A bird always knows when it’s time for the young to leave the nest. If you get too close to a beehive the bees will sting you, even if you don’t mean them any harm. There are some things that we do without even thinking about doing them.

Breathing is one such activity. The Planets revolve around the sun and trees grow. They “do” these things without really “doing” them.

This is known as Wu Wei, which means natural action. Knowing when (and how) to act is not about thinking “now” is the right time to do “this”. It is about simply doing, doing the natural thing. The aim of Wu Wei is to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium. A state where you always know what you need to do.

The literal meaning of Wu Wei is “without action” and is often included in the paradox wei wu wei: “action without action”. An example of active non-action using wu wei would be to teach in such a way that no course of action is dictated to a student (they are just told raw facts for use and left to their own creative devices), so they assume that they have been taught nothing, that is, until all they have learnt has been integrated in their lived experience.

I think the comic book summarization Zen Speaks says it best “A good teacher teaches the student that they already know the answer.”

When we choose to do an action, we are interfering with the natural way. Whenever we have to think about what needs to be done, we are thinking about manmade superficial matters. In any natural situation we just ‘know’ what to do. So, by reducing the number of things we have to think about doing, we reduce our interference with the natural order of things.