Speaker 1: Pushkin. I get to interview a lot of great people
Speaker 1: for this podcast, but one of the guests I was
Speaker 1: most excited to talk to was a rather modest and
Speaker 1: self effacing British writer named Tom Hodgkinson. What was Tom
Speaker 1: famous for. Well, he's made a name for himself by
Speaker 1: trying not to do well much of anything. I think
Speaker 1: I was born fairly idle. I always had a strong
Speaker 1: will towards idling. I'm a huge fan of Tom's books
Speaker 1: on being idol. They're clever and funny. But I came
Speaker 1: to Tom's work because idling. This philosophy that we should
Speaker 1: devote time to not being productive, is something I find
Speaker 1: super hard to do. When I sat down with Tom
Speaker 1: for an episode called for Whom the Alarm Clock Tolls,
Speaker 1: I was struck by the fact that his fear of
Speaker 1: overwork informs the entire way he sees the world. Take
Speaker 1: Tom's view on the novelist George Orwell. Many of us
Speaker 1: think of Orwell for his warnings about political repression, but
Speaker 1: Tom focuses on a different tyranny, an animal farm. We
Speaker 1: had the example of the horse boxer, who, when faced
Speaker 1: with a problem, work harder, work harder, until he works
Speaker 1: himself into an early grade. He's taken off to the
Speaker 1: glue factory. Now that to me is that's a warning.
Speaker 1: Since talking to Tom last season, I've thought more and
Speaker 1: more about the importance of idling when life gets stressful.
Speaker 1: My temptation is always to be like Boxer and just
Speaker 1: do more. I mean, these days everyone talks about being
Speaker 1: fully committed or redoubling your efforts or giving one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten percent. It can feel like heresy to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I might be happier doing a bit less.
Speaker 1: But as I was gathering ideas for this series on
Speaker 1: the Ancients, I realized that Tom's plea for more idling
Speaker 1: fits well with the teachings of an important ancient Chinese philosopher, Loutsa.
Speaker 1: Lotza argued that we should look to nature for our
Speaker 1: happiness inspiration. While we often talk about putting in one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten percent, Latsa thought that the sweet spot
Speaker 1: was much less. He thought we should live life at
Speaker 1: about so welcome to Happiness Lessons of the Ancients with me,
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos. When you think about the wisdom of
Speaker 1: the ancients, Lautza is exactly the sort of philosopher that
Speaker 1: comes to mind. His Daoist ideas are the very antithesis
Speaker 1: of our hectic twenty four seven modern culture. Instead of
Speaker 1: the ping of calendar alerts and smartphone notifications and the
Speaker 1: hurry and rush and demands and deadlines, Daoism is about
Speaker 1: calm and quiet and steadiness, like the waters of a
Speaker 1: broad river running slowly through a wooded valley. Part of
Speaker 1: why I think of Taoism is such a calming influence
Speaker 1: is that I first learned about it on the inside
Speaker 1: time or meditation app when I was listening to Solala
Speaker 1: Tower's course called Tao Principles for a Prosperous Life. Thou
Speaker 1: that can be spoken is not the true and eternal Dao.
Speaker 1: Names that can be named are not the true and
Speaker 1: eternal names. Just hearing Salala makes me relax and unclenched
Speaker 1: from the stresses of my life. Non being is the
Speaker 1: origin of heaven and earth. Being is the mother of
Speaker 1: the ten thousand beings. Juan Wu. So I thought I'd
Speaker 1: reach out and ask him to be our final guest
Speaker 1: on this season of happiness Lessons of the Ancients, and
Speaker 1: to guide us all through Lutz's work and the story
Speaker 1: of Taoism. It's at least five thousand years old, and
Speaker 1: it was developed slowly over time, and the most important
Speaker 1: and famous book from Taoisms that thou Ching, was written
Speaker 1: by a character named Laotze, and today it is the
Speaker 1: second most widely translated book in the world after the Bible,
Speaker 1: so basically it's been a best seller for twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred years. Lautsa talks a lot about the different between
Speaker 1: head knowledge or intellectual knowledge, and belly knowledge, gut knowledge,
Speaker 1: and that he really emphasizes gut knowledge overhead knowledge. And
Speaker 1: so Daoism actually contributed an enormous amount to what we
Speaker 1: think of today is Chinese culture. Things like meditation, fung
Speaker 1: hui chi gong taiji, Daoist yoga called Daoian painting, calligraphy, music,
Speaker 1: all these kinds of things Chinese medicine have their roots
Speaker 1: in Daoism. And for many many years, Daoism was more
Speaker 1: what we call a philosophy what today is called dao
Speaker 1: ja And then about six hundred years after Laotz's book,
Speaker 1: a Daoist religion was formed called dao Joe, and today
Speaker 1: in China there are many temples and priests and nuns
Speaker 1: and liturgy, but I think for most people in the
Speaker 1: West who are interested in Daoism are more interested in
Speaker 1: what we call the dao Ja or the philosophical Taoism,
Speaker 1: which incorporates these practices like chigong in meditation and really
Speaker 1: basically advice on how to live a prosperous and happy life.
