okay now Taoism begins with a person by the name of Lao Tzu and we don't know much about this person it's very difficult for us to to say what is historically true about him or not simply because we don't have a lot of archaeological evidence for him we don't know when he lived we don't know where he was from we don't even know how long he lived although the Scriptures do tell us that he lived to a hundred and sixty years old and and they kind of date him around the 5th and 6th century BCE so I'm just giving you some loose dates here to say that he may have been born around 600 around 500 we don't know precisely because of that maybe there was a person that taught this religion somebody had to start it right so when I say that lotsa is the founder I mean that somebody had to start the religion of Taoism who that person was or who those people were some people think that this is a group of people who started it we're just gonna call Lots up and say this is the religion that they taught or he taught most of the pictures show lots of riding on an ox because of his end of life story that I'll tell you in just a minute so according to the scriptures Lanza was born of a virgin when his mother was actually standing out in a field one day she looked up into the sky and she saw a comment overhead and the comments in Chinese culture indicate that something something was going to happen it was a sign of an omen that something major was about to take place and it's not really clear how those omens worked but if it was a white comment that would indicate that it was a good omen and if it was a red comment they were in indicate it was a bad omen was coming so she looks up she sees this white comet indicating that something good is about to happen on earth well in that moment she conceives of lotsa and therefore she you know gives birth to a child she actually kept him in her womb for many years until eventually he was actually born as an old man and so actually the word lotsa means old man and this could be one of the reasons why that is the case Taoist are trying to indicate that you know he was born an old man and then lived for a hundred and sixty years teaching people about Taoism you see why this is kind of hard to place right we don't know much about the historical Lanza but these are the stories that are told about him so he's born an old man he continues to teach thousand four hundred and sixty years and then at the end of those that time period he then leaves China riding on an ox now this is why the pictures of lotsa always show him riding on an ox because maybe that was the last thing that the Chinese saw before he left that therefore it's kind of burned into their memory so lotsa is writing to the edge of the Chinese boundaries when the guards recognize him he and he's already famous but and he's been around for so many years that they recognize him know like hey aren't you lotsa and he says yes I'm leaving and they're like you can't leave you're the wisest man in China we need you like you're here to teach us all this is truths and these things that are so important so he says well I've already done my teaching what else can I do if you haven't learned it yet you know you're probably not gonna get it I'm out of here and they're like well we're not gonna let you leave unless you write down your teachings but he says no right if I if I just write down my teachings and if you're not gonna listen to me when I am Alive if I just write them down you're just gonna put that book on a shelf and you're never gonna read that book so in other words you know I'm not gonna write it down if you're not gonna listen to me you're not gonna read it either so therefore I just says no I'm not gonna write it down well they insisted they said well then we're not gonna let you leave and so but grudgingly and after a much dispute he finally writes down the teachings that are known as the daodejing and this becomes the central scripture of Taoism so he does write things down notice that a lot of the founders don't write anything down Confucius never everything down Buddha never wrote anything down jesus never already thing down Muhammad never wrote anything down and maybe for different reasons but lots I think it's just expressing this fact that look if I write it down you're probably not gonna read it you have to actually teach this to people where you can actually talk to them and you can see that when I actually read through the data Jing you're gonna get this sense that there's something going on as he's writing this down he's almost like angry as he's writing it you tell me if you don't sense that when I read through the first chapter so you're right some of the noticing and that becomes scriptures of that wasn't from that day forward then according to one version of the story he then continues to ride that ox up the Himalayan mountains and ascends into heaven where he is now treated as a deity in fact he's called Lord Lao the human incarnation of the Dao to kind of indicate his divine nature the idea here is that the Dao became a human being born of that virgin in that field that did that fateful day taught people about himself about the Dao for 160 years and then he rides this ox up the mountains and ascends into heaven where he returns to being bent down again so that's the the view that many Taoist have regarding this person there is another version of that story however this says that he didn't actually go up the Himalayan mountains he went perhaps around the Himalayan mountains and then descended south into India where he started teaching his religion there but in India he was known by a different name can you guess who the Buddha the reason why Dallas tell that version of the story is because when Buddhism makes its way back into China five hundred years later five hundred years after loud sigh had left