Speaker 1: If we didn't believe that we were somehow more important,
Speaker 1: that we were not so special in this whole natural world,
Speaker 1: the whole world will look different. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest this week
Speaker 1: is Daoist monk un Row, formerly known as Arthur Rosenfeld.
Speaker 1: He's an author, activist, and a thirty five year master
Speaker 1: of Daoist arts. Unro was born in America and ordained
Speaker 1: a monk at the Pure Yang Temple in Guangzhou, China.
Speaker 1: Combining his spiritual focus with a Yale literary education. He's
Speaker 1: an author on the cultural, social, and spiritual dimensions of
Speaker 1: Eastern thinking for the Western world. And here's the interview
Speaker 1: with you and Roe. Hi, you and Roe, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. So happy to be with you. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to get you on because one of my favorite books
Speaker 1: of all time. Hang on a second, we get a dog. Well,
Speaker 1: when my turtles start breaking wind in the background, I
Speaker 1: won't feel so bad. I'm excited to talk to you
Speaker 1: because one of my favorite books of all time is
Speaker 1: The Dowd Ching. But I've never really had a chance
Speaker 1: to learn a whole lot more about Taoism or talk
Speaker 1: to anybody who was a Taoist. So I am excited
Speaker 1: to get into that book a little bit in some
Speaker 1: of your other philosophies. That'd be great. It's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite books to talk about, even though every word
Speaker 1: we say is not the tao that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: But let's start like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness, and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in your work,
Speaker 1: and also what are some of the things that you
Speaker 1: do in your own life to feed your good wolf.
Speaker 1: So I should start by saying that I love the
Speaker 1: bad wolf, and and I love the bad wolf because
Speaker 1: I love the dual non dual nature of everything. And
Speaker 1: as a Taoist, I tend to see things in terms
Speaker 1: of binary opposites harmoniously interacting, and we want to make
Speaker 1: them harmoniously interact, but sometimes disharmoniously interacting in order to
Speaker 1: define each other. And also the cycles of life, and
Speaker 1: without those cycles we would have much less to appreciate
Speaker 1: and experience. And without that bad wolf, there would be
Speaker 1: no good wolf. Right So with without you know, our
Speaker 1: cloudy days, we don't see appreciate the sunny ones. And
Speaker 1: by the way, there's a I think, an important distinction
Speaker 1: between appreciating and experiencing. So I wouldn't say, for example,
Speaker 1: that someone who has never known heartbreak or disease or
Speaker 1: challenge is someone who doesn't experience joy or pleasure or
Speaker 1: satisfaction in life. But I might argue, I think coated lee,
Speaker 1: that the appreciation of that experience would be greatly diminished
Speaker 1: without something to compare it to. Yeah, So, I mean.
Speaker 1: One of the lovely things about bringing traditional dao Is
Speaker 1: thinking into our high tech, quantum world these days is
Speaker 1: to see how very often in my wide ranging listening
Speaker 1: and readings, I come across a validation and confirmation in
Speaker 1: terms of science, basic science, tech, world exploration, universal exploration
Speaker 1: of of things that have been expressed very clearly, if
Speaker 1: not in the same language for thousands of years in Daoists,
Speaker 1: in Daoists texts, in the Daoist cannon. So you know,
Speaker 1: to me there, it's not so much that you want
Speaker 1: to make a habit of feeding one wolf to the
Speaker 1: exclusion of the other. It might be that in one
Speaker 1: circumstance in your life you want to starve the good wolf,
Speaker 1: and in another you want to starve the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: and the many others. You want to feed one a
Speaker 1: little bit more than you feed the other. You want
Speaker 1: to play favorites. You want to be conscious and active
Speaker 1: in this process of feeding, because what you see and
Speaker 1: experience and understand in the cycles and changes in your
Speaker 1: daily life ought to be queuing you to what you're
Speaker 1: doing with your kimmel. So would you give your summary
Speaker 1: of what Taoism is? This actually is a far more
Speaker 1: challenging question than you You may know. You may you
Speaker 1: may know how challenging it is, and you just did
Speaker 1: it to make me squirm. But you may also but
Speaker 1: you may also not realize that it is to some
Speaker 1: extent of debated issue in a broadway. Taoism is a
Speaker 1: is a cultural and social phenomenon, and it it is
Speaker 1: inextricably intertwined in traditional Chinese culture, and it is born
Speaker 1: of um life in China, the bitter life of the
Speaker 1: people in early China, the flooding of rivers, the conquests,
Speaker 1: the famines, the droughts, the difficulties, the invasions, the constant
Speaker 1: pushback against uh the people who nomads on horseback, who
Speaker 1: ringed China for for millennia and created a certain nucleation
Speaker 1: of culture in that enormous piece of land, and without
Speaker 1: some understanding of the history of China and how things
Speaker 1: developed there, I would submit that a deep comprehension of
Speaker 1: daois thought is not possible. Now. You know, it's funny
Speaker 1: because I have two Thouist masters, and one of them
Speaker 1: is my martial arts master and another one is my abbot,
Speaker 1: and we could talk if it's if it's relevant, we
Speaker 1: can talk more detail about that later. But but you know,
Speaker 1: they both always tell me that, you know, the ideas
Speaker 1: of Taoism, of harmony, of balance, they don't really depend
Speaker 1: on even calling it Thoism. They don't. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: whether you know anything about China or you know anything.
