无为 wú wéi
Non-forcing — the Daoist skill of not pushing the river.
The short answer
Wu wei means non-forcing: acting with the grain of a situation instead of against it, intervening no more than the moment requires. It is a Daoist ideal — and often misread as doing nothing.
What it means
The Laozi's examples are water and wood: water is soft yet carves canyons; the sapling knows how to grow without meetings. Wu wei is that mode of action — skillful, timely, unforced. The archer at full draw is still; the cook whose blade never dulls follows the joints.
So 无为 does not mean doing nothing. It means refusing the extra push: no forcing, no meddling, no gesture-making. The companion phrase 无为而无不为 — through non-forcing, nothing is left undone — is the paradox: less pushing, more done.
How people use it
Modern usage is loose and playful. Parents joke about 无为而治 — governing by non-action — as a parenting style; managers borrow it for delegation; wellness culture repackages it as letting go. The classical pairing 无为而治 originally described ideal rulers who intervened so rarely that order looked like weather.
It also supplies a vocabulary of refusal: describing a colleague's constant meddling, someone might sigh that they could use a bit of 无为.
Where it comes from
The concept anchors the Dao De Jing, attributed to Laozi, and runs through the Zhuangzi's stories of craftsmen whose skill has become effortless. The Dao itself models it: the Way does nothing, yet nothing is left undone.
Chinese history kept circling it: every dynasty argued between Confucian activism and Daoist restraint, and after harsh campaigns, edicts of rest — light taxes, few orders — were justified in exactly those terms.
In use
2 examples道家提倡无为而治，不要管得太多。
Daoism champions governing by non-forcing — don't meddle too much.
带孩子有时候要无为一点，别什么都替他做。
Raising kids sometimes calls for a little wu wei — don't do everything for them.
The characters
Explore individuallyIndividual character meanings do not always explain the meaning of the whole word.
This guide is original Dengdeng editorial content, offered under CC BY-SA 4.0. The linked dictionary entries adapt CC-CEDICT under the same license.