TERMBASES
The term means that ingenuity and skill at their best look simple and clumsy. The greatest ingenuity should be something completely natural and that it has not been painstakingly worked on. The term comes from the book Laozi. Laozi the philosopher believed that everything should be in keeping with nature. He advocated non-action and was against any form of excessive act. Later, the term came to mean the highest possible level of skill and perfection in artistic and literary creation. In Chinese literary theory, “exquisite skill looks simple and clumsy” does not mean the clumsier the better, nor is it a rejection of skill. Rather, it rejects excessive embellishment and over-pursuit of the exquisite, and encourages well-founded simplicity and naturalness. The phrase represents the highest possible level of perfection in artistic beauty and skill and is also what the people in pre-modern China strove to achieve in calligraphy, painting, gardening, and other forms of art.
In its original meaning, dao (道) is the way or path taken by people. It has three extended meanings: 1) the general laws followed by things in different spheres, e.g. the natural order by which the su…
The term refers to the primordial state of things, unaffected by the various meanings imposed on it by man. The concept of naturalness in philosophy is different from that of nature in the ordinary sen…
Wuwei (non-action) refers to a state of action. Daoism contrasts “action” to “non-action.” “Action” generally means that the rulers impose their will on others or the world without showing any re…
Dao operates in accordance with natural conditions of all things. This idea first appeared in the book Laozi, according to which “natural” means the natural state of things. Dao creates and nurtures …