B (3:34)

For the benefit of our viewers, I see you're wearing a shirt that has both Buddhist and. It looks like Hindu or Sanskrit words. And it looks like Sanskrit. The point is that you are basically a scholar and a teacher of Eastern spiritual traditions.

A (3:55)

Yeah, that's right. That's right. I've been doing it now for almost 20 years, actually. So it's got a lot more, I would say, popular since the last time, actually, we spoke 10 years ago. So with the YouTube channel and a lot more books being published, so it's been a great journey. I kind of feel like you and I have been on this sort of parallel trajectory with. With our work. Yeah, especially on YouTube. So it's always a pleasure to connect with you and. And, yeah, like, getting back to, like, what I've been doing, it's there. There is a lot more interest actually in this day and age, particularly with Eastern philosophy and spirituality. So I don't know if people are disenchanted with the cultures that they are. They are from or what, but there's a lot more attention to it. And I feel like even throughout Covid, a lot of people were looking for different ways of thinking about the world and other answers from sort of what the masses kind of regurgitate.

B (4:56)

Well, I imagine there are a lot of people who are disillusioned with Western materialism and the mindset that has created so much anxiety, not to mention threats of war and pollution and harm to the planet, that people are interested in alternative ways of looking at the world. Would it be correct for me to say that you look at Daoism through the lens of the neighboring cultures of Buddhism and Confucianism and Hinduism, because they all came out of the same area of the world.

A (5:37)

That's right. I definitely do. There's no doubt. And if you look at it from a cognitive science perspective, if you look at Western and Eastern thought, there's a general underlying sort of symmetry between Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, in the sense that if we look at it from how we evolved in the east, they were more collective cultures. So there was more. The activities that we did were more collective. So there was more rice cultivation, a lot of things that you needed large populations of people to do, so general. So as a result, then you had holistic ways of thinking. Right. As opposed to the West. Now, it's not to say that east of the west is either or is better, but in the West, a lot of our activities were fishing, hunting and, you know, and herding and things that you can do of an individualistic nature. So in the west, we develop. We developed individualistic philosophies and cultures around individualism. And so in the. In the east, it obviously, a lot of things are built around collectivism. Right. So like if. If you go to India, for example, there's the whole social cultural system of Sanata And Dharma. So everyone abides by that. And you're not. It's not so much about you, it's more about the family, more about the culture and upholding those traditions. So I've always felt that we're in a stage of our own evolution where we can bring a kind of a balance between that individualistic and collectivist type of thinking. And I think Daoism is a good vehicle for that. Because Lao Tzu himself would always challenge the system, right? So he would challenge Confucian, Confucius and Confucianism at the time, because, you know, it was a system, a moral and social and political system that was imposed on the people without kind of, you know, it naturally evolving that way. It just got imposed on them. Because Confucius was the so called greatest scholar of the Warring States period of China. So Lao Tzu kind of challenged that. And he was kind of, I think, a good balance between this kind of collectivist and individualistic mentality that I think that we can embody in the modern day.

B (7:47)

The great classic text of Daoism, the Tao Te Ching. If I recall the story correctly, Lao Tzu, the philosopher, the founder of the field was, if I recall correctly, leaving China and riding on a bull, if I remember correctly, and he is stopped at the border by a border guard who says, before you leave, I want to record your teachings. And that's how the teachings of Taoism were first recorded. I don't know if it's true, but I believe that is the legend.

A (8:27)

That is the legend. It's interesting because he, Lao Tzu, if he was a real person, let's say he was a real person. There's still a lot of debate on that. Let's say he was a real person. He thought that he was a librarian or a scholar in the kingdom. And then he was disenchanted by Confucianism and Confucius. And like you said, he got on the bull, got on the ox and rode to the Western gate of China. And the guard said, look, before you leave, can you leave some wisdom for me? And that's when he wrote the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching for him. And so there are other legends after that too, because a lot of people actually believe that he went to, he kept going and he went to India and he was the Buddha, right? There's a lot of other, especially in China, they create a lot of extra myths on top of this. But obviously, obviously I don't think he was the Buddha, but it's, it's interesting because he, you know, he left the society that he didn't resonate with anything within that society. He was seeing what actually the socialization process was doing to people. And so the doubt, the Qing itself came out of that. And that's why it is a book of wisdom, but it's also a critique on socialization. It's a critique on Confucianism particularly. But, you know, it's leaving. He was leaving the guard advice to, you know, understand the Dao, understand the. The ultimate, but also understand why are you in this society, why are you sort of a cog in this machine and you're getting minced in these cogs, you know, so he wanted people to question the socialization process that we've all gone through. Right. So, yeah, but that's basically the crux of the story. Lao Tzu left because he was disenchanted with the society itself.

B (10:15)

And isn't it the case that there is a tendency amongst the Daoists to live as hermits, to live far, far away from civilization in the mountains and as far away from the emperor as possible? As I rec.