Speaker 1: And so one of the interesting things about the Doubt
Speaker 1: teaching is that Lautza, the author isn't really a particular person, right.
Speaker 1: Historians argue about this. Scholars argue about this all the time.
Speaker 1: Traditionally in China is believed that one guy, by the way,
Speaker 1: is not his actual name. Lautsa means the old master,
Speaker 1: and the character for master also means child, so sometimes
Speaker 1: you'll see his name translated as the old child or
Speaker 1: the old boy. But the story is that he was
Speaker 1: a high official in the court and the Joe dynasty
Speaker 1: and saw that China was entering what historians called the
Speaker 1: Warring States period and society was basically falling apart. He
Speaker 1: decided to drop out, and he was on his way
Speaker 1: out to the wilderness of western China when the last
Speaker 1: gatekeeper before the Worlderness implored him to please write down
Speaker 1: some of his teachings and the story is that he
Speaker 1: didn't want to do that. Once you take the story
Speaker 1: or the teaching and imprison it on the page, then
Speaker 1: it doesn't get to change. Solusa finally came around to
Speaker 1: writing this very short book, but the very first line
Speaker 1: of the book says, the Tao that can be written
Speaker 1: about or spoken about or put in a little box
Speaker 1: is not the real Tao. So I think it's fascinating
Speaker 1: that the very first line of the book is telling
Speaker 1: us that what you're going to read in this book
Speaker 1: is not the real Tao, but hopefully my words will
Speaker 1: point towards something that you can use in your life.
Speaker 1: I think one of the cool things about the Tao
Speaker 1: is that it's about kind of how we behave in life.
Speaker 1: But in some ways the Tao is interesting because mostly
Speaker 1: a focus on how we shouldn't be behavioring or what
Speaker 1: we should not be doing. Right. Yeah, it's you know.
Speaker 1: One of the main principles of Daoism is called uwei,
Speaker 1: which translated directing into English, means not doing, But what
Speaker 1: it means is not overdoing, not overextending, not trying to
Speaker 1: force things to happen, and really just being sensitive enough
Speaker 1: to the currents of life that you can position yourself
Speaker 1: so things can naturally be created and can naturally flow.
Speaker 1: And so this seems to be part of a broader
Speaker 1: concept because the idea of uway, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: is it's really kind of tied to going along with
Speaker 1: nature to some important sense. Right, Yes, yes, Traditionally daoisto
Speaker 1: felic nature is the best teacher. It was until much
Speaker 1: later centuries that more emphasis was put on texts, but
Speaker 1: originally it was about living in nature and observing nature
Speaker 1: and finding a way for us to flow in what
Speaker 1: we call the watercourse way, so that instead of trying
Speaker 1: to push against the currental of the time and force
Speaker 1: things to happen and be so upset and sad and
Speaker 1: depressed when things don't seem to be happening the way
Speaker 1: we wish they were, we can be okay with how
Speaker 1: things really are working, and we can find our way
Speaker 1: to enter that current of dao so that what we create,
Speaker 1: what we experience in our life is something that is
Speaker 1: very healing and very natural. The term in Daoism for
Speaker 1: an enlightened person or a self realized person is general,
Speaker 1: which means authentic person. So people who are authentically themselves,
Speaker 1: who know who they are authentically and then can express
Speaker 1: themselves authentically. That's considered a very high level person. In Daoism.
