Pu
樸 (pǔ)
The *pu* is the block of raw, uncarved wood—the image of original simplicity, of integrity before division. As long as it isn’t shaped into a tool, the wood retains all its possibilities; the moment it’s cut, it becomes one object and loses the rest. *Pu* names this whole, unspecialized state to which the sage returns. Julien renders it as *"the unworked wood,"* *"simplicity,"* or *"the perfect purity of the Tao."*
comme le bois non-travaillé.
The word depicts something very concrete: a piece of wood that has not yet been worked. In Chapter 15, Julien describes the ancient followers of the Tao through a series of images—they faded like melting ice, they were hollow like a valley—and at its heart lies this one: “rough as unworked wood” (其若樸). Julien comments on this roughness: “what is whole… what is in its natural state, what is simple, unadorned.” Pu is the wholeness before the cut.
As long as the block remains uncarved, it can become any object; all its possibilities are held together within it. To carve it is to fix it into a single tool and lose all the others. Chapter 28 states that the sage “will return to perfect simplicity”—not by crafting something, but by ascending beyond fabrication, back toward the whole wood. This is the state that wu-wei preserves by not intervening, and that ziran describes from the side of things left to themselves.
Pu is thus neither a skill nor an acquired quality: it is what one retains by not allowing oneself to be carved up by desires, distinctions, and ambitions. The de, the inherent power of a being, unfolds all the better when that being remains close to its pu—faithful to its unshaped nature rather than adjusted to an external use.
≠ Do not confuse it with austerity or voluntary poverty: pu is not deprivation, a simplicity by subtraction. It is quite the opposite—the fullness of the block containing all its possible forms before one is extracted. Nor should it be understood as ignorance or naivety: the child and the rough wood lack nothing; they are not yet divided. Pu is integrity, never a deficiency.