A (10:33)

Yeah, it's true. It's true. Even. Even in the modern day, Jeff, there's still Dallas in the mountains. Like, you. You can go. I, I know, I know of a. A Taoist. She's. She's a. It's a lady, it's a woman, and she's a Daoist, and she lives in the mountains, and she lives as rugged as you. As you can think of, you know, and so she didn't even want to get a gas stove. You know, she was at that level, like someone was offering her a gas stove and she didn't want it because she thought that was getting too close to society. Now do as if we are a Dallas. Do you have to go to that extreme? Of course you don't have to go to that extreme, but there is a tendency for Dallas to go to the mountains because of, as I said, Lao Tzu's attitude towards society. Right. So he left society. So a lot of people sort of embody that ethos and, and then they go and do the same thing. I don't think you have to do it. There's another Taoist sage called Chuang Tzu, and, And he was a proponent of being in the world, but not of it. So, like, not abiding by the motives of what the world, how the world is, but, you know, understanding that you are conditioned to a certain degree and you do play a role, but understand that the human condition is to play roles, but not to overly identify with that role as well. Right. So you need to understand. See it sort of objectively. So Chuang Tzu sort of came along a bit later and sort of refined Taoism a little bit, instead of making it sort of this hermit tradition where you should go to the mountains. And. And I personally don't think that if you want to follow Daoism, you need to go to the mountains. But it is a culture, particularly in China, that that's there. And it's very similar to the yogic culture in India. So a yogi would go to the Himalayas because, you know, that's part of the yogi tradition. You never stay in any one location for more than two days because you don't want to develop the habits of the society. So the Daoists would take that even further because they would just go to the mountains and they would just live in a cave, and you would never see them again. So, you know, there's even in Zen Buddhism, they have this tradition, right? There's the great Sage, Cold Mountain Hanshan, and he actually wrote a beautiful verse where he said when he left the society, he put his ears in the ocean to. In the stream to wash out the red dust of the city and say that's kind of metaphorical of washing, you know, the noise out of his mind from city life. Right. So there is a lot of that in Daoism and also in Zen as well.

B (13:05)

I don't know a lot about Daoism, to be honest, but one phrase, I believe it's from the Dao Te Ching that has stuck in my mind a lot. And I think it's a phrase that puts you at a great disadvantage as a teacher, which is that anyone who proclaims that they know the Dao doesn't. And anyone who really knows the Dao would never tell you that they do.

A (13:29)

Yeah, it's a divine paradox, isn't it? Well, it's interesting because, like, you know, Lao Tzu says that in one of the first chapters. In the first chapter, actually. But then he goes on to write another 80 chapters. So even. Even he is understanding the. The paradox itself. So. And even when you look at trying in the Chinese, Jeff, like the. We translate it in English a lot that way. But there's other lines where it's alluding to this, the Confucian society. Not so. Not so much like he's like, Lao Tzu can be talking about it in a sense of how a scholar talks about the Dao, you know, like how A scholar, or how a Confucian scholar talks about the dao in the sense of it in a very unnatural way. So Lao Tzu's saying, like, when you're talking about it in an unnatural way like that, it's better. It's better to not talk about it at all. Because once we build a language around what the dao is and we reduce it to logic, then we've kind of made an object of it, right? It becomes an object of knowledge where it should remain, this type of mystery. And so that's really what he's saying. Like, once we start talking, overly talking about it, it becomes. It loses its essence, so to speak. So, but the irony is, like, even when you look at the Tao Te Ching, he is speaking about the dao, but he's always talking about the dao in relation to something, right? He's not talking about it in the sense, like the dao is this undifferentiated ultimate whole. Because even to say that we're still using language to try and define something, that's undefinable. So he will always talk about the dao in relation to society, relation to people and so forth and so on.

B (15:10)

I did find one spot in your book where you say the dao is the same as Brahman.

A (15:17)

Yeah. Well, in the sense. In the sense of Naguna Brahman, right? Because when we think about Naguna Brahman, that is like Brahman without qualities. And that's. And that's about all we can reduce it to. Like, now, what that is in its totality, we cannot understand with our puny intellect, right? So it's about understanding that dao. Now, when I say dao in that context, I'm talking about in the sense of uchi. So in Chinese, they say uchi, which is dao in stillness or nothingness. It's something that we cannot quite quantify, but that's sort of the best that we can come up with what the dao in its essence is. But it's, you know, outside of that, we could not know. Again, when you go from tight. When you go from Uchi, the first movement to. Of energy is Tai Chi. And Tai Chi is dao in motion, which creates then the. The yin and Yang, the mutual unified opposites, which then creates the manifest world. So there's a. There's a metaphysical cosmology to actually the Taoist thought. But as you said, like, in explaining, we're kind of clumsy when we try to explain, as I did in the book, trying to explain the dao. Because you can only reduce it to sort of our own language and what we know and how we can sort of communicate that to each other. Right. So the dao in Uchi is this ultimate, undifferentiated stillness, nothingness. But that's about as far as we can go with it, because it's something that's. It's like, again, the analogy of, you know, the fish in the fishbowl. Right? So it's. We cannot know sort of it in its totality, but we can understand that it lives within our hearts.

B (17:04)

Many other traditions are pointing in the same direction as the dao. And at the moment, I'm thinking of the Hebrew Kabbalah. There is a concept known as ein sof ur, which I think might be translated as invisible light, the light that you cannot see.