there like this kind of sounds familiar to us like we recognize this sounds a lot like our guy Lao Tzu and they put two and two together and realize that lots of lived around the time of the Buddha and therefore maybe he left China to go to India to teach his religion there and that's why Buddhism and Taoism have so much in common you'll see this common similarities throughout this this lecture but the Buddhists hate that story because they're like no right the Buddha was an Indian he was a warrior noble he was born of the Kisatchie a tribe in northern India and lived his life his childhood in India in the in the palaces he wasn't some old dude and he wasn't Chinese so you know as Buddhists don't like that version of the story but the reason why the DAO is tell it is to kind of indicate the connection between all of these religions so that's the version that they teach well what did he do when he was alive for those 160 years he was the curator of books in the Jo dynasty so his job was to work in a library they didn't have libraries in every city not like here you Benjamin Franklin for starting libraries around America but in the ancient time period they'd usually have one library in the capital city where if you wanted to go look at a book you'd have to travel at the capital city go to the library read the scroll there and then close it up and put it back on the shelf so that other people could read it you'd have to memorize these texts in other words books were very rare back then because they were so fragile and so rare too hard to copy you know how do you copying a single book by hand in that age period so his job was to do that very thing he was the curator of the books so when an old scroll would get brittle and you can imagine this paper starts to pull apart and therefore you can't read it anymore might have missing chunks his job was to write the the book on to a new scroll or you could read it and it would then last for the next hundred years or however long parchment or papyrus or whatever they were around with last and that might indicate why louts is considered to be one of the most wise people in China it's because he's read all of the books of China he's read all of their philosophy all of their theology all of their history so he just knows a lot more than most people because he's spent his years writing word-for-word each book and therefore he just knows the stuff that could be the reason why he's regarded as so wise now he is a contemporary with Confucius and the Buddha but there's no record that any of these guys ever met one another Dallas however believed that Confucius did come to lanza while he was working in one of the libraries and so they say that Confucius came as a young man because he had heard about the wisdom and stature of this great sage named lotsa so he goes to go meet this guy and when they're talking about their different philosophies they got into some disputes about how they viewed their religions or their philosophies and and particularly about you know human nature and so eventually lots of kind of kicked Confucius out saying no no no you're way too strict and that's that's a kind of a slam on the Confucian is to say no your religion is way too harsh you should be more peaceful right in other words Dow ISM is the right way get out of here Confucius so there's no evidence that that story is real right it's certainly not how Confucius is view their master but that was to tell that and there one of their stories so the famous tapestry actually in China shows these three people sitting around a pot of vinegar and each of them have scales on their face right Confucius in the Buddha to represent their negative view of human nature that is they actually think of human nature's being flawed Confucius thinks that were broken and we need to be fixed the buddha sees the world is just full of suffering and therefore we have to achieve Nirvana to escape it but Laos is sitting there with a big smile on his face to kind of indicate life's good in other words everything is happy right I can taste the vinegar and it doesn't it's not sour to me so this represents his view of human nature he thinks that humans are naturally good and if we just simply leave people free to follow the DAO they will be at their best when they are free to do to fulfill their nature so imagine if we were to take people in our classes at Rock Valley College and assign you a major to half of you we would assign engineering to the other half we're gonna assign math majors okay so you're gonna become math teachers you're gonna become engineers would you accept this probably not right because the the most of you some of you probably can't do math or some of you don't even like engineering and therefore you're not gonna be very good at it what the Dallas are saying is that each one of you has like a natural set of gifts and talents that you should pursue and if you pursue those natural talents you'll be rewarded for that people will want to you know pay you to do your work whatever it is that you do so let's say you are good at math well then people will be like I want to go to that guy's math class because he's so good right or you know if you write poetry and people will pay money to listen to you recite poetry or if you're a great musician or a great singer or a great artist that people will pay money to come hear your music or to see your artwork and therefore it's because you're good at it that people respond in kind but if you're not good at poetry then you shouldn't do it right you're not going to make any money you're going to be frustrated it's not in your nature so notice that your personal dhow your personal nature is not something that you get to choose it's something you have to discover about yourself so you have to kind of say is it like okay Who am I in and what are my natural gifts and