Speaker 1: And although they say that, and I bowed to them
Speaker 1: and respect them greatly and love them both very much,
Speaker 1: I have to say that on this score I don't
Speaker 1: fully agree. And I think that the reason that they
Speaker 1: think that is that they are Chinese and their whole
Speaker 1: worldview is so colored by being Chinese that they may
Speaker 1: not see that from the same point of view as
Speaker 1: we do. So let's let's let's say it this way.
Speaker 1: Taois Um is a way of looking at nature. It
Speaker 1: is a way of understanding natural forces and natural phenomena,
Speaker 1: and a way of integrating what you see and feel, smell,
Speaker 1: taste in here so that you can live a healthier,
Speaker 1: more compassionate, humbler, and more frugal life. As that that
Speaker 1: is a great start. Most of my exposure to Eastern Um,
Speaker 1: you know, philosophy or religion has largely been through you know,
Speaker 1: various schools of Buddhism. But like I said, I've always
Speaker 1: loved the doubt a change. But what does what does
Speaker 1: Daoist meditation look like? Is that is that something you practice?
Speaker 1: And if so, what is that? What? What how do
Speaker 1: you do that? How is that different or similar maybe
Speaker 1: to some of the other meditation styles out there? So yes,
Speaker 1: I do it. It's a core practice. UM, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a few things that come
Speaker 1: to mind because you mentioned Buddhism and what it looks like, UM,
Speaker 1: is that you may see Daoists standing or walking as
Speaker 1: opposed to sitting or lying down. Which is not to
Speaker 1: say that Daoist meditation can't also be conducted prone or
Speaker 1: in a seat, but we prefer, we prefer to stand
Speaker 1: or walk if possible. And that is because there's a
Speaker 1: connection in Daoism, which I think is really quite different
Speaker 1: from Buddhist meditation, and I've some Buddhist meditation. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of my twin Daoist lineages is a version of
Speaker 1: Taoism which is sort of all encompassing um. It's called
Speaker 1: Longman Pie. It's also known as complete Truth as the
Speaker 1: sort of overarching idea of it. And this complete Truth sect,
Speaker 1: if you will, includes some Buddhist and some Confucian ideas.
Speaker 1: So so there's there's some bleed over. But a core
Speaker 1: thing that I want to get to is that in
Speaker 1: in Dallist meditation, the notion is that in order to
Speaker 1: awaken the mind in order to achieve what what we
Speaker 1: would term enlightenment. We don't have that exact phrase, but
Speaker 1: what what what we might call it enlightenment in the West,
Speaker 1: to open the mind, to awaken the mind. In order
Speaker 1: to do that, we have to do a lot for
Speaker 1: the body, because it is the body that supports the
Speaker 1: process of enlightenment. In other words, you can't have the
Speaker 1: strength and clarity of mind that you need without having
Speaker 1: a strong and healthy body. So for example, something like
Speaker 1: zazen sitting and zen where you damage your knees and
Speaker 1: hurt your back, and you use the strength of your
Speaker 1: mind to force your body into an uncomfortable position and
Speaker 1: ask it to stay there for a long period and
Speaker 1: then have to have a knee replacement later back surgery.
