Ziran breaks down as self-so or so-of-itself, and it is the standard the whole ethic is measured against. Water finds its way down without deliberating; a plant grows without instruction; a skilled craftsman at full stretch is not choosing each movement. The opposite is wei, contrived or forced action, and the Daodejing's objection to Confucian ritual and moral training is precisely that it is contrivance — an attempt to produce by rules what would happen anyway if you stopped interfering. Modern Chinese uses ziran as the ordinary word for nature, which is a useful accident: the tradition's picture of what is natural is not wilderness but self-generating order. Wu wei follows directly and is regularly mistranslated as doing nothing; it means acting in a way that does not push against the grain, and the Daodejing recommends it to rulers, generals and cooks alike.