talents what is my Dow saying and then if you follow that Dow you'll be hugely successful in life you know whatever you do you'll be successful but if you go against your Dow you're not going to be doing it right so I'm saying this from personal experience I can't write poetry I don't understand poetry if I were to cite recite poetry to you guys I'm pretty sure that some of your heads would just explode in your homes and I don't want that to happen so I'm not gonna do that I can't dance I know that from experience I'm saying that to you because I know that and because I am gonna dance for you a little bit later on and it's gonna get really ugly in here so if you're wondering why there's blood all over the walls it's because my dancing is that horrific so just be warmed okay that you're gonna see some pretty gross stuff later on today but I am good at drumming right that's something if you don't know that about me I probably should have mentioned this in one of my previous lectures I actually got all sorts of first place awards and drumming and percussion I actually played at the House of Blues and and and performed from you know several different bands and stuff like this I'm good at drumming but that's just something it comes naturally to me I don't have to try and you say well wait a minute if you're a good drummer shouldn't you be a good dancer I'm like no right you know dancing is not the same thing as holding two pairs of sticks and being able to hit all sorts of different ostinatos and rhythms dancing involves a lot of movement that drummers just don't normally do so I can't dance but I can play drums I can play rhythms that's that's what you've got to figure out for yourself what are you good at what you know and if you are good at then people will want to go do you you know pay you to do your thing am I good at teaching philosophy you decide if you take another class with me that might be I'm doing a good job at this if someone is a really bad teacher no one's gonna sign up for their classes I think you guys already know that so what they are trying to get us to do is to follow our Dow and that's really what thou ISM is all about so one of the most important concepts in Taoism is the concept of yin and yang yin and yang are the two forces of nature that express themselves in opposite yet complimentary principles of life so think of them as like opposite ends of the same spectrum they're complementary and that they're all along the same spectrum but they're kind of like the two opposite ends of that so they're always kind of pulling apart from each other kind of like a tug-of-war if you will now the words yin and yang originally referred to the light side and the dark side of a hill so if you can picture like when the Sun rises half of the hill is going to be lit up and they called that young and the other half is in shadows they called that Yin when the Sun rose overhead then the whole hill would be lit up and they would call that young and then when the Sun set in the evening the other half of the hill was lit up and the other half was in shadow and they would call that yin and young and then when the Sun set everything is shrouded in darkness and it's all again and that kind of represents their view of the Dow that the Dow is always moved fluctuating in these forces of yin and yang that represent different aspects of our daily life and so what you want to do is to kind of feel that fluctuation of yin and yang and then maybe you all understand where the Dow is leading you in that moment we'll talk more about those concepts in just a second but here's a picture of the yin-yang symbol it's called the Tai Chi Chuan and in Chinese and the tattoos chuan is representative of the yin forces and the young forces swirling around can you picture this symbol like going around in circles now notice that there is a black dot inside the white portion and there's a white dot inside the black portion and that represents the seed of the opposite that is there's a little bit of yin in every bit of young just like if I turn on the light I create shadows so therefore there's always a shadow where there's a light and there's a little bit of young in every bit of yen in darkness and there there is no complete darkness even the Stars or the moon are gonna reflect some light back to you therefore these two things are complementary you can't have one without the other so that's the the forces of yin and Yong and if we give you examples of these I think you can pretty much see how they work in all forms of nature so Jung represents the positive forces and by positive I don't mean good I mean that it's positing something it is the presence of things it is the active principle it is the aggressive principle so it represents things like light which is the presence of photons daytime the active part of the day male who is considered the more aggressive sex in China and very traditional gender assignment so men are considered more aggressive than females hot right he is when you accelerate particles in the air it becomes warmer so when you rub your hands like this together you're actually generating heat and that's that's young sky is the moving part of the earth where everything moves the the clouds move the birds fly people walk around summer is the active part of the year when people get out of hibernation they go out on vacation and then birth is the presence of life the beginning of organism sound is the presence of noise as I'm doing for you here so you can see that these are the active principles the aggressive principles whereas yang is the opposite of each one of those Yin represents the inactive or the passive parts of nature the absence of things the negation of things negation not in the sense of negative but in the sense of than the absence of things to negate to something darkness is the absence of