Speaker 1: But you can point to how strong your mind is
Speaker 1: a triumphed over the flesh. That sort of Descartian dualism
Speaker 1: about mind body is not present in the house thinking.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we find it difficult to understand why
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to do that, So we want to
Speaker 1: nurture the body in order to help the mind. And
Speaker 1: now back to the rest of the interview with you
Speaker 1: and Roe. In addition to being a Daoist monk and
Speaker 1: a prolific author, you are also I don't know what
Speaker 1: the quite the right term is, but I'll say a
Speaker 1: tai chi master. Um you teach a lot of tai chi,
Speaker 1: which I think is a form of Daoist meditation. Is
Speaker 1: that accurate? It is somewhat accurate. It's not exactly a
Speaker 1: form of Daoist meditation, although taiji practice does include specific
Speaker 1: meditations that are by definition Daoist, since Daoism is the
Speaker 1: overarching idea, or maybe put a different way, I'm not
Speaker 1: aware of any system of movement anywhere in any tradition.
Speaker 1: There may be one, but I'm not aware of it
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world from any period of history that
Speaker 1: is more intimately interdigitated with a system of philosophy and thought.
Speaker 1: Then tai tai chi is with Daoism. They are inextricable.
Speaker 1: So the practice of tai chi is one of the
Speaker 1: Daoist practices that I engage. It's my favorite one, it's
Speaker 1: the one I probably spend the most time at. But
Speaker 1: it's importance to me personally and to my students because
Speaker 1: I run what I call martial arts rather a philosophy
Speaker 1: school with a major in martial arts, rather than a
Speaker 1: martial arts school that pays lip service to philosophy. The
Speaker 1: most important part of it is as as a Daoist practice.
Speaker 1: So whether we are doing brush painting or landscape painting
Speaker 1: or calligraphy, or playing a musical instrum meant or writing
Speaker 1: or standing in meditation or practicing with a seven foot sword,
Speaker 1: all these things fall under the umbrella in my own
Speaker 1: life practice and teaching of of datost practice. Okay, here
Speaker 1: will be a geeky question. Do you have a favorite
Speaker 1: translation of the dow Day Chain, because I have one,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious if if they are similar, or what
Speaker 1: you think of the one that I really like. I
Speaker 1: could almost reach out and touch from where I'm sitting
Speaker 1: sixty translation. Wow, alright, so mine is the Stephen Mitchell translation. Right?
Speaker 1: That was a pretty good guess, I guess if it
Speaker 1: might be um and I think it's good. You know.
Speaker 1: I like Mitchell's writing style. I like I like the
Speaker 1: poetry of his prose, so from a from an esthetic
Speaker 1: point of view, I like that version too, but it's
Speaker 1: not that alone. Because I'm a fan of the science
Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy writer Ursula Lagwyn, who also did a
Speaker 1: translation which was based on so body else's translation. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't believe that she reads Chinese, but uh,
Speaker 1: I don't care for that one. As much as I
Speaker 1: like her other writings. I didn't care for that one,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned that in in the Connection with Mitchell,
Speaker 1: because I think Mitchell has some grasp of what's going
Speaker 1: on and has a point of view which I respect.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to say that if you had
Speaker 1: asked me this, I've been I've been involved in this
Speaker 1: quite some years now, and if you had asked me
Speaker 1: this five years ago, or ten years ago or fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, I might have been super eager to give
Speaker 1: you a list and say, hey, these are the ones, right,
Speaker 1: read these these And what I've what I've come to
Speaker 1: over time and with some thousands of hours of practice
Speaker 1: and meditation about these things, is that it's such we
Speaker 1: we are so far from really understanding what the context
Speaker 1: of that book was, who wrote it, um, what is
Speaker 1: purpose was, and what it might have sounded like in
Speaker 1: the language of the day. My guess I can tell
Speaker 1: you what I guess. I can tell you what I
Speaker 1: surmise about that book's origins. Um. Before I go there,
Speaker 1: I will tell you that I think for most people,
Speaker 1: Guy Leakly's version L E K L E y is
Speaker 1: probably a great place to start. It's a wonderful addition.
Speaker 1: Um Mitchell's is good. Jonathan Star, It's got a good one. Um.
