itself as a combination of body language, micro-
emotional expressions, tone of voice, and general appearance by people who are
relaxed, honest, sincere, self-confident, and without guile. (In this regard, it echoes
some of the points made above regarding hot vs. cold cognition in neuroscience.)
Focusing on simply being what one cannot help but be, especially in a skill-relevant
environment, can mean, “getting lost” in free play. Having an openly mindful (empty)
external focus on the world around one means tuning-in to others more than one’s own
mind, listening closely to the objects of conversations of others rather than one’s own
thoughts, and to the body language being projected by others than what one is
attempting to do or achieve for him- or herself. In other words, one can be moved by
one’s environment rather than trying to control it. Action still occurs, but without
intentions of a subject towards an object: viz., the action of non-action.
Wu-wei seems to offer a world without artifice, hypocrisy, or excess desire. Wu-wei
arises when one is properly situated in the cosmos. Wu-wei provides the ability to move
through a human world with ease. The wu-wei actor naturally finds his or her place
within communities--within social interactions and shared values. People who act from
or out of virtue provide the stable dispositions to perform socially desirable actions within
a community, sincerely motivated by the values that one shares with others.
The person in wu-wei moves through the open spaces of social life, rather than bouncing
from known certainty to known certainty (like a ball in a pinball machine). The wu-wei
actor leans, sidesteps, moves around, absorbs, or (like the resiliency of bamboo) bends
or flows through difficulties that damage the spirit and wear out the body. Allowing
things simply to be puts one into harmony with the forces around oneself. Emptying
oneself of the self creates a receptive space and an openness to what any situation can
expose. Wu-wei works only if one is sincere. A person can attain the power of de only if
he or she doesn’t want it.
According to Confucius and Mencius, rituals are essential behavioral training practices.
They socialize and institutionalize. Social scripting and guided reflections can turn
instinctual reflexes of actors into more mature reactions through storytelling, art, peer
modeling, literature, and understanding the wisdom of old texts. The purpose of these
cultural practices is to create social cohesion. (The arts may be especially crucial for
engendering socially responsible behaviors.)
When personal will disappears, spirit rushes in. Willfulness is replaced by a sense of
wu-wei. A person feels he or she knows where things are moving to, and he or she feels
(rather than thinks) what is the right thing to do. Wu-wei is cooperation with the
inevitable. One no longer asks about which way is the right way. One gets beyond right
and wrong. One doesn’t commit to either. One quits arguing with life and awakens at
the level of the gut, playing his or her part in many roles with full expression.
There is nothing that anyone can do to let go to achieve wu-wei. Letting THAT in, is
finally letting go. All holding appears to be futile. Grasping any view makes one blind to
everything else possible. One perceives from wholeness, without being divided on the

12
inside.
As a note of distinction, wu-wei might look like flow (above) to some, but flow is different.
Flow is a precise calibration between skill and challenge, which often leads to an ever-
increasing spiraling complexity due to ever-increasing learning or skills. In particular,
flow tends to be solitary and aimed at self-improvement, arising from an almost pure
individualistic perspective. (Csikszentmihalyis, the first to write about flow academically,
advised it was probably better to lessen the connection between flow and extrinsic
performance measurements.)
Wu-wei differs from flow by emphasizing social dimensions in communities. Wu-wei
occurs only in the service of something bigger, something beyond one’s own narcissistic,
rational, personal self-interests. (Only perhaps in a pure stoic sense can “rational self-
interest” possibly look like virtue—when one does something because it is simply the
most reasonable thing for one to do.)
David Brooks in The New York Times argues that the celebration of bluntness and
straight talking has blinded moderns to the moral function of civility and manners. He
argues that peoples’ mundane social habits and practices end up shaping the people
they are on the inside. Maybe society could use more role-centered, tradition-bound,
communitarianism as found in Confucianism. It might make cold-cognition (a highly
approved set of orientations and behaviors in today’s modern world) more reliable by
making them natural and spontaneous, so that every action could be free and easy yet
perfectly appropriate. Then the conscious mind could let go so that the body would take
over. Cold cognition would then simply maintain a background situational awareness.
CONCLUSION: PATTERNS OF SIMILARITY
The threads of commonality that run through these (so-called) secular approaches to the
nondual are authenticity and the unconscious—and nonconceptuality for the most part.
All orient to radical, free-form subjectivity. What is objective are simply the words and
their meanings / definitions--not what the words point to. What they point to cannot be
accurately or completely pinned down.
Authenticity shows up in honest expressions of being—less cold cognition, less guile,
and more spontaneity. Spontaneity shows up in free play and the motivation of intrinsic
rewards. Personality is expressed within roles that one finds oneself in—neither to the
detriment of the roles nor to the detriment of the personality. Neither dominates the
other; neither subordinates the other. Within one’s roles (father, sibling, teacher, citizen,
etc.), one observes oneself being who and what they cannot help but be. Both the role
and the personality work within and without from each other. This interactive unity
expresses a dance of mutual causality, neither one leading the other.
The unconscious shows up repeatedly in these topics in the paper, both out from the
words, and in the very writing of the words as they appear on my screen as I type them.
Out from these hands arise what looks to be an indescribable, creative energy.
The writing and topics here also suggest a conundrum by a repeated references to
“self.” (But there is no “self” that anyone can apparently find within themselves; the “self”
appears to be merely an expedient convention, a concept.)

13
Life, living day to day, in the moment, can appear to be simply a loosely connected
series of reflexes: “a life experienced” is a role played by an actor in a grand narrative
the Hindus refer to as the Lila). If one sees, as an apparent living entity, that one’s life is
simply that which is “being lived,” then one can experience no harbored intentions.
Without intentions, there would be no need to form concepts. If indeed urges arise
independent of conceptualizations, then one can let go into complete spontaneity. A
pervading sense of emptiness, openness—and finally a sense of pervasive unity—then
show up.

Secular Approaches to the Nondual

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