“Nature does nothing, and yet nothing remains unaccomplished.” – Tao Te Ching, with “nature” replacing the Tao
Wu Wei (Doing Nothing 無爲) is a key concept in Taoism and in Chinese philosophy. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines wu wei as:
the practice of taking no action that is not in accord with the natural course of the universe.
Which reminds us of the Epicurean insistence of living in accordance with nature, defined as living pleasantly (rationally and pragmatically following the pleasure impulse and evading the pain signals). According to The School of Life,
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 wu wei is captured when we talk of being ‘in the zone’ – at one with what we are doing, in a state of profound concentration and flow.
… so that it seems that wu wei is a way of acting that does not interrupt the natural flows, including those of sentience and attention. Wu wei also is associated with the enjoyment of things without clinging or yearning. A metaphor for this is the bee which goes from flower to flower, enjoying the nectar freely, and moving on. We also see the logic of wu wei in the Lathe biosas (Live unknown) teaching, and in the focus on natural and necessary pleasures which are easy to get.
In Taoism, the focus is less on accepting that which you cannot change (as the Stoics do), and more on acting efficiently and effortlessly. A clear, non-mystical understanding of wu wei helps to remind us of the wisdom of choosing our battles, and choosing the most efficient and opportune moments and circumstances in which to act. According to this essay by LR:
A better way to think of it, however, is as a paradoxical “Action of non-action.”
This is very problematic for us, since Epicurean philosophy frowns upon unclear speech. But wu wei is far from a mystical and unpragmatic idea. It’s applied effectively in many fields, including business, politics, and martial arts.
Over 20 years ago, when I studied tai chi under an instructor who had been trained in China, he explained wu wei to me by teaching me that in addition to evading or dodging a blow and allowing the opponent to tire and hurt himself in various ways, we can also use the momentum from our own bodies and the strength of our legs when we counter-attack. This, too, is wu-wei, and it’s not just effortless: it’s efficient. He struck a blow once from a position of being steady on his feet, and then another one with a dancing motion, using his legs to add momentum to the blow. This second blow was, naturally, much stronger than the first (because he used momentum and I felt the weight of his whole body), and it pushed me back. He then said: “THAT is wu wei”. I was planning to move to Chicago in a month, so my tai chi classes were brief, but I always remembered this encounter, and the sense that the Sensei was on to something.
Sometimes wu wei is about the use of observable factors over which we may have no control, and sometimes it’s about the employment of the few other factors over which we DO have control, but that when applied at the right moment and in the right way, create much more effective ways of acting in the world thanks to the assistance of nature. According to this essay,
Another example of Wu Wei is the cutting of wood. If you go against the way the tree grew, the wood is difficult to cut. The wood, however, splits easily if you cut against the grain. When sawing wood, many people are in a great hurry to power through the block and do not realize they are splintering the back edge. Instead, a skilled carpenter will let the saw do the work, patiently allowing the blade to glide across the wood without causing any splinters or tiring themselves out.
Wu wei reminds me of the way in which sleep assists in neuroplasticity and in the process of memorizing and learning. Before we are able to perform a task thoroughly and subconsciously, without even thinking about it, many neural connections must happen in our brains, and these neurons do their repair work at night while we sleep. We do our active memorizing and learning while we’re awake, but (arguably) the most important work happens at night, when the brain really goes to work on learning. We must give up the power over the tasks or information that we’re learning, and allow the brain to rest, in order to learn. Without this effortless aspect of the process, learning does not happen. According to this study:
… during sleep, the brain must also stabilize key synapses to prevent what was learned the previous day from being eliminated by new learning experiences…
… the REM stage may make learning before sleep more resilient to interference from subsequent learning.
Unlike non-REM sleep, the sharp fall in plasticity during REM sleep was only seen among the volunteers with a task to learn.
This suggests that the stabilization that occurred during REM sleep was focused exclusively on synapses involved in learning this task.
