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these ideas are not about looking within and finding oneself. They are about overcoming the self. They are, in a sense, anti-self-help.

Today, we are often told that our goal should be to look within and find ourselves, and, once we do, to strive to be sincere and authentic to that true self, always loving ourselves and embracing ourselves for who we are. All of this sounds great and is a key part of what we think of as a properly “modern” way to live.

But what if we’re, on the contrary, messy selves that tend to fall into ruts and patterns of behavior? If so, the last thing we would want to be doing is embracing ourselves for who we are — embracing, in other words, a set of patterns we’ve fallen into. The goal should rather be to break these patterns and ruts, to train ourselves to interact better with those around us.

Certainly some strains of Chinese political theory will take this vision of the self — that we tend to fall into patterns of behavior — to argue for a more paternalistic state that will, to use a more recent term, “nudge” us into better patterns.

many of the texts we discuss in the book go the other way, and argue that the goal should be to break us from being such passive creatures — calling on us to do things that break us out of these patterns and allow us to train ourselves to start altering our behavior for the better.

You argue that Chinese philosophy views rituals as tools that can liberate us from these ruts.

Rituals force us for a brief moment to become a different person and to interact with those around us in a different way. They work because they break us from the patterns that we fall into and that otherwise dominate our behavior.

In the early Han dynasty, for example, we have examples of rituals that called for role reversals. The father would be called upon to play the son, and the son would play the father. Each is forced to see the world from the other’s perspective, with the son learning what it’s like to be in a position of authority and the father remembering what it was like to be the more subservient one

We tend to think that we live in a globalized world, but in a lot of ways we really don’t. The truth is that for a long time only a very limited number of ideas have dominated the world, while ideas that arose elsewhere were seen as “traditional” and not worth learning from.

imagine future generations that grow up reading Du Fu along with Shakespeare, and Confucius along with Plato. Imagine that type of world, where great ideas — wherever they arose — are thought about and wrestled with.

There’s a very strong debate going on in China about values — a sense that everything has become about wealth and power, and a questioning about whether this should be rethought. And among the ideas that are being brought into the debate are these earlier notions about the self and about how one can lead a good life. So, while the government is appropriating some of these ideas in particular ways, the broader public is debating them, and certainly with very different interpretations.

Wu wei is integral to romance, religion, politics and commerce. It’s why some leaders have charisma and why business executives insist on a drunken dinner before sealing a deal.

the quest for wu wei has been going on ever since humans began living in groups larger than hunter-gathering clans. Unable to rely on the bonds of kinship, the first urban settlements survived by developing shared values, typically through religion, that enabled people to trust one another’s virtue and to cooperate for the common good.

But there was always the danger that someone was faking it and would make a perfectly rational decision to put his own interest first if he had a chance to shirk his duty.

To be trusted, it wasn’t enough just to be a sensible, law-abiding citizen, and it wasn’t even enough to dutifully strive to be virtuous. You had to demonstrate that your virtue was so intrinsic that it came to you effortlessly.

the discovery in 1993 of bamboo strips in a tomb in the village of Guodian in central China. The texts on the bamboo, composed more than three centuries before Christ, emphasize that following rules and fulfilling obligations are not enough to maintain social order.

These texts tell aspiring politicians that they must have an instinctive sense of their duties to their superiors: “If you try to be filial, this not true filiality; if you try to be obedient, this is not true obedience. You cannot try, but you also cannot not try.”

is that authentic wu wei? Not according to the rival school of Taoists that arose around the same time as Confucianism, in the fifth century B.C. It was guided by the Tao Te Ching, “The Classic of the Way and Virtue,” which took a direct shot at Confucius: “The worst kind of Virtue never stops striving for Virtue, and so never achieves Virtue.”

Through willpower and the rigorous adherence to rules, traditions and rituals, the Confucian “gentleman” was supposed to learn proper behavior so thoroughly that it would eventually become second nature to him.

Taoists did not strive. Instead of following the rigid training and rituals required by Confucius, they sought to liberate the natural virtue within. They went with the flow. They disdained traditional music in favor of a funkier new style with a beat. They emphasized personal meditation instead of formal scholarship.

Variations of this debate would take place among Zen Buddhist, Hindu and Christian philosophers, and continue today among psychologists and neuroscientists arguing how much of morality and behavior is guided by rational choices or by unconscious feelings.

“Psychological science suggests that the ancient Chinese philosophers were genuinely on to something,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Particularly when one has developed proficiency in an area, it is often better to simply go with the flow. Paralysis through analysis and overthinking are very real pitfalls that the art of wu wei was designed to avoid.”

Before signing a big deal, businesspeople often insist on getting to know potential partners at a boozy meal because alcohol makes it difficult to fake feelings.

Some people, like politicians and salespeople, can get pretty good at faking spontaneity, but we’re constantly looking for ways to expose them.

However wu wei is attained, there’s no debate about the charismatic effect it creates. It conveys an authenticity that makes you attractive, whether you’re addressing a crowd or talking to one person.

what’s the best strategy for wu wei — trying or not trying? Dr. Slingerland recommends a combination. Conscious effort is necessary to learn a skill, and the Confucian emphasis on following rituals is in accord with psychological research showing we have a limited amount of willpower. Training yourself to follow rules automatically can be liberating, because it conserves cognitive energy for other tasks.

He likes the compromise approach of Mencius, a Chinese philosopher in the fourth century B.C. who combined the Confucian and Taoist approaches: Try, but not too hard.

“But in many domains actual success requires the ability to transcend our training and relax completely into what we are doing, or simply forget ourselves as agents.”

The sprouts were Mencius’ conception of wu wei: Something natural that requires gentle cultivation. You plant the seeds and water the sprouts, but at some point you need to let nature take its course. Just let the sprouts be themselves.