wu-wei - knowing when to stop.

I must confess that Alan watts gets to the marrow of life, at least this morning he got into my marrow when i read the following:


"Tao was always nameless...
Inasmuch as names are given, one should also know where to stop.
Knowing where to stop one can become imperishable.

This "knowing where to stop" is more generally called wu-wei, a term whose literal meaning is nonaction or noninterference, but which must more correctly be understood as not acting in conflict with the tao, theway or course of nature. It is therefore against the tao to try, exhausively, to pin it's unceasing transformations of names, because this will make it appear that the structure of nature is the same as the structure of language: that it is a multitude of changing relations. because it is the latter, there is actually no way of standing outside nature as to interfere with it. The organism of man does not confront the world but is in the world. - Alan Watts, the ways of liberation."