Wu-wei

Effortless action

A friend asked me to write a post on wu-wei and its relationship to Schopenhauer’s will. This is no mean feat, but here’s my first assay, following the post on Daoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy I wrote about last week.¹

What is Wu-wei?

The short answer: “effortless action” or “spontaneous action.”

The long answer: Wu-wei is a concept in Chinese philosophy which originated in poetry during the Spring and Autumn period (770–481 BC).²

Wu-wei later became an important concept in both Confucianism and (more importantly for our purposes) Daoism.

The first part, “wu,” (無) means “negative, no, not; lack, have no.” The second part, “wei,” (為) means “do, handle, govern, act; be.”

So together, wu-wei literally means something like “non-action.” But the figurative meaning is more paradoxical, something like “acting without acting.”

Laozi, author of the Tao Te Ching, found chilling north of Quanzhou, Fujian province, China.

Wu-wei appears in 9 of the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching. It first occurs in the second verse.

Here are several translations of one line of Verse 2. This should also give you a flavour of how different the translations are, as I described here.

Some translations emphasize not doing anything:

• “Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing” (trans. Feng/English)

• “Therefore the sage is devoted to non action” (Addiss/Lombardo)

But most translations emphasize that action still takes place despite the negation:

• “The Sage acts without action” (Jonathan Star)

• “Therefore the sages: / Manage the work of detached actions” (Derek Lin)

• “Therefore the Master / acts without doing anything” (Stephen Mitchell)

• “Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action” (D. C. Lau)

• “Therefore the Sage: / Manages affairs without action” (Lin Yutang)

• “That’s why the wise soul / does without doing” (Le Guin)

• “Therefore the sage manages affairs without doing anything” (Legge)

• “Therefore the Sage relies on actionless activity” (Waley)

• “Using this: sages fix social issues without deeming” (Chad Hansen)

Can you be less academic?

Sure.

In my life I typically understand wu-wei as acting without striving, or taking skilful action and entirely relinquishing the results.

Edward Slingerland, an expert on early Chinese thought with whom I did an online event last year, wrote a book called Trying Not to Try on his understanding of wu-wei.

Here’s his definition from Trying Not to Try (2014, p12):

Wu-wei literally translates as “no trying” or “no doing,” but it’s not at all about dull inaction. In fact, it refers to the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. People in wu-wei feel as if they are doing nothing, while at the same time they might be creating a brilliant work of art, smoothly negotiating a complex social situation, or even bringing the entire world into harmonious order. For a person in wu-wei, proper and effective conduct follows as automatically as the body gives in to the seductive rhythm of a song. This state of harmony is both complex and holistic, involving as it does the integration of the body, the emotions, and the mind. If we have to translate it, wu-wei is probably best rendered as something like “effortless action” or “spontaneous action.” Being in wu-wei is relaxing and enjoyable, but in a deeply rewarding way that distinguishes it from cruder or more mundane pleasures.

Elsewhere, Slingerland compares and contrasts it with Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow (p38):

If we consider the major features of flow as he outlines them, many similarities pop out: deep but effortless concentration, responsiveness to the environment, a high degree of effectiveness, profound enjoyment, the loss of a sense of self, and an altered sense of time. […] Flow happens when we hit the “sweet spot” between too easy and too hard. Since skills improve over time, this means that flow requires exposure to constantly “spiraling complexity” that “forces people to stretch themselves, to always take on another challenge to improve on their abilities.” It is this emphasis on challenge and complexity that best allows us to see the distinction between flow—at least as defined by Csikszentmihalyi—and wu-wei. It also helps us to see how Western individualism can obscure certain important aspects of spontaneity that are, in contrast, highlighted by the early Chinese.

Can you be more academic?

Sure.

Let’s drill down further. Here’s a detailed dictionary entry for “wu” (無) from the Chinese Text Project:

Not have. / Philosophical category referring to absence, non-existence, or vacuity. / Adverb expressing negation: not. / Adverb expressing questioning: or not. / Connective: regardless of. / Connective: even if. / Particle used at the beginning of a sentence, no meaning. / Do not. / Barren, uncultivated.

Here’s the detailed dictionary entry for “wei” (為):

Create, make. / Build, construct. / Do. / Plant, grow. / Govern. / Research, study. / Serve as. / Change into, become. / As, in the role of. / Count as, be considered as. / Called, named. / Expresses judgement: is. / Make, cause (to). / Have. / Take part in. / Write, author. / Connective: if. / Particle used in the middle of a sentence to move forward the object. / Modal particle used at the end of a sentence to express a rhetorical question.

“Wei” can also mean:

Help, assist. / Preposition: for, on behalf of. / Preposition: by (passive). / Preposition: because of, due to. / Preposition: with, together with. / Connective: because. / Say. / False, fake.

Wu- (無) appears 101 times in the short ~5,000 characters of the Tao, in 40 of the 81 verses. Wu-wei (無為) appears 11 times in 9 of the 81 verses: 2, 3, 37, 38, 43, 48, 57, 63, and 64.

This means that <10% of the usages of wu- in the Tao Te Ching modify wei.

What are the other wu- forms in the Tao?

Although wu-wei first appears in the second verse, and then again in the third, the wu- (無) character appears twice in the first verse, with yu (“desire”) and ming (“name”).

This means the first wu- forms in the Tao are not wu-wei (“effortless action”) but wu-yu (“objectless desire”) and wu-ming (“nameless naming”).

Here’s how these forms contrast with Confucianism, from the introduction to Roger T. Ames & David L. Hall’s Daodejing (a philosophical translation of the Tao), p25:

In Confucianism, self is determined by sustained effort (zbong) in deferential transactions (shu) guided by ritually structured roles and relations (li) that project one’s person outward into society and into culture. Such a person becomes a focus of the community’s deference (junzi) and a source of its spirituality (shen).

Daoism, on the other hand, expresses its deferential activity through what we are calling the wu- forms. The three most familiar articulations of this pervasive sensibility are: wuwei 無為, wuzhi 無知, and wuyu 無欲. These are, respectively, noncoercive actions in accordance with the de (“particular focus”) of things; a sort of knowing without resort to rules or principles; and desiring which does not seek to possess or control its “object.” In each of these instances, as in the case of Confucian shu, it is necessary to put oneself in the place of what is to be acted in accordance with, what is to be known, or what is to be desired, and thus incorporate this perspective into one’s own disposition. Our chief aim here is to demonstrate how this explicitly Daoist understanding of deferential activity presupposes a focus-field model of self.

Some important wu- forms, therefore, include:

• Wu-wei, or “effortless action”

• Wu-zhi, or “knowing without categories”

• Wu-yu, or “objectless desire,” sometimes translated as “desireless”

• Wu-ming, or “naming without names",” sometimes translated as “the nameless”

Although I don’t read Chinese, I try to look at primary sources whenever possible. If you’re a sinologist, I’d love to hear what I’ve got wrong :)

I’ll stop striving here, and look forward to hearing from you.

Bryan

1. Yes, I do take requests, even if they sometimes take me a long time to finishing — so please do send any questions or comments as I love receiving them.

2. According to Wikipedia, it’s found in the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), but I could only find a few instances of wu wei there, and the Legge translation renders them into apparently literal “non-action.”