Speaker 1: There there are and you know we we can maybe
Speaker 1: email and you can put up if you wish, a
Speaker 1: list of some others I like. But but let me
Speaker 1: go back to the sort of the point about the
Speaker 1: whole book. Whether or not the putative author of the
Speaker 1: data Jing was a real historical personage is an open question,
Speaker 1: as indeed is the historicity of a lot of other
Speaker 1: things that people say about that book. Um. I choose
Speaker 1: because I have a romantic heart to believe that Louds
Speaker 1: was a real person, but intellectually I doubt it, um And,
Speaker 1: And in fact, the book that I wrote about Louds
Speaker 1: that is going to be released tomorrow is predicated on
Speaker 1: the decision that I was just going to embody him
Speaker 1: and envision him and indeed tell a love story about
Speaker 1: him as a sage who is in search of a
Speaker 1: soulmate and the difficulties of being such an enlightened personage
Speaker 1: and finding somebody with whom you can have that kind
Speaker 1: of connection. But I think that historically, probably um, he
Speaker 1: was a creation of a coffee clatch of guys who
Speaker 1: were responding to the Confucian, Draconian, highly regimented, and ordered
Speaker 1: society of China at that time. So maybe you could
Speaker 1: think of it this way. If you believe that Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: for example, or Moses or actual historical personages, you could
Speaker 1: see and become attached to their message with greater avidity
Speaker 1: and warmth and enthusiasm. Then if you found out that Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Jesus was really an amalgam of a bunch
Speaker 1: of rabbis who were writing at the time, and they
Speaker 1: were pretty much fed up with being told what to
Speaker 1: eat and you know, with whom to sleep, and uh,
Speaker 1: what to wear, and you know how to pray and
Speaker 1: so on, and so his message of release and freedom
Speaker 1: and forgiveness is in some ways analogous historically and socially
Speaker 1: to the message of loud Zo at the time, whether
Speaker 1: he was a real single person or whether he was
Speaker 1: a construct designed to put forth a point of view
Speaker 1: that was like just a great relief to people. Um. So,
Speaker 1: you know, Confucian society was quite regimented, as early early
Speaker 1: Orthodox Judaism was it is, and and so, you know,
Speaker 1: being offered a way to still be considered a good person,
Speaker 1: a religious person in the case of Christianity, a god
Speaker 1: fearing person, and yet have some personal freedom and have
Speaker 1: the ability to be bacchanalien and go into the mountains
Speaker 1: and meditating the cave if you want, and drink wine
Speaker 1: and write poetry and do all those things, but still
Speaker 1: be considered a worthy person. This was the attraction of
Speaker 1: that early Daoist message and maybe the power of the
Speaker 1: data Jing and why both the data Jing and the
Speaker 1: Judaeo Christian Bible have become a from from what I hear,
Speaker 1: the two most widely translated works in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a guest on Edwards Slingerland who wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Trying Not To Try, and he talks about
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient Chinese philosophy, Confucianism and Daoism. And
Speaker 1: but he has a funny line in there where he
Speaker 1: refers to the dowd Ah Ching is possibly the book
Speaker 1: that more joints have been rolled to than any other
Speaker 1: book in history, which I thought were funny. The minute
Speaker 1: you say that, I think of Taichi joint locking of course,
Speaker 1: and rolling the shoulder over his uncle. Different joint here. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually corresponded with Professor Slingerland once or twice, um,
Speaker 1: and I did hear his interview on your show, and
Speaker 1: I liked it. It It was very interesting. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a section from The dowd Ah Ching and
Speaker 1: just kind of ask you to elaborate or you know,
Speaker 1: talk about kind of what it means to you. And
Speaker 1: this will be from the Stephen Mitchell translation. It is
Speaker 1: number forty four Fame or integrity, which is more important,
Speaker 1: money or happiness, which is more valuable, success or failure,
Speaker 1: which is more destructive. If you look to others for fulfillment,
Speaker 1: you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends
Speaker 1: on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be
Speaker 1: content with what you have, Rejoice in the way things
Speaker 1: are when you realize there is nothing lacking. The whole
Speaker 1: world belongs to you. Do you see how deeply revolutionary
Speaker 1: and rebellious that is? Oh? Yeah, yes I do. I
Speaker 1: read it as an eighteen year old, probably in a
Speaker 1: suburban town. That was you know, it's it in my
Speaker 1: view of the world. That's all anybody cared about at
Speaker 1: that point. But it was money, which was not true,
Speaker 1: but that was my that was my view of it.