Speaker 1: We don't look to some sort of personalized deity to
Speaker 1: free ourselves. We need to find a way to free
Speaker 1: ourselves by ourselves. And one feature of that freedom seems
Speaker 1: to be like not going to the extreme, like not
Speaker 1: pushing yourself past your natural boundaries, or not pushing yourself
Speaker 1: to the point of burnout. But what's interesting is I
Speaker 1: feel like this is really countercultural right now, Like you know,
Speaker 1: it feels like everyone in modern culture is kind of
Speaker 1: pushing themselves past the breaking point. But that was almost
Speaker 1: explicitly prohibited, right Yes. In Thaism, we have this tradition
Speaker 1: of eighty percent, never eat until you're more than eighty percent,
Speaker 1: don't push yourself or work especially physically or even on
Speaker 1: the computer, really beyond eighty percent of your capacity, because
Speaker 1: the more you stuff yourself with food that you can't digest,
Speaker 1: the more hours you spend on the computer or even
Speaker 1: in a physical labor job, the easier you burn out.
Speaker 1: And that was him in Chinese culture in general really
Speaker 1: respects the long life and these practices that we do,
Speaker 1: these Chee goong and meditation practices are called long life practices,
Speaker 1: and that seems to fit with one of the passages
Speaker 1: you talked about a lot in your Insight time or course.
Speaker 1: I think the passage was something like, it's better to
Speaker 1: leave a vessel unfilled than to attempt to carry it
Speaker 1: when it's full. Kind of walk me through this analogy,
Speaker 1: because I think it seems to get at this idea
Speaker 1: of not going overboard. Well, on one side, it's overfilling
Speaker 1: a vessel. Things end up just spilling everywhere. So trying
Speaker 1: to overfill your life by putting too many activities, extending
Speaker 1: yourself in too many different directions, then you end up
Speaker 1: actually losing energy. Where if you keep to a more
Speaker 1: sort of middle way, you can get things done but
Speaker 1: you don't burn out. And people think, well, if I
Speaker 1: just keep going longer and longer and longer and get
Speaker 1: this project better and better and better, and then when
Speaker 1: they're finally done, often they just collapse, or they may
Speaker 1: even collapse before the project is even done. So we
Speaker 1: want to keep a balance. This is the whole Yeen
Speaker 1: young thing, you know, the balance of young energy, which
Speaker 1: is very expansive, fiery outward projecting energy and yeen energy,
Speaker 1: which is very inward RESTful kind of energy. That we
Speaker 1: find a way to balance those two so we're not
Speaker 1: either going too far out or we're not pulling back
Speaker 1: too much. And this can vary from person to person,
Speaker 1: because some people are more fiery and can go out
Speaker 1: in the world and get a lot done, or other
Speaker 1: people are more reflective and may even compare themselves with
Speaker 1: the other person and say, look how much they're doing
Speaker 1: and I'm not getting anything done. There must be something
Speaker 1: wrong with me. That was really respects that everyone has
Speaker 1: their own way of being and doing in the world.
Speaker 1: And also sometimes we need to move in a young
Speaker 1: direction to get projects done, and then other times we
Speaker 1: need to be more reflective. And this can happen over years, days,
Speaker 1: or even in one day. Yeah, I think another one
Speaker 1: of the passages that speaks to this, those who stand
Speaker 1: on tiptoe don't stand firm, and those who rush ahead
Speaker 1: don't go far. Yeah. If the metaphors, you're standing on
Speaker 1: tiptoe so that you can seem taller and bigger and
Speaker 1: better than other people, but you can easily lose your
Speaker 1: balance that way, and someone who's rushing forward to try
Speaker 1: to get ahead of everyone. They also lose energy. The
Speaker 1: Daoists talk about leading from behind the teacher, the high
Speaker 1: level teacher, and dodging is described as the person who
Speaker 1: teaches without words. And the one other phrase that I
Speaker 1: love is the sage returns people to their childlike hearts.
