Name: TAOISM | The Art of Not Trying
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T05:23:14.000Z
Duration: 13 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

Those who stand on tiptoes do not stand firmly.

Those who try to outshine others dim their own light.

Lao Tzu how can we improve when we stop trying to improve?

Many people waste their efforts trying to better their lives with questionable results.

They gain knowledge and chase external things while exhausting their bodies and burdening their minds, only to end up in discontent.

The Taoists observed that humans tend to act in ways that are counterproductive.

And in their attempts to alter the natural way, they only make things worse.

All these strivings, rules, ethics, values surely are invented to benefit humanity.

But according to the ancient Taoist sages, we should get rid of them all.

Because all these man made ideas only remove us further from the natural flow of life.

Trying to alter what nature has intended is like swimming against the stream.

This video is about not trying to change the world to gain the world.

Behind the ever changing universe lies a mysterious and undefinable force that the Taoists call Tao, for the lack of a better word.

The Tao is all encompassing and it's beyond everything that our senses can perceive.

Still, we can know and feel the dao, even though we cannot comprehend it.

This symbolizes the tragic attempts by humans to conceptualize things that are beyond their understanding.

They select and discern, but fail to grasp what the universe is truly like.

So they create a deception, an artifice that makes life understandable for humans.

But by trying to comprehend, they lose the dao.

Five colors blind the eye, Five notes deafen the ear.

Still, wrote Lao Tzu in his work the Tao Te Ching, so by arranging colors, notes and flavors, we might enhance our understanding, but

And there's so much more outside of these fixed concepts.

The same goes for the human tendency to make rock solid rules for everything to get a sense of control again, we limit ourselves by doing so because the world is ever changing and what works today may not work tomorrow.

Also, from a sense of solidarity and justice, people create immense bodies of ethics, moral codes and rituals that form an artificial way of life.

Even though the intentions are good, they try to make things work while building their own prisons.

I think most of us are familiar with the idea that we should simply act and not try.

This idea is closely related to the flow state.

In a flow state, one becomes the act, like a dancer who becomes the dance or the poet.

This is wu wei, a concept that can be literally translated as non doing or doing nothing.

In the context of the flow state, wu wei translates best as effortless action because we act in a smooth and painless manner.

In the context of this video, however, translating wu wei as non doing or or doing nothing fits best.

Doing nothing is often seen as unproductive and as a useless way of being in which there is no progression.

But according to the Taoists, nothing is further from the truth.

When we keep in mind that the universe is in flux and in a state of entropy, we'll realize that there's always progression in the natural flow of life.

So instead of using force and exhausting ourselves, which is the favorite method of today's culture, we we could travel through life much more easily by using intelligence.

Because isn't it so that so many times problems seem to solve themselves and that by taking action we often make things worse?

When we waste our time trying to improve things, we distance ourselves from the natural cause.

We repeatedly act in ways that are, according to the Taoists, unnatural and waste our bodies and minds doing so.

Well, it has a lot to do with how we attribute value to certain things.

For example, when we're averse to poverty but desire money and fame, and

when we're averse to being lonely but desire to be part of something.

So we try to eradicate the former and increase the latter, while the latter cannot exist without the former.

Also, we think that it's necessary to conform and alter nature based on belief systems.

We try to better the world, while the results of our interventions are kind of questionable.

Now, how can we bring these ancient theories into the modern world according to Taoist thinking?

In what ways do we modern humans try, while our efforts only leave us with peanuts in the end?

Let's explore some examples of how we try using the ancient Taoist scriptures, the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi.

The first one is trying to improve the world.

Alan Watts, who was a fervent scholar of Taoism, once pointed out that the goody goodies of society are the biggest troublemakers.

Their must save the world attitude often disrupts the natural course simply because they seek to enforce man made ideas of what's good and evil.

An example is communism, which originally sprouted from a desire to change humanity for the better based on equality and honest distribution of goods.

However, apart from the discussion if this approach is natural or not, the ways in which the communists spread their ideology were absolutely brutal.

In the Zhuangzi we find a story about a man named Yen Hui who asked Confucius for permission to travel to the country of Wei after he heard that it's ruled by an incompetent ruler.

Yen Hui wanted to use everything he learned about governance to improve the country of Wei.

Confucius, however, discouraged him to do so, not only because Wei's highly disagreeable leader probably wouldn't listen, but

also because people in general don't like outsiders coming in telling what's better for them from a place of moral supremacy, as Confucius stated.

And I if you do not understand man's mind, but

instead appear before a tyrant and force him to listen to sermons on benevolence and righteousness, measures and standards, this is simply using other men's bad points to parade your own excellence.

We could ask in what way is using other people's faults to create a nice role for ourselves genuine virtue?

We won't improve a situation by one sidedly demonizing groups while placing ourselves on a moral high ground.

This only creates more division, more tension, and

will unlikely change things for the better in a sustainable manner.

As Lao Tzu puts it in the Tao Te Ching and I do you want to rule the world and control it?

The world is a sacred vessel and it cannot be controlled.

If you try, it may slip through your fingers and disappear.

Now the second one is trying to be happy.

No matter if it's the pursuit of money, status, fame, power or knowledge.

These ongoing efforts to be happy are the reason why we aren't.

We think that we're happy when we've got a million dollars in the bank, or when we finally published that book, or when our YouTube channels have 100k subscribers.

Sure, we enjoy some momentary pleasure, but that's not happiness according to the Taoists.

Moreover, by this pursuit we exhaust our bodies and minds.

We while tragically never achieving what we're looking for.

I quote this is what the world wealth, eminence, long life, a good name.

This is what the world finds happiness in a life of ease.

Rich food, fine clothes, beautiful sights, sweet sounds.

This is what it looks down Poverty, meanness, early death, a bad name.

This is what it finds bitter a life that knows no rest, a life, a mouth that gets no rich food, no fine clothes for the body, no beautiful sights for the eye, no sweet sounds for the ear.

People who can't get these things fret a great deal and are afraid this is a stupid way to treat the body.

People who are rich wear themselves out rushing around on business, piling up more wealth than they could ever use.

This is a superficial way to treat the body.

So when chasing happiness is a blind alley, what should we do instead?

Well, the Taoists give us some suggestions.

But before we go into them, let's look at the third one trying to be something else.

The Zhuangzi tells us a story about animals in the wind that envy each other for their inborn characteristics.

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TAOISM | The Art of Not Trying

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improve

ancient