Speaker 1: So I do recognize that this was for me. This
Speaker 1: was very revolutionary, um, and I'm sure are more so
Speaker 1: in in a age like the one you're talking about
Speaker 1: when he when it was originally written. So if I,
Speaker 1: if I may, I want to just talk to you
Speaker 1: about at this from a personal point of view, please.
Speaker 1: I was raised in a home with a very very successful,
Speaker 1: famous father. My dad Isadore Rosenfeld. He's still with us.
Speaker 1: Was you know, one of the most famous heart specialists
Speaker 1: in the world for many years, and he had as
Speaker 1: his patients, and not only but among his patients he
Speaker 1: had many luminous individuals, people who ran the world. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, captains of industry and Hollywood stars and powerful
Speaker 1: politicians and heads of state and so on. And I
Speaker 1: watched as a as a young man, as a boy,
Speaker 1: I watched a parade of these folks through the lives
Speaker 1: of my family. I saw, you know them in our home.
Speaker 1: We we would take holidays on their islands and their
Speaker 1: yachts and and travel the world and their company. And
Speaker 1: probably because like you, I was born with a certain
Speaker 1: gene which made me a real pain in the ass.
Speaker 1: And my parents, Um, I had my doubts about all this.
Speaker 1: And I had my doubts that if these things that
Speaker 1: I was being told were true, were in fact the
Speaker 1: way the world really did work. And if fame and
Speaker 1: wealth and power and beauty and notoriety and all the
Speaker 1: rest of it, if all all that was really the
Speaker 1: be all and all the purpose, the thing for which
Speaker 1: we should strive, and so on, then how come so
Speaker 1: many of these people that I saw growing up were
Speaker 1: so miserable. Right, how come you know they threw their
Speaker 1: wives down the stairs, or they went to jail, or
Speaker 1: their parents or their their children hated them, or or
Speaker 1: you know, they were just assholes. And you know what,
Speaker 1: this is not true of This was not true of
Speaker 1: all the people that I'm talking about. There were many
Speaker 1: wonderful people among them. But I was I was able to,
Speaker 1: I think, at that tender age, separate, to tease out
Speaker 1: the good characteristics of the people that I thought were great,
Speaker 1: um from the ones that I didn't think we're so good,
Speaker 1: and to realize that there was no connection there too,
Speaker 1: uh to their fame and and and the rest of them.
Speaker 1: So I think you know early on what what you
Speaker 1: what you have alluded to, I believe, and what I
Speaker 1: experienced I know was, you know, sort of the path
Speaker 1: a seeker, the secret and as the calling of the seeker,
Speaker 1: the personality of the seecret whatever whatever you like. In fact,
Speaker 1: Guy Leakally is doabtaging that I recommended to you earlier. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Guy Legally was a good friend of mine and he
Speaker 1: passed away just a short while ago. Very sad to
Speaker 1: lose him, because he was a wonderful scholar, and writer
Speaker 1: on the dataging. But anyway, you know, I think if
Speaker 1: those things weren't true, what else wasn't true? I think
Speaker 1: of God because he titled his doabtaging, you know, a
Speaker 1: version for all seekers, So you know, people who are listening,
Speaker 1: I would get I would guess. I would bet that
Speaker 1: you know people who listen to this podcast of yours,
Speaker 1: And I know a few, and I'm an ardent listener myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that people who listen to are seekers.
Speaker 1: I mean you and you obviously must be a seeker,
Speaker 1: one or both of you, otherwise you wouldn't have this
Speaker 1: the show. So you know, I think, knowing knowing that
Speaker 1: you have this steep suspiciousness, knowing that you recognize that
Speaker 1: the speed in Greek culture in which we live, which
Speaker 1: is guided very much by our corporate masters, their lobbyists, um,
Speaker 1: their control of media and so on, happily not this
Speaker 1: medium um yet uh is is is a you know,
Speaker 1: is a relief and and and the dotaging for me,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it did this for you.
