Wu Nengzi The Book of Non-Action 无能子

Written by Wunengzi of the Tang Dynasty.

His personal name and surname remain unknown, and the book was completed in the third year of Guangqi (887).

Wu Nengzi The Book of Non-Action

The book was already recorded in Xin Tangshu·Yiwenzhi (New Book of Tang·Treatise on Literature and Arts). The original version was divided into thirty chapters. The existing Daozang (Daoist Canon) version has three volumes and thirty-four chapters, included in the Taixuan (Supreme Mystery) section. There are also more than ten versions from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The chapter sequences of various versions are disorganized, interspersed with texts interpolated by later generations. Wang Ming, a modern scholar, collated this book and compiled Wunengzi Jiaozhu (Collated Annotations on Wunengzi). The first volume of the book discusses principles, the middle volume deals with history, and the third volume records what the author saw and heard, as well as dialogues between brothers and friends. In his preface, the author stated: "Its purport is to clarify the principles of nature and explore the ultimate of life and destiny. Nature is uncreated, and life and destiny are free from desires. Therefore, it disregards etiquette and education and sets aside worldly affairs." The book fiercely criticizes the chaotic disputes in the late Tang Dynasty as "the faults of sages", advocates cultivating life and destiny, and upholds naturalness and non-action. It generally pursues personal immortality and liberation through the techniques of emptying the mind, sitting in oblivion, and inhaling qi to nurture life, and also embodies the aspiration to help the whole world. Its ideological system is deeply rooted in the theoretical framework of Taoism and resonates with the philosophical ideas in Laozi.