A (17:27)

Well, you find that within all those traditions, don't you, Jeff? You find it within Judaism, you find it within Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism. There's always this idea or the central pillar of this sort of ultimate substratum. The difference is how we sort of interpret that. So some interpret it as a difference between God and man as separate, or others believe it's like a unified whole and everything like that. Right. So that a lot of the Eastern traditions believe in a unified whole. A lot of the Abrahamic traditions, they have a separation between you and the ultimate. So we are like this bitter clay that God makes with his hands, and then we're here. Right. Whereas Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, they have terms for this. Like I said, in Daoism, they have uchi, right, which is this undifferentiated, as you said, this unseeable light, so to speak. And then in Buddhism, particularly in Vajrayana Buddhism, so Tibetan Buddhism, they have a word called Dhamma Datu. And Dhamma Datu is this. This type of ultimate substratum, which you don't really find in some of the other Buddhist traditions, but you find it in Tibetan Buddhism because there's kind of a. There's a synthesis with Hinduism a little bit in the evolution of Vajrayana Buddhism. And then obviously in Buddhism, as I mentioned before, you have no guna Brahman. So this idea of this quality less reality, whatever you want to call it, that actually is everything and holds everything in place. It's like using the space analogy. You can't see space, and space is empty, but it holds the whole universe together. It contains the whole universe. So that's kind of an analogy for how we should think about these words that we find in the east and like you said, within Hebrew as well.

B (19:24)

Well, your book spends a lot of time focusing on the Taoist critique of the Confucian tradition. We should go into that a bit because for one thing, I'm pretty sure that many people in Main and China particularly today would consider themselves still followers of Confucius.

A (19:49)

It's true, it's true. And not just in China. Also in Korea and Japan there are still a lot of. Even in Vietnam, there's still a lot of Confucianism that's prevalent within the society. But particularly in China, they have a. Even though they might be a communist country, there's still. The Confucian psychology is deep within, within everyone, basically. Right. And so that's why Taoists themselves were always seen as kind of these, I was going to say hippies, but not really hippies, but these people beyond, beyond the border of society. Right. Like in the way that they think. Not not so much in a physical sense, but in the way that they think. So yeah, Daoism became a critique of it because first and foremost Lao Tzu, and the difference between Lao Tzu and, and, and Confucius is a, is a metaphor where you have Confucius uses the carving and polishing metaphor and Lao Tzu uses the uncarved block metaphor. So now it all relates to the dao. Right. And so Confucius's idea of the dao is that the dao is induced. It's not something that is natural. We have to create a society in a certain way so that the Dao enters that society and then we all have good health and longevity and a prosperous society. We're allowed to disagrees and says that it's innate within everything as it is now. It doesn't matter whether we create a society a certain way or not. The Dao is here and actually the cultivation process is what is wrong. Right. So because Confucius, Confucianism with the carbon and polishing metaphor, if you, if you can get that in your mind, is you're carving and polishing, right. So you're, you're cultivating yourself to be a certain way. And so, and this includes a lot of strange things within the Confucian society because women have to bind their feet. And I don't know if you've ever seen a woman with bound feet before, but it doesn't look good. It's torturous. Right.

B (21:41)

My wife has a collection of bound feet shoes as a matter of. Oh yes, antique bound feet shoes. Some of them are like 2 inches long and they are Authentic. She teaches a creativity course called Unbind. You'd mind uses the Chinese bound foot shoe as an example both of a creative act and a way in which we constrain ourselves.

A (22:13)

That's a perfect analogy, Jeff, because that's really the plight of especially a Confucian woman in the Warring States period. China was binding their feet and it was a beauty standard, if you can believe it. And I don't know if you've ever seen a bound foot with the shoe off.

B (22:30)

It doesn't look great and it doesn't smell good either. Although I understand that Chinese men found the smell rather erotic.

A (22:41)

I don't know how that's possible. But see, this is why Lao Tzu questioned this mentality because he thought that this is very unnatural. Like a woman shouldn't have to bind their feet. You shouldn't have to abide by man made rules and indoctrination, particularly from just one person, right? So Confucian, Confucius had his own system that people abided by. And he was very convincing. He wasn't, he wasn't an idiot, obviously he's very intelligent, but he, he had his own system of thought and it was based on this. And so Lao Tzu was saying, no, no, we are the uncarved block. We actually have to return to our nature. The socialization process we've gone through, the carving and polishing has warped our nature. And so that's why we are disconnected from the Dao. We don't feel it in our lives. We don't, we don't have a sensibility of it. And so he would say we have to start to deprogram ourselves from that and go back towards the uncarved block, right? And this is the different opposing aspects. And so because of Confucian, because Confucianism was the actual social system at that time in the Warring States period China. That's why it kind of won out in air quotes over the masses. But you still do find older people in China who follow Daoism. Like, I don't know if there's a lot of young people I know, I have a friend in China and I was speaking to his son, he's 13 years old and he's, we're talking, I'm talking to his son about the Dao, right, about Daoism. And he's like, ah, you're just like my grandma. He said, don't you know China is Marxist? We don't, we don't follow that anymore. And I'm like, like this, this is actually Your culture though, you know, so. But he was just saying, yeah, you're like my grandma, like that's all she talks about and, and tries to get me to understand. So. But yeah, the end. Look, there's a lot of reasons why Confucius, why Lao Tzu critiqued Confucianism. There's. That was the first and foremost, that, that one. Right. But then you have also these other problems where you have, you know, an institutionalized inferiority complex in Confucianism because it's such a hierarchical based system. And as China has evolved and has, say Korea and Japan has evolved as well, there's a lot of friction with the way the society is evolving in relation to that over overlaid, say, psychology on the society. Right. So where are the. Like, say, for example, my wife is Korean, right. She, she's kind of a bit of a, I would say a lot different than other Korean people. And so because she's not sort of following that Confucian model, she becomes an outcast in that society, you know, because you're not abiding by this, this type of innate psychology that everyone has or everyone thinks that they have. Right. And so that's where you create this kind of cognitive dissonance with, with the, with the masses.

