Yun Shui (雲水) – clouds and water

Yun Shui (雲水) — clouds and water — in Daoism denotes a way of being that does not rest on permanence, but on reflecting Dao (道) itself. Clouds do not strive to remain; water does not stay in one form. In the same way, a person who follows Dao dwells in the world without settling anywhere or becoming attached to anything.

A cloud is born from the invisible; the wind lifts it and the wind disperses it. Today it is here, tomorrow there, without a plan and without a trace. Water does not choose its path, but receives everything it meets: it goes around the rock, fills the valley, enters the empty space, and always continues, without knowing where its path will end. Thus the ancient sages say: water does not compete, and so it loses nothing.

A Daoist has no home; their home is the whole world. Wherever they arrive, they are a guest; wherever they depart, nothing remains that must be held on to. What is given by nature, they accept; what is not given, they release. In non-attachment there is no possession and no loss, and therefore no burden.

Their heart-mind (心, Xin) is like a cloud: light, open, and weightless. It holds on to neither the past nor the future, but moves with the wind or rests when there is no wind. Their intention is like water: it does not speak and does not plan, yet still reaches everything; it does not force and does not oppose, yet nothing remains untouched. Water descends downward, and precisely in this lies its fullness, for it nourishes all beings without claiming anything for itself.

Free and carefree wandering through the sky — 逍遙遊天 (Xiaoyao you tian) — is therefore not the movement of the body, but accord with the breath of changing nature. Morning, day, evening, and night alternate in their flow; spring, summer, autumn, and winter turn in their cycle; birth and passing away do not stop. The true traveler does not resist, hold on, explain, or attach, but follows what is already taking place. Change is not an impassable boundary, but a natural flow.

Clouds gather and disperse; water is born from clouds, falls to the earth, returns to the sea, and evaporates again into the sky — everything works without intention, yet nothing is left undone. So too, a person who follows the principle of Yun Shui does not seek a fixed form of the self, but entrusts themselves to the flow of things. Dao is where there is no ownership, where there is no “I am here” and where there is no “this is mine”; precisely there, the world becomes boundless.

Meeting and parting follow the natural flow. The heart remains open like the sky, the spirit clear like a mountain spring, and the person moves among countless beings without belonging to any of them, for they belong only to Dao.

Thus Yun Shui is not wandering without meaning, but being without rigidity; it is not the search for a path, but trust in the universal lawfulness of the Way. Whoever realizes this does not travel through the world — the world travels through them. Where there is Heaven, there is their breath; where there is Earth, there is their step; where there is Dao, there is their home. And because Dao is omnipresent, their home is everywhere.

Rector of SDT, Yuan Weiqi