Speaker 1: I don't know how early you discovered it, But for me,
Speaker 1: when I discovered this book, you know, thirty or forty
Speaker 1: years ago and began to read it. I realized that
Speaker 1: I was I was too young and insecure to have
Speaker 1: confidence in my own way of looking at the world,
Speaker 1: and I didn't. I wasn't sure about what I saw,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure about what I believed, and just finding
Speaker 1: out that there was this entire body of thought which
Speaker 1: so completely validated that, you know what I was seeing
Speaker 1: in the world, You know, the questioning of our capitalist,
Speaker 1: materialist society and its values, but also a lot of
Speaker 1: other things in our Judeo Christian tradition. For example, you
Speaker 1: know the biblical notion of hegemony for human beings over
Speaker 1: the natural world, something that has written and spoken of
Speaker 1: often these days an environmentalist and climate change circles. Right,
Speaker 1: that if we didn't have a point of view, that
Speaker 1: this is all here for us, and that you know,
Speaker 1: we can we can kill all the rhinos we want
Speaker 1: to grind up their horns um so that we'll perform
Speaker 1: better in bed. We can do kill all the bears.
Speaker 1: We want to do the same with their gall bladders.
Speaker 1: You know, we can take all the deer we want
Speaker 1: for the same reason. We can cure cancer by grinding
Speaker 1: up the shells of every endangered turtle in the world
Speaker 1: and all that if we, if we, if people didn't
Speaker 1: really somehow think that, And you know, I used a
Speaker 1: lot of examples there from Chinese medicine. But this is
Speaker 1: a thread that goes through from our Western culture to
Speaker 1: um to the east. Is the idea that if if we,
Speaker 1: if we didn't believe that we were somehow more important
Speaker 1: and it wasn't that we were not so special in
Speaker 1: this whole actual world something that that was and doesn't
Speaker 1: exactly believe at least not the same way, and our
Speaker 1: environment would look completely different. The whole world would look different.
Speaker 1: So these are big important ideas. Yeah, it's that whole
Speaker 1: idea that it's that it's not connected, that this thing
Speaker 1: over there does not connect to this thing over here.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't connect to the environment. I think
Speaker 1: is what's missing from so much of modern thought. So
Speaker 1: this business of connecting is very interesting from a dahouse
Speaker 1: perspective because it can be interpreted and it should be
Speaker 1: two different ways, or not two different ways, but on
Speaker 1: two different levels. The first is the non duel, which
Speaker 1: is to say that you know, everything is one, everything
Speaker 1: is connected um and and you know we were talking,
Speaker 1: I'll come back to the other in a second. We
Speaker 1: were talking about loudso a moment ago and about this
Speaker 1: you know, lads, of means the old Boy, the Old Master,
Speaker 1: the great sage um. And it's it's really a title
Speaker 1: more than it is a name. He had a family name,
Speaker 1: but who knows if it's real. But you know, his job, this,
Speaker 1: this putative author of this book that we both love
Speaker 1: so much. His job at the time of the Eastern
Speaker 1: Joe dynasty, so let's call it five or six b
Speaker 1: c uh, maybe maybe a little bit later. Um. His
Speaker 1: job was he was a fortune teller. He was a
Speaker 1: librarian and an oracle. This is how I render him,
Speaker 1: by the way, in my novel in and I had
Speaker 1: great fun with it. But years long years, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which by the way, probably refers to his Burmese origins.
Speaker 1: He may have come from, well, he was supposed to
Speaker 1: have come from the state of Chew and in those
Speaker 1: days before there was a China. Um. China didn't come
Speaker 1: around for another three hundred years or so. Um. And
Speaker 1: and that area is what now we would call me Nimar.
Speaker 1: I just came back from there anyway, So, lads, it
Speaker 1: was a fortune teller and and his job might have been,
Speaker 1: and this speaks to your question or your point about
Speaker 1: connection to the world. His job was likely to advise
Speaker 1: the king. I remember, this was not an emperor. This
Speaker 1: was a hedgemon, a a a a ba. He was
Speaker 1: a strongman, a local king, one of maybe uh some
Speaker 1: hundreds that existed in the area we now called China.
Speaker 1: These were fieftims, small kingdoms, and and so his his
Speaker 1: king was likely to have said to him something like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't have enough troops to protect our entire border,
Speaker 1: but I'm worried that we're going to be attacked by
Speaker 1: a neighboring kingdom or somebody else. Tell me where should
Speaker 1: I put my troops. And this is an example of
Speaker 1: this that I often used talking about this, and you know,
Speaker 1: so Lauds. It would have gone down to the river
Speaker 1: and the capital of this this dynasty was at that
Speaker 1: time and and low young, and an early capital of China.