B (25:47)

From what you're saying, it would seem as if the Confucian tradition is similar to Christianity in the sense of the belief in original sin. Like when you're born into this world, you're born in sin, you've got problems. The Taoists seem to suggest you're perfectly fine as you are the moment you come out of the womb.

A (26:13)

That's right. I would have liked to see Lao Tzu critique Christianity if he was still alive when Christianity came about. So. But I actually speak about that in the book, Jeff. I speak about nature versus sin and I use that original sin idea because like you stated beautifully that you're a sinner from birth and there's nothing you can do about it. Right. Where Lao Tzu says that actually our natural tendencies and our inclinations are a beautiful thing, actually if we look at the sexual act, right. The sexual act in and of itself keeps the species alive. Right. It's not something that should be scorned, it's something that should be celebrated. Now you don't want to take that too far, obviously, but it's not something that should be taboo, so to speak. Right. And so I think that we, especially with original sin and, and particularly like religions like Christianity and Islam, they take our natural inclinations and they turn them into something beast like, right? And so Confucius had the same mentality. He believed we were beasts from birth. This is the original sin idea. So we are beasts from birth. We need to be cultivated with their system as if they have the path for us. But Lao Tzu says, actually it's that system that turns us into beasts. We were beautiful on birth when we were born, right? Like, if you can imagine Adolf Hitler when he was a little baby, was a happy little baby, playing with toys and so forth and so on. Socialization process happens, becomes who he is, who he was, right? And so. And we all were that happy little baby. And then the world steps in with. With everything and tells us how to be in and how we should live, right? And so Lao Tzu flips that on his head. He says, no, you're not an original sinner. You're perfect as you are. You were always. You were born perfect, but the world taught you that you were imperfect. And that's kind of the basis of Taoism is that fundamental goodness. So you are fundamentally good from birth. And actually, I use a metaphor in the book where Mencius was a Confucian sage, but he was kind of like a closet Taoist. And he has a story in there about Ox Mountain. And so the story is in the Mencius text. He was another Warring States sort of teacher at the time. And so he was talking to his student, and they looked in the distance. So there's all green mountains around, right? And then there's a mountain called Ox Mountain, and it's bare, it's barren. People will take their cattle up there and graze the grass and everything like that. And his student said to Mentius, he said, you always talk about fundamental goodness, but look at Ox Mountain. Ox Mountain is barren. It's desolate, it's terrible. And he said, no, you're looking at it the wrong way. Look at where Ox Mountain is positioned. It's positioned right near a city. And so being it's the environment that turns it into what it is, it's not its natural goodness. Its sprouts continue to grow, but the world keeps eating its sprouts and taking its fundamental goodness away. So it becomes what it is, right? And so that's kind of like the central metaphor for Taoist fundamental goodness, is that, no, you're not an original sinner. You're actually, you are Ox Mountain. And you were a green, lush mountain once upon a time, but now you're a barren and desolate mountain because society kind of wore you down. And the overlaid sort of socialization process, trained you to become who you are.

B (29:58)

How would, let's say, Buddhism fit into this dichotomy? I have the feeling that it's somewhere between Daoism and Confucianism.

A (30:08)

Definitely. Yeah. There's no doubt about it. There is the idea in Buddhism of the original face. You find this in Zen Buddhism particularly, and you find it in Vajrayana as well, these other traditions. So we were original from birth, but then obviously, the Buddhist approach of the Eightfold Noble Path is about sort of recalibrating with that and sort of deprogramming you from that socialization process. So it's kind of a system to help you once you understand the four. The Four Noble Truths, you know, related to suffering and why you suffer. You know, you've been trained to crave, you've been trained to desire, which, again, this. This is a big part of Taoism as well. The desires of the eye and the desires of the belly. So artificial desires versus natural desires. So Buddhism steps in that way where it says, yes, we were this original face, right, we were this undifferentiated whole, so to speak, but then the world stepped in and then you become trained, and now we're going to offer you a system to try and deprogram you from that. So. And that's kind of how the Middle Way kind of came about within Buddhism.

B (31:29)

Yeah. One of the qualities that I understand is associated particularly with Taoism, but also, I think with Tibetan Buddhism is a fascination with magic, with mysticism, with alchemy, things of that nature, things that we would associate with the occult.