light nighttime is the passive part of the day when most people go to sleep unless you're a college student females are considered the more passive of the two sexes cold is when things become cool they become more static don't they when water freezes it becomes ice it doesn't move much it's frozen solid so therefore cold represents the the passive part this the steady part earth the steady part of the earth it doesn't move right there what occasionally there's a vault no because there's always a bit a little little bit of young and every bit of yen but for the most part the earth remains stationary winter when people go into hibernation they become more passive they become dormant they sleep more death the absence of life silence the absence of sound now there's one one pair of concepts that yin and Jung do not refer to and you need to understand this eun-young represent every aspect of nature that has these active and passive principles but it doesn't apply to good and evil many people think that the Union symbol is like the forces of good and evil swirling around fighting each other all the time so yin and yang are always at war with each other that is not Taoism whatsoever that sounds more like a zoo last rien ISM and we're gonna be talking about that in our next chapter so hang on to that for later because we will talk more about the fight between good and evil in the zoo a strain religion so the yin yang actually represent balance that is what the Taoist are trying to get us to see is that you want to be in harmony with yin and Yan therefore it's not that you want to be both good and bad that doesn't make sense goodness is the balance between yin and Jung and evil if they had a word for it would be going to the extremes of two too much young or too much Yin and so if you go to those extremes that's where there's an imbalance and they want to correct that so therefore yin and yang are things that are both good in their own respects but it's the balance between the two or goodness lies if they had a word for goodness in Chinese and they don't so therefore those concepts don't really apply here so let's look at examples of that light and dark if this room were full of photons what would happen well first of all you wouldn't be able to see because the camera would be overexposed and therefore you would just see the light white light I wouldn't be able to see because my irises wouldn't be able to focus enough light out to see that the stuff in front of me I wouldn't even be able to see you know the computer in front of me so therefore too much young is bad too much light is is evil but too much darkness is if there were no photons in this room then the room would become peat pitch-black I wouldn't be able to see anything in front of me you would be able to see me in the video and therefore too much jinn is evil goodness resides in the balance between those two where there's just enough light in the room where you can see me but not so much light that you're blinded by me anything is truth hot and cold right if you take it to the extremes this centre of the Sun is like I don't know 10 million degrees Fahrenheit and therefore you can't nothing lives in that extreme temperature right it's just all of incinerates so that's not good that's evil that's too much young but what does the coldest temperature we could possibly get to would be something like negative 273 degrees Celsius I think I don't remember what the number is but it's called the absolute zero in Kelvin scale so if you're taking Kelvin that's the coldest temperature we can possibly reach and scientists say that if we ever reached that temperature all time would stop because nothing would move everything would just be frozen solid so we live in that sleep balance where we're close enough to the Sun to be warmed by it but not so close that we're incinerated by it so we live in that sweet spot about 70 degrees Fahrenheit so therefore the do you want to live in the fluctuation of yen and Jung as we go through summer and winter night and day cold and hot and and therefore it's that fluctuation that we should be living in okay so lots of writes a book called the daodejing and that book was allegedly written by him however the oldest copy we have of it it dates to the 4th century BCE it's about 350 BCE that we have an oldest copy and and that copy is slightly different than all the other copies that we have so we don't even know if it's even the first copy or if it's if it's a derivative of the daodejing in Chinese down Beijing means the classical book about the way and its power you can also be translated as the path and the potency given that we don't have like strict definitions or words in English that match these Chinese words so it's hard to translate them the word Dao in Chinese means either way or path it can also stand for truth or reality in other words the word doesn't really match any of our English words so we just say you could say it's the way you should live your life where it's the path in which you should walk the dow is the way of things so the the path if you will day means virtue or potency the Dao de Jing is that you you experience a kind of power that comes from living virtuously and I can't think of an English word that means that the power that comes from living virtuously I you know I I don't know what English concept to associate with that so we just used the word day to reflect it the day is when you are living in the doubt when you are going with nature you're gonna experience a kind of power that's gonna make you more powerful more successful in life more virtuous more good if you will so when you go against the doubt you're doing things wrong and therefore you're gonna end up in immorality that's where immorality comes from into Dallas worldview going against the Dow the best way to illustrate the day is to talk