Wu-Wei (Non-Action) and Go Intuition

Nohát, régen volt már üres tábla részlet, pedig hetente terveztem. Intuíció... Ja. Kétségbeesés. Inkább. Béke? A fenéket. Olvasni azért jó róla, mégha a közelében sem vagyok. Még szerencse, hogy röhögni bármikor tudok magamon, meg a helyzeten. Vagy csak úgy "ok" nélkül. Pedig tudom, hogy semmi sincs ok nélkül...

Wu-Wei (Non-Action) and Go Intuition

by William Cobb

The Chinese term wu-wei (usually translated as "non-action") plays an important role in Taoism and is familiar to anyone who has had much contact with Eastern thought. However, most people find it very difficult to figure out what the term means. Here Go players have an advantage because we engage in "non-action" all the time; it is what is called playing by intuition.

To explain my point I must first say a little about what makes the Taoist term puzzling. The term wu-wei is used to refer to the behavior of people who are enlightened, who are said to engage in non-action, but the Western ear tends to hear this as passivity. One would assume that non-action is what results when one does not act. Yet this assumes that "non-action" and "not acting" are the same thing, while the Taoists, mysteriously, distinguish these two terms. If we ask, " What does an enlightened person do?", Taoists reply that the crucial thing is not to act, and also not to refrain from action. Instead, one engages in "non-action", which is neither acting nor not acting.

This sort of response is anything but illuminating, of course. If "not acting" and "non-action" are not synonyms, how are we to understand them? All we can tell initially is that the Taoists are trying to distinguish some sort of alternative beyond the apparent dichotomy of acting and not acting. The implication is that there is a way of being involved in the world, of engaging the world, which is neither acting in it, nor not acting in it. But what could that be? Perhaps the solution is that the common understanding of "acting" and "action" is problematical, and what is being suggested is that one must avoid acting in one sense, but not in every sense. So, what could be the problematical sense of "action" and what sort of "action" is being pointed to with the term wu-wei?

Now, any student of Eastern thought knows that we must start here with the notion of the actor, the one who is acting. The problem has to do with the assumption that there is a self that is supposedly acting or not acting. To understand this, we must explain how an independent ego that could serve as the initiator and beneficiary of actions does not really exist. Thus, what is ordinarily thought of as action does not really occur, since there is no actor in the ordinary sense, and so enlightened people neither engage in action in that sense nor refrain from it (as though it represented a real option). However, this explanation becomes lengthy, complicated, and difficult to get a clear sense of. Go players have an easier path to take. We can just say it is like playing by intuition, and every Go player should know what that is like.

Playing by intuition is contrasted with two other ways of playing: playing on the basis of reflective analysis, on the one hand, and on the other hand, playing by more or less randomly throwing stones on the boards. We tend to think of the first of these as "serious" play, and the other as at best a form of amusement. Thinking of playing in these two ways sometimes creates a problem for understanding playing by intuition, however, because we may assume that since playing by intuition is clearly not "serious" play in this sense, it must be less than serious and hence suspect. That may be why some people are quite negative about lightning games-they think that such games cannot be "serious" play since one does not have time for analysis and calculation.

What is needed, then, is a clarification of the difference between playing by intuition and just throwing stones on the board. As one learns to play the game, using reflective analysis to figure out what is going on, that is, what one should do in various situations, one comes to recognize certain types of patterns. When you encounter these patterns again, you do not have to analyze-at least you do not have to if you are happy with playing at the level of understanding you have so far achieved. In such recognized situations, you simply perceive what is appropriate, and you just do it. As a result of earlier analysis, you are able to see how things are and you can act without any need to examine the board to figure out how things are.

In this sort of playing one is not really thinking about what one is doing; there is no gap between looking at the board and knowing what to do that must be bridged by analysis. Yet, this clearly is not just throwing stones around. It is responding to the way things are on the board in an immediate and spontaneous way that is made possible by one's having learned to perceive how things are. Thus, this is neither playing on the basis of analysis nor is it not playing on the basis of analysis. Nor is it just randomly jumping around. It is the kind of play that understanding makes possible. And the better your understanding is, the better your intuition will be.

Intuition is an immediate perception of how things are. That is, as you gain a better understanding of what is happening on the board, you immediately see what should be done to a greater extent. At the ultimate level of Go enlightenment, then, one would never have to "think", one would just play, because it would always be clear what should be done. Of course, no Go player expects to reach this ultimate level, but all Go players use intuition to some extent.

Thus, all Go players engage in non-action, at least in playing Go, and can understand what it is like to be an enlightened person in the world. Such a person sees things as they really are and does not have to think about what to do. Life just plays itself. Likewise, in playing Go by intuition, no independent self is involved because there is no need to analyze, initiate, and justify plays. One just plays. The board situation directs the play, and the stones play themselves.

Lightning games force us to play by intuition, that is, without our selves, to play when all that is going on is the play itself. We usually discover how far we are from final Go enlightenment in such games, but we also get a hint of what the life of an enlightened person is like. Playing by intuition is not playing (in the ordinary "serious" sense), nor is it not playing; it is non-playing.

The Empty Board #5

American Go Journal XXX, 1 (Winter 1996), 34-35, 37