Speaker 1: And so talk a little bit about this childlike idea
Speaker 1: because I think that's so important, especially since Lutza in
Speaker 1: some ways mean like a master child in some sense,
Speaker 1: right yeah, old child. Loud means old and it means
Speaker 1: master or a child, So sometimes his name is translated
Speaker 1: as the old boy or the old child. And of
Speaker 1: course he talks, just like in the Bible when they
Speaker 1: talk about becoming as a child to enter the kingdom,
Speaker 1: talks and drunk. So who's the next most important teacher
Speaker 1: after Lautza? About having those childlike qualities of joy, of flexibility,
Speaker 1: of excitement, excitement about learning new things, experiencing new things,
Speaker 1: He says, when the plant is young, it is very
Speaker 1: flexible and can bend. But as the plant gets old,
Speaker 1: it gets dry and brittle and breaks easily. And as
Speaker 1: we age, it is very important to keep that childlike feeling,
Speaker 1: that flexibility of a new plant, so that as we
Speaker 1: get older in our bodies, in our hearts, and especially
Speaker 1: in our minds, we don't start shutting down and becoming
Speaker 1: brittle and dried up, so that we keep that excitement
Speaker 1: of adventure in her life throughout our life. And this
Speaker 1: is so perfect because it really connects with what the
Speaker 1: modern science is saying about how to stay happier right now.
Speaker 1: In the happiness science work, there's a lot of emphasis
Speaker 1: on what's called time affluence, right, just this idea that
Speaker 1: we feel like bountiful in time, like really wealthy in time.
Speaker 1: And it seems like that's exactly what the Tao is
Speaker 1: really suggesting that by going with nature, by not trying
Speaker 1: to squeeze too much in, you get back some free time,
Speaker 1: and that that in and of itself might be the
Speaker 1: key to happiness. Yes, another big concept in a doubt
Speaker 1: uching is about an empty vessel. The cop or bowl
Speaker 1: is useful because of its emptiness. If it was just
Speaker 1: a solid block of wood or clay, it wouldn't be useful,
Speaker 1: justlike the openings or windows and doorways are so useful
Speaker 1: and it's really in their emptiness that makes them useful
Speaker 1: and special. But it's so hard to stop sometimes that
Speaker 1: you think I'll just do a little more, and suddenly
Speaker 1: you collapse and have to take a whole week off,
Speaker 1: or if you had gone slower, you might have been
Speaker 1: a little or through the whole week. And this childlike heart,
Speaker 1: I think is a real key to happiness in Dellism.
Speaker 1: You know that idea that the more we keep ourselves
Speaker 1: open to learning new things, to experiencing new things without
Speaker 1: judgment or criticism, but just seeing where is this going
Speaker 1: to go? Where is this going to take me? You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of us have the experience in our life
Speaker 1: and you know this is almost a cliche, but people
Speaker 1: get sick, they get in a terrible car accident, they
Speaker 1: get cancer, they get very close to death's door, and
Speaker 1: when they come through that, they suddenly have a whole
Speaker 1: new lease on life and they suddenly are enjoying and
Speaker 1: feeling exuberant about things that they never perhaps even paid
Speaker 1: attention to before. And the idea is that we don't
Speaker 1: have to go to death's door. We don't have to
Speaker 1: get cancer, or have a terrible accident or have some
Speaker 1: really traumatic thing happened to us. We can decide right
Speaker 1: now that we're going to follow that path, the path
Speaker 1: of lease, resistance of the flow, the watercourse way, and
Speaker 1: we're going to keep that innocent air about us, the
Speaker 1: innocent childlike nature, because we all have it, but it's
Speaker 1: suppressed as we grow older and older. Right, that's actually
Speaker 1: a wonderful transition, because I think one of the things
Speaker 1: we want to discuss next is how we can get
Speaker 1: back that flow to life, how we can follow the
Speaker 1: water course way. And we'll do that when the happiness
Speaker 1: lad returns in a moment. Lots of metaphors get thrown
Speaker 1: around to tell us how to act when life inevitably
Speaker 1: gets tough. We might get told to be aggressive like
Speaker 1: a wild animal and sink our teeth in. We might
Speaker 1: be told to take on the resilient qualities of steel
Speaker 1: and to become hard as nails. Daoism uses a very
Speaker 1: different metaphor, one that's a lot gentler. Daoism tells you
Speaker 1: to be more like water. The waterway path or the
Speaker 1: water course way is how to find yourself in the
Speaker 1: flow of what the flow naturally is, and that flow
Speaker 1: can change from time to time, from day to day,
Speaker 1: from moment to moment even and so how do we
Speaker 1: know what the flow is and where can we find
Speaker 1: our place in that flow. And over the centuries, the
Speaker 1: Daoists have created these practices like chegong, different kinds of meditation,
Speaker 1: and we call them self cultivation practices because it's like
Speaker 1: we're planting a garden, and we're planting these seeds of
Speaker 1: what we want to accomplish, of who we want to
Speaker 1: be and how we want to express ourselves in the world,
Speaker 1: and then we tenderly tend these sprouts as they grow
Speaker 1: up into beautiful plants, perhaps even trees, and then we
Speaker 1: get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. And in
Speaker 1: self cultivation practice, it's not that someone is going to
Speaker 1: tell you what to do, so we have to find
Speaker 1: what works for us and not compare ourselves to others.