about canoeing I don't know if you guys have ever been canoeing but picture yourself going in a canoe and you're paddling upstream you know you're like paddling paddling paddling you're like barely moving up the river why because the rivers are pushing you backwards but you're like working your your butt off trying to get yourself to go forward in a stream that's trying to get you to go that way whereas if you turn the canoe around and you go downstream it's like you know one stroke whoa you know it's it's it's a power that you can't really quantify and so that's what the day is it represents the power that comes from living in the DAO that once you're in tune with the DAO you're kind of going with nature you're going downstream and then the DAO pushes you so that's kind of what they're what they're trying to get out with the daodejing by understanding Taoism helps you to live a life inconsistent in in line with the DAO such that you achieve great success through through its manifestations so the daodejing is a practical guide for living in harmony with the dow and notice that I use the word dow and universe and nature all interchangeably because the Dow is nature it is the universe this is a pan theistic religion and therefore we're not really talking about a God up in heaven so the Dow is the universe it is nature well it's not a personal God if you're picturing like a guy with arms and legs and a beard no it's the force of nature that kind of underlies all of reality so everything is comprised of the dow in in forms of yin and yang male and female hot and cold day and night and everything is is part of those two aspects of the dow all trying to achieve this balance that doubts are trying to achieve is their religious goal harmony with nature so we can use the word out to mean any of those things according to the daodejing the dow itself is nameless it's beyond any description because you can't describe the universe try that maybe I should make that an essay question for you guys in in three pages are less describe the universe I gave me hi how would you answer nice you know I don't know what's where to start you know I you know as you can't describe the universe you can't describe to doubt it is beyond description because that was recognized that our language is man-made it's constructed based on the way we see the world and therefore there's something wrong with the words that don't match the thing and that's why they want to say the Dow is nameless if you're thinking that the three-letter word Dao represents the Dow that's not the Dow it's the word that we use to describe the Dow but it's not the Dow itself that is some people might think that the word Dow is the Dell and it's not right though they're just three squiggly lines I could put like three random you know squiggly lines on the page and that wouldn't make it anymore the Dow than the 3d squiggly lines da and O so so what the Dow's are trying to communicate is don't be focused on the words instead understand what the words are pointing to and understand that thing you we talked about this in doubt in Buddhism - where we're trying to look at the moon not the finger that's pointing to the moon so Dallas don't really care about the Scriptures and you really sense that from loud so when he writes the daodejing the opening line to the daodejing is this the dow that can be spoken of is not the eternal dow now do you understand how ironic that is that he's writing a book about the dow and the first words he puts on the paper are these you can't talk about the dow and then he goes on for 87 chapters talking about the doubt there's a sense of irony in the in the wording here they just you know it you can't really understand it unless you have a sense of humor about it right there he's he's almost playing with us as he talks about the dow right he's telling us that you can't talk about the dow but he then goes on and talks about it and the reason I think why that's so prevalent is to say that you might confuse the book for the Dow no the book isn't the point it's not about these squiggly lines on a piece of paper it's about the the lived experience feeling the down moving within you and having that be the source of your life right the book might help you don't feel that but you need to feel that nature because the book is just pointing to the feeling it's not the point so you just you know you're supposed to read the daodejing he likes to throw it away that was nice okay but then you've got to go out and live the devil so for Dallas it's very much about the experience with with the doubt itself so I'm gonna read you that opening paragraph and kind of convey some of the teachings that there's something more going on here than just what the words are saying so here's here's a different translation of the daodejing it says a way that can be followed is not the constant way and notice that the word way is the word now so here they just translate it as way although that may not quite suffice what the meaning of the word really is the DAO that can be followed is not a constant Dao a name that can be named is not the constant named nameless it is the beginning of heaven on earth but named it is a mother of myriad of creatures meaning if the doubt doesn't have any name then it's this great mystery of which you know all things kind of come from heaven and earth it's just the beginning of all things but when you name it you start categorizing everything you stay say we get these are humans right Deezer these are mammals these are you know reptiles or I'm sorry I'm you know trying to categorize everything and and those categories are just made-up concepts but but that's how we identify like the difference between male or female or human and other animals or insects or plants and we try to make these these distinctions and they're not really good