'Wú Wéi' (无为) means, in Chinese,
'non-doing', or 'doing nothing'.
It sounds like a pleasant invitation
to relax, or worse, fall into laziness
or apathy.
Yet this concept is key to
the noblest kind of action,
according to the philosophy of Daoism,
and is at the heart of what it means
to follow 'Dào' (道) - 'the way'.
According to the central text of Daoism,
the 'Dào Dé Jīng' (道德经),the way never acts,yet nothing is left undone.
This is the paradox of Wú Wéi :
it doesn't mean 'not acting,'
it means 'effortless action,' or
'actionless action'.
It means being at peace,
while engaged in the most frenetic tasks,
so that one can carry these out
with maximum skill and efficiency.
Something of the meaning of Wú Wéi
is captured when we talk of
being 'in the zone',
at one with what we're doing,
in a state of profound concentration and flow.
Wú Wéi is closely connected to
the Daoist reverence for the natural world,
for it means striving to make our behaviour
as spontaneous and inevitable as
certain natural processes,
and to ensure that we are swimming with,
rather than against, currents.
We are to be like the bamboo
that bends in the wind, or the plant
that adjusts itself to the shape of a tree.
Wú Wéi involves letting go
of ideals that we may otherwise
try to force too violently onto things.
It invites us instead to respond to
the true demands of situations,
which tend only to be noticed
when we put our own ego-driven plans
to one side.
What can follow is
a loss of self-consciousness,
a new unity between the self
and its environment.
But none of this means we won't
be able to change or affect things
if we strive for Wú Wéi.
The Dào Dé Jīng points out that
we should be like water, which is
submissive and weak, and yet which
can't be surpassed for attacking
what is hard and strong.
Through gentle persistence and a compliance
with the specific shape of a problem,
an obstacle can be worked around
and gradually eroded.
The idea of achieving the greatest effects
by wise, strategic passivity
has been central to Chinese notions of
politics, diplomacy and business.
In the manuals on wisdom produced
by Daoists, we are repeatedly told
that rather than impose a plan or
model on a situation, we should
let others act frantically, and then
likely adjust ourselves as we
see the direction that matters
have evolved in.
In China's Táng (唐) dynasty,
many poets likened Wú Wéi to the
best aspects of being drunk.
It wasn't alcoholism they were promoting,
but the decline in rigidity and anxiety
that sometimes comes with being a little drunk,
and which can help us to
accomplish certain tasks.
One poet compared someone
inspired by Wú Wéi to a drunk man
who falls uninjured from a moving cart.
Such is their spiritual momentum,
that they are unaffected
by accidents and misfortunes
that might break those of a more
controlled and controlling mindset.
Theories of painting from
the Táng period onwards
made Wú Wéi central
to artistic practice.
Rather than labouriously attempting to
reproduce nature as faithful copyists,
the artist should find nature
within themselves, and
surrender to its calls.
The painter's task is not to
imitate the external surface of things,
but to present the
'Guǐ (鬼)' or 'spirit' of things
like mountains, trees, birds and rivers,
by feeling some of this spirit
in themselves, and then letting it
'flow out' through the brush,
onto silk or paper.
It followed that Daoist thinkers revered
not just the finished work of art,
but the act of painting itself.
It considered artist studios as
places for applied philosophy.
The Táng dynasty poet, Fú Zài (符载),
described a big party that had
been thrown to witness the painter,
Zhāng Zǎo (張璪), in action.
'Right in the middle of the room,
he sat down with his legs spread out,
took a deep breath and
his inspiration began to issue forth.
'Those present were as startled as if
lightning was shooting across the heavens,
or a whirlwind was sweeping up into the sky.
'The ink seemed to be spitting from his flying brush.
'He clapped his hands with a cracking sound.
'Suddenly, strange shapes were born.
'When he'd finished, there stood
pine trees, scaly and riven,
crags steep and precipitous,
clear water and turbulent clouds.
'He threw down his brush, got up and
looked around in every direction.
'It seemed as if the sky had cleared after a storm,
to reveal the true essence of ten thousand things.'
Fú Zài added of Zhāng,
whose works are sadly now lost,
that he had 'left mere skill behind',
and that his art was
'not painting', but 'the very Dao itself'.
A good life could not be attained
by Wú Wéi alone,
but this Daoist concept captures
a wisdom we may at times
be in desperate need of :
when we're in danger of damaging ourselves,
through an overly stern and unyielding
adherence to ideas which simply don't fit
the demands of the world.