Speaker 1: And that seems to really get at this idea of
Speaker 1: the water course way right, because water is constantly moving,
Speaker 1: right like, it's never kind of stopped and it's achieved
Speaker 1: its goal. It's kind of constantly moving, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of constantly moving into places that some people might reject,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And not only that, but sometimes say the
Speaker 1: water is coming downstream and we're sort of floating merrily
Speaker 1: along with the water of our life and suddenly we
Speaker 1: hit a beaver dam or a log or something something
Speaker 1: that stops the water. Now, just like we're that person
Speaker 1: or where that water. We can get very upset and
Speaker 1: we can try to bash your way through the obstruction,
Speaker 1: but that way we lose a lot of energy and
Speaker 1: we don't get anything done. We may even harm ourselves.
Speaker 1: And the idea is when we feel we're in an obstruction,
Speaker 1: the best thing to do is be quiet and wait,
Speaker 1: because eventually that water is going to rise and go
Speaker 1: over the obstruction. And so the less energy we spend
Speaker 1: trying to bash your way through it, and the more
Speaker 1: we are quiet and just let the energy grow of itself.
Speaker 1: There's a termin Taoism called curan, which means something that
Speaker 1: occurs spontaneously, sometimes translated as of itself. So and not
Speaker 1: only will I be happier doing that, but I will
Speaker 1: if not being more successful, at least being good with
Speaker 1: what is instead of what we wish was. And that
Speaker 1: seems like part of the thing that we're using this
Speaker 1: water course way a metaphor to explain, right, this is
Speaker 1: this idea that water just kind of deals with whatever
Speaker 1: circumstances it finds itself in. Right, Yes, if it's a
Speaker 1: you know, put it in a round container, it becomes round,
Speaker 1: and a square container becomes square. It just does so naturally,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't lose anything of its real nature. You
Speaker 1: can freeze it, you can boil it, you know, you
Speaker 1: can put salt in it. The water always retains its
Speaker 1: own nature. Just like when we find ourselves in a
Speaker 1: square container or a situation that we're not that comfortable in,
Speaker 1: we can find a way to flow with that. We
Speaker 1: can find a way to take whatever shape we need
Speaker 1: to in that moment and still remain authentically ourselves, just
Speaker 1: like water remains itself no matter what condition it's in.
Speaker 1: And of course we know that water very patiently and
Speaker 1: slowly over time can carve through mountains and create the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon. So Lautsa says, there's nothing softer than water.
Speaker 1: But through perseverance, through patients, it can cut its way
Speaker 1: through rocks. And it's a way that we can deal
Speaker 1: with the obstructions in our life by remaining authentically ourself,
Speaker 1: and over time, and sometimes it takes more time than
Speaker 1: we wish it would, we can actually not only get
Speaker 1: through or over or around that obstruction, but become even
Speaker 1: stronger for it. And I love this part of the
Speaker 1: metaphor in particular because I think, you know, again with
Speaker 1: sort of modern eyes, sometimes when you think of some
Speaker 1: substance like water that's very yielding, that's very flexible, you
Speaker 1: can assume it's very weak, right like you can assume
Speaker 1: it's not very powerful. And we want to be powerful
Speaker 1: in our lives, you know, we want to carve good
Speaker 1: things for ourselves. But I think the Daoist way suggests that,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the way you carve those good things
Speaker 1: is not through fighting against the tide. It's through kind
Speaker 1: of going with the flow and persistence. Sometimes you can
Speaker 1: reach a state of what the Buddhists call enlightenment or
Speaker 1: what the Daoist called entering dao. It can happen just
Speaker 1: in a moment, in a flash, and people may think, wow,
Speaker 1: how did that happen so quickly, But it's because of
Speaker 1: all those years or perhaps even lifetimes of persistence that
Speaker 1: you have been building your energy, your understanding over the
Speaker 1: less time that finally you reach that precipice, like the
Speaker 1: water going over a giant waterfall. It's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: the Beatles were so famous, right one day they were
Speaker 1: just the Beatles and famous and accomplished and rich, and
Speaker 1: didn't talk about all the years they played in these
Speaker 1: horrible dives in Hamburg in Germany, and all the little
Speaker 1: funky gigs they did for many, many years all over Liverpool,
Speaker 1: all over England. And so sometimes we see someone and
Speaker 1: become famous and we go, wow, where do they come from?
