Doing by Not Forcing

Wu wei is literally "non-action," but the phrase is misleading, and the concept is not passivity. It names action that does not force, action so attuned to the situation that it seems to require no effort, arising from the natural course of things (ziran, "self-so") rather than from the striving, calculating ego. The sage governs the state and the adept lives a life by wu wei, and the paradox the texts delight in is that this "not-doing" is supremely effective: as the Daodejing puts it, the Way "does nothing, yet nothing is left undone."

The classic images are drawn from skill and from nature. Water is the favoured emblem, it yields, takes the lowest place, and yet wears away rock and finds every gap. In the Zhuangzi, the cook Ding carves an ox for years without dulling his blade because he no longer hacks at it but lets the knife follow the joints and cavities already there; his mastery looks like effortlessness because he has stopped imposing himself on the material. Wu wei is that quality generalised: efficacy without coercion, the removal of the interfering self so that action can flow from the grain of the world.