A (31:50)

That's right, yeah. And sadly, the occult has got a bad name in a lot of sense in this day and age. But that, you know, it just means hidden, basically. Right? Occult just means hidden and. And practices that weren't shared widely. Like you said with Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, even if you look at Egyptian mysticism, right, Egyptian mysticism, they would keep a lot of the. The practices and the higher teachings away from the general populace because you need to develop yourself in a certain way. And Daoism has that in. In its system. Like even if you go back to the Yellow Emperor's classic Huangdi, like, which is even way older than. Than the Tao Te Ching. Because if you think about in. In the Dao Te Ching, right, where Lao Tzu says we are learning the ways of the ancients, he's talking about the ancients in relation to him, say, we're going even further back with these practices, and who knows how far but there is a penchant for these occult practices that are related to the path of, in some sense, nagong, like, so inner alchemy. And so in nagong, you have qigong, you have Tai Chi, chuan, you have all of these practices that have kind of become popular, like yoga in the modern day. But as you go deeper into those traditions, there are other practices to help you sort of evolve into, like you said, this magical realm. Like, for example, there's a text called the Secret of the Golden Flower. And in the text of the Secret of the Golden Flower, there's a practice called the microcosmic orbit. And so the microcosmic orbit is about moving this light of qi circulating around your body. And, and it's obviously a very. In detailed practice. And it's not for the layman. You know, you have to develop yourself to a certain stage to even get to, to even be able to try and do this. Right. And, and a lot of people actually don't believe in a lot of these practices anyway, but because they don't invest their time in these practices. So. But there is, as you said, Jeff, there is, there is a sort of a, because of these practices, there's a focus on the occult, there's a focus on magic and everything like that. And Lazarus would say, he wouldn't deny that, but he would say you have to understand yourself and, and the dao first and foremost before even stepping onto those sorts of fields. Right. Like, or. I think that in the modern day, people get fascinated by the occult and they might see qigong or tai chi and this and that, and they think, I want to practice that first without even understanding the philosophy of why they're doing it in the first place.

B (34:26)

My understanding is that the Confucian tradition emphasized education quite a bit, especially to rise up and the bureaucracy. Confucians often were part of that bureaucracy. And so the more education you had, the more you would rise up in the social structure. And the Taoists pretty much didn't care for education.

A (34:53)

No, they didn't. A lot of people call the Daoists, like the modern hippies, you know, of the counterculture movement. Now, I don't know how much truth there is to that, but yeah, it's true. The Confucians were always intertwined with government. There's, there's no doubt about it. They, they were running the show. And it was thought that if you have this education, particularly Confucian education, you're going to rise up the ranks of society. Like, if you could recite parts of the Analects, right? Like Confucius's main text, then you're going to be. There's going to be a lot of favor towards you, and you. You're going to rise up through the ranks where. Where Lao Tzu and the early Daoists, they kind of thought that that was all silly, like you should go back to nature. Go back to living a simple life, you know, having your own cattle and so forth and so on, right? Like in a real rugged sort of sense where you don't need education. Because their idea is that education itself is an indoctrination system that can warp your nature. Now, Lao Tzu's not ignorant to the fact that education can benefit you in certain ways, but his mentality would be that the Confucian education was probably like our modern education. It's a little. It can be deemed as a little bit over the top. You know, there can be so much education where, you know, how much do you actually really need to actually be good at a certain job, right? And so you see this all around the world now. People are doing education for being a cleaner. Like, why do you really need education to be a cleaner? Not that hard to clean your house, right? And so it gets pretty nutty in that sense. So Lao would critique Confucianism, saying that we don't need all of this education. It's actually what's warping our nature. We should go back to what is natural and follow that. Right? And it's not that in earlier Dao societies, before Confucianism, that there wasn't a society, there was still a society, but it was. They were much more built on sort of a natural premise, right. Rather than sort of an ideology, like, this is what you should do and this is how you should think. It was more about trying to bring your nature out of yourself. There's a Chinese word called li. And so Lee, Jeff, means if I. If I clumsily translate that in English, the markings and jade, the grain in wood, the fiber, muscle. So it's kind of this natural constitution that we have as individuals that. That contributes to the larger whole, right? You with your lifetime of knowledge and wisdom, and having this platform is part of your lee. It's part of your natural process that allows other people to benefit from it, right? And so that's how Dallas society was built. It was built on this idea that actually, I don't need to tell Jeffrey how to think and how to be. I need to. He needs to understand what his Lee is, and we need to bring that out into the world. World. Now, could education tease that out a little bit? That's the argument there, right? It could tease it out a little bit, definitely. And that bit of friction may make you want to go in a different direction, but the whole point, but it doesn't negate Lao Tzu's point in the end, because it's still the same point, is that we have to find our own natural constitution, our own grain of wood. You know, we might be all pine trees, but we all have a different grain of wood. Right. And so, like a different pattern in the wood, I should say. And that's what brings sort of this beauty to life. And that extends to a different concept called ying. And Ying is mutual resonance and interdependence. So that means that when you find your li, as I said to you, with your platform, you bring people towards you because you have something that's innate within you, that's coming out, and it attracts people and it inspires them to do that same thing themselves. Right. And so that's how a sort of a Taoist society would ideally unfold. Right. As opposed to like your typical education model that Confucius followed.

B (39:09)

I think one of the most important concepts in Daoism is the idea you refer to it in your book, I believe, as effortless wandering.