Speaker 1: But it's really because we are consistent and patient. You
Speaker 1: know what. My teacher watching Ni says that the high
Speaker 1: is built on the low, and that when we're in
Speaker 1: that spot in her life where nothing seems to be
Speaker 1: getting accomplished, where we feel like we're just not getting
Speaker 1: anywhere and we're not getting ahead, certainly, and we might
Speaker 1: get frustrated with that naturally, of course, but to understand
Speaker 1: that suddenly you see things, you understand things in a
Speaker 1: different way, and why not start right now where you are,
Speaker 1: right now, right here, in this very moment, we have
Speaker 1: all the power we need to free ourselves from the
Speaker 1: chains of bondage that culture and various religions and society
Speaker 1: and teachers and political parties have put us in. And
Speaker 1: realize that we are already enlightened beings. We are Buddhists,
Speaker 1: We are the people who are authentically are cells, and
Speaker 1: why don't we start experimenting with how to embrace that
Speaker 1: and show that to the world. And so I wanted
Speaker 1: to touch on how following the Huwai has worked in
Speaker 1: your own life. You know you're a practicing Daoist, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, how has this how's this philosophy changed how
Speaker 1: you live and how happy you are? Very good question.
Speaker 1: I use that principle in my life. You know, when
Speaker 1: I'm writing books, when I'm recording music, when I'm teaching.
Speaker 1: Right now, you know, the whole world has changed. And
Speaker 1: I used to travel around the country teaching chigong. I
Speaker 1: used to take tours of groups of people to China
Speaker 1: and go way up in the mountains and work with
Speaker 1: the Daoists and the holy people in the mountains, the
Speaker 1: hermits who live in caves and things like that. And
Speaker 1: now I'm doing it all through Zoom. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it calls upon my ability to be flexible and to
Speaker 1: not get frustrated. I can't actually go to the mountains
Speaker 1: of China, but what I can do is remember what
Speaker 1: I learned in the mountains of China, what I experience
Speaker 1: varience there, and bring that into my life and not
Speaker 1: feel like I'm losing anything. I can apply this principle
Speaker 1: of not over extending, not standing on tiptoe, not forcing
Speaker 1: things to happen. You know, I went through my own
Speaker 1: cancer journey last year, and anyone who's been through that
Speaker 1: nose it's a very life changing experience. But even in
Speaker 1: the midst of it, before surgery and that, I had
Speaker 1: a feeling in myself that who I really was was
Speaker 1: going to be okay. No matter what happened to my body,
Speaker 1: I was going to be okay. So I think that's
Speaker 1: a little bit of what we're talking about. And of
Speaker 1: course in relationship that's a big issue too. Is that
Speaker 1: more important to you to be right or to have
Speaker 1: harmony in your relationship in your life, not trying to
Speaker 1: force your opinions your judgments on someone else, being open
Speaker 1: to listening to them. Using another very important Dallas principle
Speaker 1: of going slowly, especially if you're in a difficult conversation,
Speaker 1: speak slowly and listen slowly, so that you're not sitting
Speaker 1: there listening to the other person, but half of you
Speaker 1: is just thinking about what you're going to say. As
Speaker 1: soon as they stop talking, they all work together. That's
Speaker 1: the thing. Uway, watercourseway flexibility going slowly. They all work together.
Speaker 1: It's like a band, right. We had John, Paul, Ringo
Speaker 1: and George and they all work together and they had
Speaker 1: a special kind of magical synergy that is still moving
Speaker 1: people fifty years later. So why don't we do that
Speaker 1: in our life? Why don't we become the directors of
Speaker 1: our own life movies and the writers of our own
Speaker 1: scripts of our life? And sometimes in the movie, things
Speaker 1: aren't going well for the hero and you were wondering,
Speaker 1: how's he going to get out of it this time,
Speaker 1: although most of the time you know the hero is
Speaker 1: going to get out of it somehow, but you don't
Speaker 1: know how. So when something really tragic or difficult happens
Speaker 1: in your life, instead of going, oh my god, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to me? Now, you can instead with
Speaker 1: that sort of childlike thing, I wonder how I'm going
Speaker 1: to get out of it this time? And I wonder
Speaker 1: what this is going to lead to? Because so many
Speaker 1: really challenging things in our life lead to really wonderful things.
