The River
The Teaching
We are all floating in a tremendous river and the river carries you along. Some of the people in the river are swimming against the current, but they are still being carried along. Others have learned that the art of the thing is to swim with it. You have to flow with the river. There is no other way. You can swim against it, and pretend not to be flowing with it. But you still flow with the river.
Watch the flow of water when it crosses over an area of land and you will see that it puts out fingers, and some of them stop because they come into blind alleys. But it never uses any effort. It only uses weight and gravity. It takes the line of least resistance and eventually finds a course.
To the degree that you go with the stream, you are still — you're flowing with it. But to the degree you resist the stream, then you notice that the current is rushing past you and fighting with you.
Commentary
The river is the oldest image in the philosophical tradition for a reason. It captures the paradox of being in motion while at rest, of being carried while choosing nothing, of arriving without effort at exactly where you were going.
Watts uses it to name an experience most people have had but few have articulated, the exhaustion of resistance. Not the tiredness that comes from good work, but the specific depletion that comes from fighting something that doesn't fight back. The current doesn't oppose you. It simply continues.
The first thing to notice is that everyone is in the river. There is no one on the bank. The person swimming against the current and the person at rest in it are both being carried. The only variable is energy expenditure. The second is the word 'pretend', you can swim against the current and pretend you are not flowing with it.
Water finding its course is the complementary image. The river is not passive, it is persistently, purposefully going somewhere. But its method is not force. It is the willingness to find the way rather than insist on a particular way. This is the Tao Te Ching's teaching on Wu Wei, not non-action but action so aligned with the natural order that it does not feel like effort.