A (39:20)

That's right, yeah. Xiaoya Yu. Yeah. Aimless wandering or even rambling without a destination, you know, and it's this, Xiaoya you is like, I would say one of the highest spiritual teachings in the world, not just within Daoism, because I feel if people don't really have this, it's difficult for them to follow sort of any path in their life. Because. And Chuangzi points us out that it's kind of like a practice for those who are really super conscious of themselves. He actually uses the word, if I translate into English, spiritual. Spiritual elite. Right. So the people who have developed themselves to a certain stage that they understand this concept of Xiao Yao, you where it's this aimless roaming, it's this fundamental ease you have in your life. You know, we all know people who don't have this ease. Like you might be in a conversation, and they lack this ease. And, you know, maybe a conversation will go in a way that they don't like. They lose their center and then they get up and they fall into these, maybe these ideological cul de sacs, and they end up in these arguments and this and that. Where Chuangzi is talking about Xiao Yao, this fundamental ease where you can roam the world and it's not just physical rhyming, right? It's. It's roaming, mental. It's more related to the mind. It's about you can roam the world with your mind and not be stuck to any one thing, right? And so you can live with. You can live without fear or agenda is. Is the perfect way to think about it. So you don't have an agenda anymore because you don't have fear. You're not trying to protect yourself. You're not living within a sort of a certain bubble. You don't have all these labels attached to you because you're embodying Xiao Gao. You're embracing the world as it is, but not being stuck to any one thing, right? And Chuang Tzu would actually say that physical roaming can actually help this too, sometimes, like if you travel. So think about when we all travel, right? We have a sense of ease a little bit when we travel because we're out of our comfortable environment. We don't have to sort of abide by certain state of mind in that from that location, you're just experiencing that location. You're in a childlike manner, right? So, like, you might be from Albuquerque, and then you find yourself in Chennai in India. And so it's a completely different reality, but it's freeing in a sense, because you're not abiding by the Albuquerque mentality and sort of the psychological ethos of that place. You're freed from that temporarily, but it gives you a deeper understanding of yourself. And this is why Zhuangzi and the Daoists will say that physical roaming can also help Xiaoya, you develop as well, because when you roam physically, you continually cultivate that ease, right? You continually cultivate that ease, and then you're just an easier person to be around, right? And so that's the challenge for most of us, because a lot of people will say, oh, I'm a Buddhist, for example, I follow all these principles and this and that, that. And then you may talk to them, but they seem very rigid and they don't feel free. They feel like they have become almost a victim of the philosophy that they are following, right? And I'm just using Buddhism as an example now. That's because you don't have Xiao Yao. You. That's because you don't have that fundamental ease. If you have that fundamental ease, you could even understand the Buddhist teachings even at a higher level, right? So that's the point of the Taoists.

B (42:55)

I know you've written another book that addresses what athletes call being in the zone. And I wonder if that's related in some way to this idea of effortless effort.

A (43:09)

That's right, it is, Jeff. That's wu wei, right? So wu wei is this. I should have said it's another term in relation to xiao yaoyu. Because if you have wu wei, this effortless action, or some people translate it as non doing. So non doing, it's also non interference. So you're not interfering with anything. You're allowing the world to be as it will, right? And so, I mean, don't take that to an extreme, but like, you're not. When I say non interference. I mean, you're not really. You're not an ideological person. You're not someone who is going to have their two cents about every little thing, right? And so this is of the part. Part of wu wei, this effortlessness. And the athlete or the musician sort of symbolize this, the best. Because once you begin to let go and allow your skill or allow what you've learned to be what it will without you, your sort of your conscious self interfering with it, then you can, you can express your effortlessness or your effortless skill as it is with. With no effort, right? So somebody. And we all get in the rut. So like, say, for example, if you're. If you're a star athlete and you've learned. Say if you're a basketballer, you've learned basketball, you're really good at basketball. But then you get in this rut where you're kind of. You're out of form, right? So you're not in the zone, you're in your own way. And this is where, where uway comes in. Like, you just need to let go and just allow it to be as it will. And this is. Once you're out of your own way, then that skill begins to come out effortlessly, right? This is what we would call second nature. So it becomes your second nature. And, and I remember, like, because I was an athlete and when I was younger and I remember some of the. I used to play rugby league in Australia. And so some of the best games I ever played was when there was a lot of chaos happening before the game. So some things didn't say if you were superstitious, if things went wrong and this and that before the game, you would think it would put you off, right? So I always had my best game. Sometimes when there was a lot of things that were going wrong before the game and. And this and that, or, or I was late or I was caught in traffic or, you know, so forth and so on, and then I'd just come out without. Because I wasn't thinking about the game. I wasn't overly thinking about the game. I just went out there and allowed my skill to, to be as it will. And so this is what ue is when we, once we start to overthink, then that's when we, we, we. We have hesitation. So, so another, another term, another way to translate intelligent spontaneity in relation to sport and music and this. And that is intelligent. Intelligent spontaneity. So UI is intelligent spontaneity. So you're not. In your own way, and there's an intelligence about your spontaneity because that's the second nature, right? So if you're a violinist, once you start thinking about what you're doing, then you start making mistakes, right? But when you're not thinking, you're just. You're in that moment. That's when the, the music becomes beautiful, right? And there's no mistakes. And, and, and that's really what it is having. Because once you have hesitation, that's when. That's when problems arise, right? And so we have to. Uwe is about understanding that human nature is spontaneous, fundamentally. So there's a spontaneous reality that we are always trying to curate because we think a lot about everything that we do without allowing our life sometimes just to be as it will, right? And so, and sometimes you do need to step in, sometimes you do need to plan your life and so forth and so on. I'm not saying that you don't, but if we look at that, it could be almost like a 20, 80 split. 20% of planning, 80% of spontaneity in your life, right? Like things just happen as they will. And so this is the heart of Wu Wei about not even interfering with your own life to a certain extent. Because as I mentioned before, Jeff, with the Lee, you allow your own nature to be as it will. You don't have to overly think about that. It just sort of happens.

