water and wu wei in the tao te ching

"The natural phenomenon that the Taoists saw as bearing the closest resemblance to Tao was water. They were struck by the way it would support objects and carry them effortlessly on its tide. The Chinese characters for swimmer, deciphered, mean literally “one who knows the nature of water.” Similarly, one who understands the basic life force knows that it will sustain one if one stops thrashing and flailing and trusts oneself to its support.

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

till the right action arises by itself? (ch 15)

Water, then was the closest parallel to the Tao in the natural world. But it was also the prototype of wu wei. They noticed the way water adapts itself to its surroundings and seeks out the lowest places.

The Supreme good is like water,

whihc nourishes all things without trying to.

It is content with the low places that people disdain.

Thus it is like the Tao. (ch 8)

Yet despite its accommodation, water holds a power unknown to hard and brittle things. In a stream it follows the stones' sharp edges, only to turn them into pebbles, rounded to conform to its streamlined flow. It works its way past frontiers and under dividing walls. Its gentle current melts rocks and carries away the proud hills we call eternal.

Nothing in the world

is as soft and yielding as water.

Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,

nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;

the gentle overcomes the rigid.

Everyone knows this is true,

but few can put it into practice (ch 78)

Infinitely supple, yet incomparably strong - these virtues of water are precisely those of wu wei as well. The person who embodies this condition, says the Tao Te Ching, "works without working," Such a person acts without strain, persuades without argument, is eloquent without flourish, and achieves results without violence, coercion, or pressure."