An Explanation Of Wu Wei's Taoist Philosophy

507 Words3 Pages

“A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work,” said Colin Powell. Although many successful people can relate to this quote, the Taoist philosophy of Wu Wei contradicts the core message of the quote; that many things in life will require effort. The Taoist philosophical concept of Wu Wei has a literal meaning of “non-doing”. The philosophy states that action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort. This concept is teaching the followers of Taoism that when in a crisis or when something needs to be achieved, action is not needed to be taken as the flow of life will solve the problem or help you achieve the goal. The core concept behind this philosophy is supposed to be promoting peaceful living and letting nature flow naturally without our interference, but what it's actually teaching people is that they don't have to work hard for anything in their life. If they sit around on their couch eating potato chips and behaving peacefully when a crisis has occurred, hypothetically if their daughter had been kidnapped , the natural flow of life will hand them their daughter back. As a CEO, for example, you often lead discussions. Following Wu-Wei, you would explain the expected outcome from the discussion, let it …show more content…

Work must be put into creating such natural wonder. Hypothetically, if everyone in the world just thought of things they wanted to happen and told everyone else trying to “prompt a discussion”, then there would be no physical not technological development in the world. Instead, everyone would wait for some magical “force” or “warrior” like a Jedi to come and do it for them. This goes against all the morals that people are trying to establish in schools and scriptures/sacred texts. We are trying to teach our kids to work hard in order to make a living, not that being lazy pays