B (47:21)

What about practice, though? I mean, in athletics, I'm under the impression to get into the zone can often take a lot of practice, so that whatever you're doing doesn't require conscious effort.

A (47:34)

That's right. That's right. There's two ways to look at Wu Wei itself, right? There's the Lao Tzu would say, like, there's just a spontaneous Wu Wei without the practice, right? You just, you live your life. You just do as you will. Chuang Tzu would say that, yes, that, that, that does exist. But there's also a sort of a trained Uwe. A trained effortless action. The one that you were talking about, Jeff. So there's the one that becomes second skill. And it's not that I don't think Lao Tzu was sort of saying one is either bad or the other. He. He obviously understood that if you were skillful, if you were trained at something, that's going to become effortless over time. But he was kind of saying that in relation to Confucian. Confucianism, like. Like as a sort of a. Just to be in opposition to Confucius at the time as well, right? Like to say, but we are spontaneous in and of itself. But that spontaneity can be trained. So it's a trained spontaneity. So like you said, practice comes in. My wife's a violinist, right? So she obviously does a lot of practice with the violin. Hours and hours and hours. If you know musicians that they basically, they're married to the instrument, not. Not. She's married to the instrument. Not really to me. So a lot of hours on. On the violin. But it. It comes out as that. As that second nature, right? The second nature comes out. And that's what brings a lot of beauty to the world, right? And so I would tell people that you don't want to turn it into some sort of. Like it's either Lao Tzu's just raw spontaneity or Chuang TZ train spontaneity. You can have both. You can understand both and live by both. I would say Lao Tzu is more about sort of general life. Life. So you and I are speaking here very spontaneously. It's not planned like this is just. This is general life, right? But maybe the knowledge and that. That you and I have accumulated over our lifetimes that allows us to speak the way we do with each other, right? Or you've got the violinist who has trained in this and that that person still has a general spontaneity as well in everyday life. Like, it's. So you. You can have. You can have both, and you don't want to think about it as an either or dichotomy.

B (49:49)

Changzuo, as I understand it, or as I recall, had this famous quote, I dreamt that I was a butterfly. Or could it be that I am a butterfly dreaming that I'm Chuangzhua.

A (50:04)

Yeah, it's one of the great stories. It's one of the great stories because you remember Chuang Tzu always was thinking about being and non being, right? Like Say the idea of, of I exist in the idea of I don't exist. And so he's always, and he always had a penchant for the non being, right? So like, which made him very strange because we always want to think of existing itself, right? But he used the, the butterfly analogy, the dream analogy. And you know, it's very similar to the, to Vishnu dreaming, right? We, we are, are we part of Vishnu's dream or are we Vishnu dreaming itself, right? So we're in this reality. And you know, Chuangzi often questioned the sort of, the fundamental nature of what we are experiencing, right? Like because he, he was, he knew that for example, he, he uses the word qing in Chinese which is species specific essence, right? And this species specific essence is something that a species has that you can attribute to it. So if you see a horse gallop gracefully, we can't gallop like that, right?

B (51:20)

We can't do that.

A (51:21)

So but he would say humans, our species specific essence is a flaw because we, what our essence is is we, we discern between this and that and then that creates this illusion in our mind of this sort of subjective lens. And we see the world through the subjective lens. And so he would say we need to sort of down regulate this habit of discerning between this and that and, and come back into this sort of original whole, right? Because this is the illusion, this, that, the discerning between this and that.

B (51:56)

In other words, boundaries.

A (51:59)

Boundaries. That's right. That's right. And that's why he was, he fell in love with the irrational, right? So like even the butterfly dreaming itself story is about, about aligning more with the, the irrational rather than I can understand logically what the universe is. He wants to bring you back into, into non being. He wants to bring you back into a space outside of, of logic, right? And so the, the Qing, the dissecting between this and that is very similar to Maya in Sanskrit, right? Maya means measurement. If, if we look at the root ma and so Maya and Sanskrit means not just that the reality is illusion, it also means the illusion of measurement through our subjective experience. So that this and that. So we build this framework in our mind. And in Hinduism, Shiva is the destroyer of that, of that framework, right? Because Shiva represents kind of the Naguna Brahman, the, the unquality, the unqualified unquality, less undifferentiated whole. And so Zhuangzi is saying, you know, you need to. Here's a beautiful phrase in the Chuangzhou where he says when there is no more this and that. You see the still point. You see the infinite in all things from the still point of the Tao. And so once you've stopped discerning, then you see everything for what it is, rather than seen everything as we labeled it and as we think it is. You know, there's the term in Buddhism, nama rupa, so name and form. Right. So you have to go beyond the naming and the form, though. They have a public utility. It's not in it. It's not it in its essence. Right. So I could. I can call you Jeffrey, but I know that you're much more than Jeffrey, and we all are. Right, but so it's about having that acknowledgement that we are much more than just what we are on the surface, judging a book by its cover, so to speak.

