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wu wei [OO-way]

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an important concept in Taoism that means "without effort" or "without control" or "effortless action", the way beings in harmony with the Tao behave,

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in a completely natural, uncontrived way, which is the goal of spiritual practice for the human being

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the attainment of a purely natural way of behaving, as when the planets revolve around the sun

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engaging in effortless and spontaneous movement

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wu wei is often translated as "without action" or "no action"

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not a very good translation because often people who are in wu wei are actually very active

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very it is just that their action is effortless and natural

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people who are in a state of wu wei often emerge having done something amazing not even realizing at the time that they were doing anything

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like being "in the zone" in sports

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the sense of "being in the flow" an idea popularized in the 1990s by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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lose the sense of yourself as an agent

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get absorbed into your activities

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lose the sense of the passing of time

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forget that you are doing something in particular

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however, there are important differences between wu wei and the flow

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flow is about complexity, challenge, and the need to be constantly ramped up

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if an activity is too hard we get frustrated

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if it is too easy we get bored

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flow is a channel, a sweet spot right between these two extremes

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most athletics and highly skilled activities fit this description

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wu-wei captures a broader range of activities

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what distinguishes wu-wei from other states is being absorbed in something larger than yourself

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this bigger thing is something that you value

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something that is normatively positive, something you believe to be morally good

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you become very effective in the world

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people who are in wu-wei are in a state of spontaneity

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but the English word spontaneity has too much of a sense of arbitrariness

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wu-wei is focused

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but it is not you that is doing the focussing

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you are no longer the acting agent

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you can think of wu-wei as an integration of hot and cold cognition

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it's body thinking, no conscious thought is necessary

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wu wei represents being harmonized with a greater whole

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Dao

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a path, or road, or way

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beginning with Confucius is begins to mean the way of the universe, the proper way

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when you are in a state of wu-wei, you are acting in accordance with the Dao

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tian

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heaven, or heaven's will

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when you are in a state of wu-wei you are in accord with what heaven wants

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de [pronounced unfortunately "duh" as in "no duh"]

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means Virtue

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a better translation is "charismatic power"

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a power that you emanate when you are in a state of wu-wei

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attracts people to you

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as a Confucian ruler, it's what makes people want to follow you without you having to force them to follow you

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the paradox of getting to wu-wei

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explained through a game called "mindball"

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goal is to relax more than the opposite player

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the more you slow down your brain activity, the more you relax, the better chance you will win

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the goal is to push the little metal ball to the other side of the table

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if you get it there, you win

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the way you push it is through relaxing and thus producing alpha and beta waves, which is what the electrodes pick up, and thus move the ball

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it's all the extraneous thoughts that you have to get rid of

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you win mindball by not trying to win

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a good microcosm of this problem of how you can try not to try

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it turns out that trying not to try is not very easy

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we all face something like the mindball tension in our everyday lives

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choking in sports is a version of the paradox of wu-wei

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how do you make yourself relaxed when you're not feeling relaxed

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dating

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it's hard to relax when you feel like you should be performing, being someone who the other person will be interested in

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each of the thinkers who think about wu-wei suggest a tension to be wu-wei and get de

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it is a real paradox so there isn't one solution to it

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the way ancient philosophers dealt with this tension of trying not to try has bearing on our everyday lives

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where we want spontaneity but find it elusive