Darwinian natural selection provides us another example where, without much effort on the part of sentient beings, things continue along their course, and even evolve into a magnificent variety of lifeforms. If some mutation, or some instinctive behavior, results in advantage for a creature, then that creature is more likely to survive and pass on their genes while others do not. Over time, only the better adapted creatures will remain. Like water, nature in all things takes the path of least resistance.
Another application of wu wei happens in communities where engineers of the beaver species have interfered with human communal engineering decisions. Scientists have figured out that if you play the soundtrack of running water, upon hearing it, beavers will begin to build dams by instinct. So they are using this to manipulate beaver behavior as needed. Rather than fight the critters, rather than make countless efforts, rather than be in control, humans simply need to encourage the creature to do what it’s programmed by nature to do whenever it hears running water.
We must not force Nature but persuade her. We shall persuade her if we satisfy the necessary desires and also those bodily desires that do not harm us while sternly rejecting those that are harmful. – Epicurean Saying 21
I have long considered that pleasure ethics often involves a practice of applying the same technique that we apply with the beavers, with ourselves; a practice which–in my view–requires insight, wisdom and self-compassion.
Epicurean Effortless Action
I have shared all these case studies on effortless yet efficient action in order to show that, while sometimes our instincts are triggered in vain, most of the time it does make sense to trust the wisdom of nature. A clear insight into wu wei may help us in our choices and avoidances, to more efficiently choose our efforts, and to act in a manner that is more confident, more efficient, less anxious, and yet paradoxically less in need of control. But what does Epicurean philosophy say concretely concerning effortless action? Epicurus’ Principal Doctrine 26 says:
The desires that do not bring pain when they go unfulfilled are not necessary; indeed they are easy to reject if they are hard to achieve or if they seem to produce harm.
Epicurus offers us two criteria in our choices and avoidances that justify not pursuing unnecessary pleasures: if they’re hard to achieve, or if they’re harmful, then it’s easy to dismiss them. This first criteria, of course, reminds us of wu wei (effortless action), and also the Doctrine seems to imply that it is desirable to live in such a way that our choices and avoidances tend to produce pleasures that generally require little effort.
Principal Doctrine 30, on the other hand, offers us two criteria to classify some natural desires as arising from groundless opinion:
Among natural desires, those that do not bring pain when unfulfilled and that require intense exertion arise from groundless opinion; and such desires fail to be stamped out not by nature but because of the groundless opinions of humankind.
Notice the second criterion involves the desires that require intense exertion. Here again, we find an ethics of effortless (or low effort) action in Epicurean Doctrines, tied to the accusation that the justifications for exertion involve faulty thinking not based on the study of nature.
We see in Epicurean pleasure calculus and in wu-wei a tendency to affirm nature, as well as some distrust of culture or artifice. We also see a tendency to follow the path of least resistance. But when we read Lucretius and consider Epicurean physics, wu wei comes into a different relief.
Effortless Action and Epicurean Atheology
The fullness of the pragmatic repercussions of these considerations, ordinary and seemingly unrelated as they are, is carried to its conclusion by Lucretius. This is the beauty of Epicurean philosophy: it rationally and pragmatically weaves cosmology, physics, epistemology, and ethics into a single, coherent tapestry.
If you grasp these points well and hold to them,
you will see at once that nature is free,
liberated from her proud possessors,
doing all things on her own initiative,
without divinities playing any part.Lucretius, On the nature of things, Book II
… which, of course, has repercussions for how we should live our lives (the ethics). The gods do not govern, create, or interrupt the workings of nature. Therefore, even if we attribute an artistic-aesthetic or ethical role to the gods in our lives, we need not worry about appeasing them. This, too, allows us to engage in more effective action in our environment, as it protects us from the degrading superstitions of the mobs who are forever appeasing gods out of unwarranted shame or fear.
Without gods managing everything, nature is free. Nature acts according to its own laws and cycles, which are unconscious and impersonal, and it is by prudently acting in accordance with (or not against) these cycles and laws that we act most efficiently.
Further reading:
The Taoist Hedonism of Yang Chu
