Enjoy What You Do – or – Do What You Enjoy?

A tricky part of life lies in how our biology constantly pushes us to do what we enjoy and pulls us away from what we don’t enjoy. This makes work feel like work. This stress is normally avoidable when work feels truly meaningful, if not enjoyable. Here, work can feel restful, or as chapter 56 says, mysteriously the same.

Understanding how biology pushes and pulls us is helpful. However, as chapter 70 reminds us, My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice. Being constantly aware of biology’s push-pull hoodwink is the challenge we face. This is where knowledge parts company with intuitive knowing. Knowledge can be stored in memory. Intuitive knowing is alive, concurrent with each moment. Chapter 2’s practices the teaching that uses no words speaks to this — the kind of teaching that is the living truth in each moment. Once we recognize this knowledge vs. knowing matter, how do we manage it?

Our main difficulty here is that we are attempting to resist biology. Simply put, biology trumps knowledge. Only concurrent intuitive knowing has a chance at redirecting the biological urge to do what we enjoy. The last line of chapter 3 points the way, Doing without doing, following without exception rules (literally: wéi wú wéi, zé wú bù hì… 为无为, 则无不治). This feels awfully close to the teaching that uses no words!