“’Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone’. The tricky thing is that with a busy mind, where there is conflicting or competing energies, this is often the last thing that we feel like doing!”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week I’ll be doing a couple of open talks and meditations on the five types of meditators:
- Wednesday 1st April is online only
- Saturday 4th April is Live in person & online
Details and links are below. If you are not able to make the sessions live, but want to have a listen, let me know & I’ll be happy to send the recordings on…
Beneath the session details you can find this weeks artcle on ‘Muddy water – Meditation as waiting, allowing’.
In the spirit of integral meditation,
Toby
Wednesday April 1st, 7.30-8.30pm & Saturday, 4th April, 5-6pm – Which meditator are you? – Free meditation seminars: The five types of meditators & how to build your path to inner freedom
Read full details…
This week’s article: Muddy water – Meditation as waiting & allowing
Back when I was teaching meditation classes as a monk, we used to use the analogy of muddy water to explain meditation. It is quite well known, and you may have heard of it yourself. It basically says that a busy mind is like muddy water; if you leave it to stand for long enough, the mud will settle and the water becomes clear. There are a couple of ‘sources’ for this analogy:
1. In chapter 15 of the Tao te ching, Lao Tsu refers to it:
“Clear as a glass of water.
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?”
2. It can also be found in the Buddhist sutras, specifically the Surangama sutra, where it says:
“It (meditation) is like purifying muddy water by placing it in a quiet vessel which is kept completely still and unmoving. The sand and silt settle, and the pure water appears. This is called the initial subduing of the guest-dust affliction.”
3. More recently Alan watts refers to it in his teachings in ‘the way of Zen’, where he says “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone”
The main thing I want to emphasize here is that clarity is achieved through leaving alone and waiting. It is very difficult for us to try to clear our mind in meditation, but the effort itself prevents us from letting the ‘mud’ of our mind settle, and achieve clarity. The clarity is ‘achieved’ essentially by:
- Waiting
- Watching
- Letting alone
- Being patient
- Doing precisely nothing, the less the better!
So then, you could consider it a perfectly valid meditation practice just to sit down and wait. The key here would be to do nothing else; just sit, wait, relax. The tricky thing is that with a busy mind, where there is conflicting or competing energies, this is often the last thing that we feel like doing! We want to:
- Get rid of the conflict
- ‘Achieve’ clarity
- Escape from, not have to face, what is within us
- Get it done quickly
All of this makes it quite difficult to do nothing other than wait, watch and allow.
Mastering, or at least getting better at this waiting process in meditation then starts to bleed into our daily life. Where we start to see that we can achieve several things much more easily by waiting and non-doing, rather than striving and getting busy. We start to access the art of Wu-wei, or doing-by-non-doing. This is a way of getting things done that is complementary, not contradictory to our striving and achieving approach. Indeed, it can make our striving and achieving more skilful and relaxed when we realize we don’t have to try quite as hard as we thought. Rather it is a matter of trying smarter rather than trying harder…
Related article: Effortless effort – Making everything workable
Relaxing into, not fighting with your fatigue
© Toby Ouvry 2026, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Upcoming classes & workshops
Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes
Ongoing on Saturdays, 5.30-6.45pm SG time – Saturday Integral meditation deep-dive sessions with Toby
Ongoing weekly on Wednesday – Beginners mind, resilient body – a 10-week integral meditation course
Wednesday April 1st, 7.30-8.30pm & Saturday, 4th April, 5-6pm – Which meditator are you? – Free meditation seminars: The five types of meditators & how to build your path to inner freedom
Starts Wednesday 8th April, 7.30-8.30pm, & then ongoing – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course
Saturday 11th April, 5.30-6.15pm SG time, & then ongoing – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series
Saturday 11th April, 5.30-6.15pm SG time, & then ongoing – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series
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