Speaker 1: And and he he would have watched the river, and
Speaker 1: he might have seen, for example, some mica in the
Speaker 1: sand at the bottom of the clear running water. And
Speaker 1: he might have known that that micah or some other
Speaker 1: little glimmering mineral that he saw on the sand came
Speaker 1: from the high morain, high up, uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: the mountains above this kingdom. And he would know that
Speaker 1: if he saw those little shimmering bits of rock in
Speaker 1: the water, it meant that they were being washed down
Speaker 1: from the mountains, which in turn meant that the snow
Speaker 1: was melting. And if the snow was melting early, that
Speaker 1: meant that mountain passes that might be normally impenetrable at
Speaker 1: a certain time of year would now be available possible.
Speaker 1: And so he might rush back to the king and say, hey,
Speaker 1: put the soldiers to the north, that's where the mountains are.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's going to be a surprise attack.
Speaker 1: Get ready, you know, for ambush them. And so the king,
Speaker 1: you know, would listen to him, because he would trust him,
Speaker 1: and though he was wise and observed nature nature and
Speaker 1: human nature, and make the artificial distinction, just to make
Speaker 1: the point. And and so the king would go ahead
Speaker 1: and put his troops there, and you know it would
Speaker 1: work out. These bad guys would come through the past,
Speaker 1: they'd be slaughtered, the kingdom would be saved, lots would
Speaker 1: get another hundred concubines and some tales of gold, and right, right,
Speaker 1: So so one sense of connecting with nature was to
Speaker 1: be watchful and sensitive to it, right to see our
Speaker 1: own fates in the melting of the snow and the
Speaker 1: sign of the river. But another very very specifically Daoist
Speaker 1: idea which is regrettably absent from the Judaeo Christian model,
Speaker 1: although there are certainly some Jewish and Christian people who
Speaker 1: espouse this idea is the idea of stewardship. So the
Speaker 1: idea that we would not be given this world as
Speaker 1: our sandbox are playpen, but rather we would be given
Speaker 1: by dint of our intellect and our abilities, we would
Speaker 1: be given stewardship of it. And this isn't This is
Speaker 1: an idea that goes back to Neolithic tribal you know
Speaker 1: pro too religious times, goes back to the South Pacific
Speaker 1: Islanders and their chieftains and their chiefdoms. It goes back
Speaker 1: to a lot of Aboriginal society. The Aboriginal people of
Speaker 1: Australia still have these ideas very clearly about you know,
Speaker 1: our our role in things, not just that we are
Speaker 1: connected and will suffer at the hands of nature with
Speaker 1: a capital end, but that there is a binary back
Speaker 1: and forth flow of traffic between us in nature and
Speaker 1: that we are so actually part of it that to
Speaker 1: say us in nature is to create a dual structure
Speaker 1: that doesn't even exist. Our role in the play is
Speaker 1: to be stewards. I love that about daasand and it's
Speaker 1: and it's very clearly connected to deep ecology and other
Speaker 1: things that have come about much more recently. And by
Speaker 1: the way, there are Dallas scholars who don't like this
Speaker 1: idea at all and think that what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: very much bushful thinking on the part of an American
Speaker 1: guy living at the you know, on the edge of
Speaker 1: environmental cataclysm. But there are other scholars who's support excellent.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the show. This
Speaker 1: has been a really enjoyable conversation. I think we'll keep
Speaker 1: in touch of the email because I've got a bunch
Speaker 1: more questions for you over time. Your your book comes
Speaker 1: out tomorrow. Now when listeners listen to this, it won't
Speaker 1: be tomorrow. It will already be out. So it's called
Speaker 1: Yen and it's uh, it's it's a novel that weaves
Speaker 1: a lot of these Taoist concepts in And I really
Speaker 1: I'm not a percent finished. I'm about of the way
Speaker 1: through and I have really enjoyed it. I think it's
Speaker 1: a it's a love story, it's got the Taoist concepts
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's got some humor in it, so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really well written and I encourage
Speaker 1: the listeners to check it out and we'll have links
Speaker 1: to that as well as the Doubt, a Ching and
Speaker 1: other things on the show notes. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me up. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Take care bye. You can learn more about un row
Speaker 1: and this podcast at one new feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: un row. That's why you n R O U. Thanks