Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
Riding the Wind
To gradually loosen the rigid boundaries of the self — the reflex sorting of experience into like/dislike, gain/loss, mine/not-mine, inner/outer — so that one is carried by the natural course rather than braced against it.
In 4 lines: Stop arming each experience with a verdict — right/wrong, helps me/harms me. Over many sittings, let the like/dislike reflex and the inner/outer line slowly soften. As self-commentary quiets, the border between you and the world thins. Then simply be carried, like a dry leaf — no longer sure where you end and the wind begins.
What it is
The Liezi records its namesake describing his own training under the teacher Lao Shang as a progressive de-conditioning measured in years. First he dared not, inwardly, judge right from wrong or speak of benefit and harm.
Year by year the sorting loosened: the line between what helps me and what harms me faded, then the line between inside and outside, until “my mind froze, my body dissolved… I did not know what my body leaned on or my feet trod” and, “going along with the wind east and west, like a dry leaf, I did not know whether the wind was riding me or I was riding the wind.” This practice is the slow relaxation of the self’s rigid boundaries — the habitual carving of experience into like/dislike, gain/loss, mine/not-mine, self/other — through sustained stillness and letting go of judgement.
It lives in surrender release because its operative move is releasing the grip: not on a single fear, but on the whole apparatus of preference and self-demarcation. Distinct from Zhuangzi’s “heart-fasting / sitting in forgetting”: that practice is a seated emptying of mind in a single sitting.
Liezi’s is framed as a multi-year de-conditioning of the like/dislike and self/other reflex — a cumulative softening of the boundary over time, with “riding the wind” as its emblem, rather than a method for one session.
The Method
A faithful protocol drawn from Lie Yukou’s account (attributed rendering, not a reproduction):
- Stop arming the judgements. Begin where he began: cease, inwardly, to rush each experience into right/wrong and helps me/harms me. Notice the verdict forming; decline to clutch it.
- Let the like/dislike grip relax over time. This is gradual, not instant. Across many sittings, let the automatic approving-and-rejecting soften so that more of what arises is simply met, not sorted.
- Soften the inner/outer line. As reactivity fades, the felt border between “in here” (self) and “out there” (world) thins. Don’t force this; let stillness erode it.
- Allow self-reference to quiet. He describes mind “freezing” and body “dissolving” — the constant self-commentary and body-vigilance going quiet. Rest in that quiet rather than re-asserting the managing “I.”
- Be carried. What remains is to go along: “like a dry leaf,” moved by the natural course, no longer clear where self ends and the carrying current begins. The aim is not to do the riding but to stop resisting being carried. (Sourcing note: “I did not know whether I was right or wrong,” the dropping of benefit/harm and inner/outer, “my mind froze, my body dissolved,” and “I did not know whether the wind was riding me or I was riding the wind” are short quotes / close paraphrase from public-domain renderings of Liezi bk. 2; fair-use.)
Source & Lineage
The passage stands in the Liezi‘s “Yellow Emperor” book (compiled c. 4th c. CE, attributed to Lie Yukou). The “riding the wind” image is already invoked in the Zhuangzi, where Liezi “rode the wind and went flying,” and the two texts share a vocabulary of boundary-dissolution.
It belongs to the wider Daoist self-cultivation stream that loosens the ego’s grip to harmonise with the Dao, and it prefigures later “no inside/outside,” “self and world are one” motifs.
Common refinements
Rushing it. The text is explicit that this took years. Trying to force boundary-dissolution quickly is both ineffective and risky.
- Indifference masquerading as equanimity. Letting go of compulsive like/dislike is not numbness or not-caring; discernment and compassion remain.
- Chasing the “leaf” experience. Pursuing dramatic dissolution states as a goal re-installs the very grasping self the practice loosens.
- Abandoning ground. Softening the self/other line is meant to be integrated into ordinary living, not used to check out of responsibility or relationship.