Speaker 1: So instead of just being depressed and scared and frustrated,
Speaker 1: more like, hmm, I'm really interested to see where this
Speaker 1: is going to lead me and what good is going
Speaker 1: to come out of this? I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 1: And this fits with so many of the things that
Speaker 1: we've talked about on this podcast, sort of first reframing
Speaker 1: hard tasks as this kind of game, as this sort
Speaker 1: of challenge in this sort of childlike way. But it
Speaker 1: also fits with something that we see in the research,
Speaker 1: which is this phenomena of post traumatic growth, this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, hard times don't necessarily always cause post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress. Sometimes they can cause a lot of growth. Right.
Speaker 1: They can make us recognize what's meaningful in life, they
Speaker 1: can make us stronger, we don't sweat the small stuff.
Speaker 1: And it seems like the Daoists we're kind of onto
Speaker 1: this notion that the tough times are really the good
Speaker 1: builder times. We should be excited when we experience them. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: when you're working out, when you're trying to build muscles,
Speaker 1: what you're essentially doing often is stressing those muscles and
Speaker 1: sometimes even tearing them a little bit so that when
Speaker 1: they grow back together, they grow back together stronger. So,
Speaker 1: just like the experiences in our life are frustrating or challenging,
Speaker 1: we can understand that this is going to help me
Speaker 1: become stronger if we have an open attitude about it.
Speaker 1: If we just decide the world is against us, my
Speaker 1: body's against me, all my relationships are against me, then
Speaker 1: you don't have that post trauma growth. You have more
Speaker 1: of the post drama stress. Another one of the Daoist
Speaker 1: principles that again doesn't seem to fit with modern culture
Speaker 1: is this idea that we should be going slowly rather
Speaker 1: than speeding up and racing to get everywhere. It's like
Speaker 1: slowness that's going to help us. It does seem, and
Speaker 1: it certainly is true that the world historically, culturally, even politically,
Speaker 1: is moving faster and faster and faster. You know, when
Speaker 1: people used to just walk or they might have ridden
Speaker 1: a horse, the first thing they got on a train
Speaker 1: that was going thirty miles an hour, they were just
Speaker 1: hanging on to their seats like, oh my god, we're
Speaker 1: going so fast. We were just going to explode. The
Speaker 1: idea is, when you're presented with this warlist going faster
Speaker 1: and faster and faster, the way to counter it, to
Speaker 1: be more healthy, to be happier, really is to find
Speaker 1: a way to slow yourself down at least part of
Speaker 1: the time. In Chinese the phrases manzo manzomi's go slowly.
Speaker 1: And years ago I had a group in China and
Speaker 1: we were going to a temple called Chinschunshan, and I
Speaker 1: like that temple a lot because you can't just drive there.
Speaker 1: You have to hike up many, many many stairs through
Speaker 1: the forest to get to the temple. And we had
Speaker 1: these porters who were carrying luggage and things, and sometimes
Speaker 1: even people. They have little chairs that put you in
Speaker 1: and they'll carry you up there. And I was kind
Speaker 1: of going along the path and just kind of trudging
Speaker 1: up without thinking about it too much, and I would
Speaker 1: have to keep stopping to catch my breath, and finally
Speaker 1: one of the porters looked at me. He just said
Speaker 1: manzo manzo, and even though I had not heard that
Speaker 1: term before, it was easy to understand what he meant.