distinctions after all what is a sea cucumber is it a animal or is it a plant you know a mollusk like I don't even know anymore like that I can't even tell are they plant or animal these categories don't really work so once we categorize things we've we've messed it up so there's a mystery to it that it's not it's not clear what the words really refer to now what else is doing in this passage by saying you can't talk about the down right you can't give it the words it's indicating that you've got to feel the DAO moving within you to know what it is you've got experience it for yourself because the words aren't gonna do it that's why it says I can't talk about the DAO I can't name it I can't describe it for you those things are not the real Dow so so throw away the book but I think if you listen to this in the original Chinese language you'll sense that there's something else going on here that you can't get in in reading the English translation because we lose something in translation so I'm gonna read this to you in the Chinese language it's the same passage that I just quoted to you but I want you to hear it in Chinese and you tell me if you don't feel something happening to you so forget the meaning of the words forget what he's saying and just listen to the daodejing in Chinese and tell me if you don't pick up on something going on here here's that here's the daodejing chapter one dow Qingdao they jumped out mean coming Fay jianming gyros was kind of like a rhythm a beat to it almost like just like a dance to it your second is Dow cut down hey jump down me tell me hey I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I told you my dancing is terrible are you guys okay I think there's luckily no one in their room so well I think we're okay you get the point right it just makes you want to dance and so what louse is trying to say is that that's what the Dow is it's not these words on a page of these words are meaningless or if they do have any meaning they're their only meaning is in what you understand in the concept when you experience those things so he says you've got to feel the down moving to you you've got to just let it move you this is very similar actually to music so I told you I was a musician and I studied music engineering at Ball State University for two years and it destroyed my my appreciation for music partly because you learn music theory you learned that first of all all music is the same when you listen to the radio oh my gosh every song on the radio is like one five four five one and if any of you studied music you know what I'm talking about it's the same pattern over and over again and when you learn those patterns you can like dissect all of the different chords and all of the different you know structures to music it just all starts to sound the same to you and so eventually I was just like ah I can't hear it anymore because it was just it was so monotonous to me so what I have to do now if I want to appreciate music is I have to turn off that part of my brain that learned all those things in college and just feel the music in other words I can't sit there and go oh this is you know this is no key of D or you know this is a minor transition I just have to like listen turn off my brain and just kind of go mmm I feel it right you know I'm so sorry about the dancing again I can't dance the point is is that you've got to feel the music and just turn your brain off and let it guide you that's Taoism that's what they're trying to do with this and so I think even his passage illustrates that with the opening chapter of the daodejing so another passage from the data unit says when the way is expressed verbally we say such things as how bland and tasteless it is we look for it but there's not enough to be seen we listen for it there's not enough to be heard but when it is put to use it is inexhaustible so when you feel the doubt right it's power just emanates within you and it just flows out of you have you ever have you ever been to like a poetry contest or like a rap battle or just people just kind of get into the the spirit of things and then they just it's just these amazing things come out of their mouths and they're just they're in it but if you if you try to like look for the right poem or you're trying to like you know you know construct your the best rap you're gonna mess it up because it's not natural you're trying to make it formulaic so therefore you know people say oh how bland that is and there's a lot of music that's out there it's very cookie cutter music because someone just wrote that for the artists the artists time you're gonna write music anymore that sort of frustrating is that there's all these pop people I'm sorry I'm gonna get off on a tangent again so therefore you have to kind of just feel it and then when you do then your music is gonna be so moving that people will swarm to your concerts and listen to it that's what it is like living in the DAO so notice that in this business it indicates that the dow is the origin of all things because the dow is the universe everything comes from the dow the the creation story in Taoism is like a cosmic egg that once cracked in half and when it cracked in half that formed the tooth the two elements of yin and yang and those two things have been trying to reach balance ever again so that the egg can reform so that's what they think happened in the universe and it created all these spiral eddies like galaxies and and solar systems and you know the moon around the earth and the you know the day and the night and the humans in the you know the tornadoes and stuff and all of those things are trying to reach their balance but that's what the religion is of that was trying to do is to follow this natural way now since you can't describe the doubt they instead like to use pictures instead so if you can't write about