B (54:06)

Before we conclude our interview, of course, we need to talk about the Yin Yang symbol, which I understand it's older even than Daoism, but it's integrated into taoism, definitely.

A (54:19)

Yeah, 100% correct, Jeff. Even if we go back into the I Ching, we go back into the Yellow Emperor's classic, like medicine classic that Chinese medicine came about from, which is we don't even know how old, like 3,000, 4,000, who knows? You know, we're only speculating, but it, it, it's. It could even be older than that. And so the idea is, as I said earlier, is this idea of mutual unified opposites, whatever that means. Right, but mutual unified opposites. So what we're getting at is the, the yin aspect is the sort of the feminine aspect of the universe. And, and I'm not talking about female here, I'm just talking about the feminine energy of the universe. So the, the passive, the receptive, all of this aspect, it can be related to stillness and nature and everything like that. And then you have the young, which is the active, the masculine, it's the energy of the masculine. Right. And so the way that they manifest themselves in the world is obviously through a man and a woman. But we both, we all have yin and Yang within us. And so what happens in, in the metaphysical cosmology of Taoism is you have, as I said earlier, you have uchi, which is Tao and stillness. Then there's a movement out, or I should say that the energy is inherent within whatever that is, which becomes Tai Chi, the Tao of motion. So that in this, there's energy in motion, in this whatever we want to call this, this universe or whatever. And then inherent in that is yin and Yang as these two polarities, unified polarities. Again. And so. And that becomes the 10,000 things that the manifest world. And so that's where Yin and Yang comes in. So Yin and Yang is kind of this basis of energy within the whole universe, not just physically. We're talking psychologically, energetically, everything all the way back to the origin of the universe. There's this inherent sort of template within the world. And so the problem is you need to find a good balance between Yin and Yang within yourself. And I use, in my book Fasting the Mind, I use a sort of a chocolate milk analogy where I say, now think about a chocolate milkshake, right? If you're making a chocolate milkshake, you put in everything in the blender. If you do a 50, 50 of chocolate powder and milk, it's going to be quite a mess, right? You need just enough chocolate powder and more milk to have a delicious chocolate milkshake. And likewise, what Lao Tzu recommends in the Tao Te Ching is he says, know the young, but stick to the Yin. So your ability to be active and to act and to do in the world should be conservatively applied. You should remain and abide in more beingness and in stillness as opposed to being more active. And that's where obviously thoughts get activated and this and that as well, in that energy. So the yin aspect of ourselves is to abide in that stillness and then to allow the, the world to be, as we were saying before with Wu Wei, allowing the world to be as it will without our sort of our throwing our two cents in every matter.

B (57:48)

Each half contains the seed of its own opposite. And we even have an animated version where you see each side kind of convert to the other side.

A (57:59)

That's right. And again, that's a good analogy for men and women too, right? Like, so you might, might be a strong masculine man, but deep down he might have this, this soft touch, right? This stillness, right? And so, and likewise, I could say for my mother, right, my mother was a soft touch, but damn, if you made a, you know, if you kind of stirred her up a little bit, you'd see that, you'd see that Yang, that Yang side come out of her. So inherently within each energy is the other energy. It could, that's why they mutually unified opposite opposites, you know, so they're not separate. And that's the problem, right, that people think in the world there's a separation. But what happens when a man and a woman unifies and, and has sex? We see a birth of life, right? We see something is brought into the world. And so Yin and Yang, when you have them in perfect harmony within yourself, then you bring something into the world, Right. You impregnate the world, world with something beautiful. I'm not just talking about a physical human being. I'm talking about what comes out of your consciousness. So you impregnate the world with something amazing. Right. And so that's what happens when you have kind of this, this perfect harmony within. And as you said, and as I said with the, the chocolate milkshake, you've got the one dot within either one half. It's just the right amount to balance it out as well. Right. So it's inherent within the. People just have to think about that, not just in a physical way, but more in a metaphysical way.

B (59:34)

Well, Jason Gregory, it has been a pleasure reconnecting with you after so many years. I'm delighted to see how your work has progressed, the many, many books that you've written. And also I know you've created at least one wonderful documentary available on your YouTube channel that, that I watched and thoroughly enjoyed.

A (59:57)

Thank you, Jeff. It means a lot. Yeah, you're probably talking about the art of effortless living, I'm assuming. Yeah. Like this. Yeah, I've made quite a few, but that one actually was, was very popular. And, and I just want to say it's, it's been a pleasure reconnecting with you and I've always admired your work from afar and, and I often tell you, and I know I make you feel old a lot of the time, but when I was younger, I used to watch the older episodes of Thinking a Little Bit, and I always had a great feeling from your energy and what you brought to an interview. And yeah, your body of work is amazing is what I'm trying to say in a long winded way.

B (60:34)

Well, the feeling is mutual. So I hope that you come back again and I look forward to your ongoing, very active and I presume, relatively effortless production of books, seminars, lectures and documentaries and other videos.

A (60:53)

Thank you, Jeff. Yeah. Thank you for everything and I appreciate all your kind words.

B (61:00)

Likewise. And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.

A (61:31)

Book four in the New Thinking Allowed dialogue series is Charles T. Tartt, 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.

B (61:46)

New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal, visit their website@cihs.edu. you can now download all eight copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org for early access to our videos and live stream events. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter@newthinkingallowed.org.