Speaker 1: By going more slowly, I wouldn't have to stop more often,
Speaker 1: and I would actually get further with less effort and
Speaker 1: perhaps even quicker. And in China, in the old days,
Speaker 1: when you were saying goodbye to someone, nowadays they say zeigen,
Speaker 1: which is basically like bye, but they would say manzo,
Speaker 1: which means go slowly away from me. You don't hear
Speaker 1: that as often. But last time I wasn't China. I
Speaker 1: was in a train station and I went into a
Speaker 1: little store to get some water, and I was like
Speaker 1: charging out the door, and suddenly the woman in the
Speaker 1: store yelled out, Manzo, Manzo, and it like stopped me
Speaker 1: in my tracks, and I realized I really did have
Speaker 1: enough time to get to the train. I don't have
Speaker 1: to rush so much. So if we can live our
Speaker 1: life that way, with this idea of go slowly, listen
Speaker 1: slowly when we're about to run out the door, most
Speaker 1: accidents happen when people are moving too quickly right and
Speaker 1: not in their center, not grounded and rooted. When we
Speaker 1: do our chiegoing practice, for instance, we always do a
Speaker 1: grounding rooting practice so that we feel we are connected
Speaker 1: to the living earth, that we are sending roots like
Speaker 1: a tree from the bottom of our feet way down
Speaker 1: into the earth. So when we start moving and doing
Speaker 1: our form, we are still grounded and rooted. And the
Speaker 1: more you can do just that grounding rooting practice, very
Speaker 1: simple practice, you can move through the world in a
Speaker 1: much more graceful, more of a dancerly way, and you
Speaker 1: can live your life. Instead of being in a rut,
Speaker 1: you are in a groove, which is something quite different.
Speaker 1: So many of these Daoist principles are, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: like thousands of years old, and it seems like more
Speaker 1: than ever, we're not living by them. Do you think
Speaker 1: we'd all be a little bit happier if we could
Speaker 1: embrace a bit more of the wuway? Yes, of course.
Speaker 1: That's how do I try to live my life. And
Speaker 1: I just turned seventy years old and my partner, Shanti
Speaker 1: is sixty nine. You know, our thirty one year old roommate,
Speaker 1: She said, You know, you guys are seem younger than
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends because we still have that
Speaker 1: sense of joy. We dance with each other, and the
Speaker 1: more you can dance with life. When you're in a rut,
Speaker 1: it's like you're in a canyon and you can't see
Speaker 1: either side because of the walls of the canyon. But
Speaker 1: when you're in a groove, it's like you're dancing through
Speaker 1: the mountains, through the deserts. And when you're dancing, most
Speaker 1: people feel happier. They feel a sense of joy when
Speaker 1: they're dancing, right, no matter if they feel you're not
Speaker 1: a good dancer. I'm a clunky dancer. You're embarrassed about it.
Speaker 1: You may only do it in the privacy of your
Speaker 1: own home. But the more we can feel that sense
Speaker 1: of grace, that sense of joy, that sense of excitement
Speaker 1: in life, I think, the happier and healthier we will
Speaker 1: all be. And why not use these principles that have
Speaker 1: stood the test of time right for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Why not incorporate them into our life. And we don't
Speaker 1: have to change our religion to be a Daoist, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have to change whatever spiritual path on. We
Speaker 1: can just apply these principles to our life and see
Speaker 1: how they work in ourselves. Don't just read the book,
Speaker 1: don't just listen to my words. Try to apply these
Speaker 1: ideas to your own life and see how that affects
Speaker 1: your life. That seems like a perfect thought on which
Speaker 1: to end this mini season of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients.
Speaker 1: Over the last few episodes, we've heard about a ton
Speaker 1: of new happiness practices once developed over thousands of years
Speaker 1: of human history. Learning about these insights doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: have to totally upend your normal life. Instead, take a gentler,
Speaker 1: more Taoist approach. You can experiment, maybe prioritize a bit
Speaker 1: more forgiveness, but start small. Forgive yourself for something and
Speaker 1: just see how it feels. Or maybe try to observe
Speaker 1: a mini secular Shabbat rest and reflect for a few hours,
Speaker 1: but don't feel like you have to make it a
Speaker 1: whole day. Or devise a fun new social ritual, start
Speaker 1: a monthly coffee meet up with a friend, or schedule
Speaker 1: a no phones family movie night. Or when some annoying
Speaker 1: obstacle crops up in your life, remember Salala's advice and
Speaker 1: ask what would a river do. We're already working hard
Speaker 1: on the next full season of the show, and we'll
Speaker 1: be back with you this summer, So until then, stay
Speaker 1: happy and thank you for listening to The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co
Speaker 1: written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show was mastered
Speaker 1: by Evan Viola and our original music was composed by
Speaker 1: Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the entire Pushkin crew, including
Speaker 1: Neil La Belle, Carlie Migliori, Heather Fane, Sophie Crane, mckibbon,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
Speaker 1: meat doctor Laurie Santos People