it then show me it have you heard the saying of pictures worth a thousand words if that's true then don't write about it just show me a picture so they love to use imagery to try to capture what the DAO really is now one of the most common images is water water represents the Dow because it's very fluid it's flexible it can fill any container and it fills it to the max right it doesn't leave any part undone so therefore water is very adaptable its fluid and it's very powerful too so notice that you know well not only do we need water for sustenance we without water life all all life dies but it's also powerful it can you know you can move mountains you can actually have a flood come in and wipe out whole cities it can take down trees you know water is powerful when in large quantities have you ever been in the ocean you ever felt the waves of the ocean pressing upon your body you can't stand against that it's that powerful it's also sometimes portrayed as a woman because women are considered to be very graceful in Chinese culture so therefore a woman is mysterious she has a power that we can't really define you know when my wife walks into the room I'm suddenly powerless against her right it is like I'll do anything for you whatever you want I'll marry you you know so therefore there's this mystery to it that you can't really describe and and an elegance if you will again women are considered to be very graceful in Chinese culture a family is another good description of the DAO in the sense that notice we have a word for an empty space isn't it kind of weird the the valley the word valley talks about the empty space between two mountains you can only have a valley when there's two mountains right next to it and that's what a valley is the empty space where we live so there are passages in the daodejing to talk about we live in those empty spaces that's where the doubt is that's where we live when you when you see pictures or or paintings that Taoist do in China all of these paintings are pictures of nature aren't they they're pictures that represent nature in its most beautiful state and when I show these pictures to students I ask them okay you know what are these pictures of and they're like oh yeah mountains and valleys and trees and I said what's missing in these pictures and they say Oh humans and and I say what our Western picture is usually about and they're like people right there's people we in Western culture we're always drawing paintings of humans and or these humans are like the center part of the painting there may be trees in the background but it's about the people and the doubts are like it's not about you there are actually people in these paintings that I'm showing you but they're very hard to see I wonder if you can spot them and the reason why the people are so hard to spot in these paintings is to indicate the Taoist teachings that it's not about you it's about the universe it's about the DAO and you are part of the universe so yeah it is partly about you but you're not the center focus it's about living in harmony with Adele so it's not about humans dominating nature with our you know cement roads and our you know rubber plastic things or you know artificial houses and and drywall stuff no it's about living in harmony with nature so that you let nature do its thing and then you live in harmony with that nature so does want to go back to this kind of state of nature where we're in balance where we're in harmony with it so the daodejing says nothing under heaven is more softer or more yielding than water but when it attacks things hard and resistant there isn't one of them that can prevail so notice that water is very powerful as a as a destroyer that you know you can have a hurricane or a flood or tsunami come and just wipe out whole villages cities to forests even mountains right the Colorado River formed the Grand Canyon the thing about that that that trickle of water that was going down the river formed this huge canyon over the centuries and that's how powerful water is but yet I take that same water and I put it in my glass I drink some of it and it fills my it makes me live right he helps the fluids in my body to move this is how the fluids moving my body I guess another passage talks about the concepts of yin and yang opposite forces of nature where it says when all under heaven knows beauty as Beauty already there is ugliness when everyone knows goodness this accounts for badness being and non-being give birth to each other difficult and ease complete each other so notice how in each of those pairs you you can't have one without the other if you designate these things as beautiful than the things that are not like that are labeled as not beautiful so the two are connected beauty and ugly kind of go hand in hand and that once you've defined something as beautiful you've already defined what is not beautiful or when you define something as good then you know what is evil that is you you can't know what is good without knowing what is evil otherwise it would just all look the same to you being and non-being give birth to each other difficult and easy their contrast I have students who come to me and they say oh are you are your quizzes difficult or easy and I always give them the same answer yes that is they're both difficult and easy depends on who you are as a student are you a student that struggles with quizzes then yeah they're gonna be difficult but are you a student who aces quizzes then they're gonna be pretty easy I don't know where you're at and it also kind of depends on you know what you've learned in life so maybe you've learned things about religion that might make this class easier if you've never studied religion that makes this class a little bit harder but for each person it's just it's going to vary and I can't gauge where you're at on that spectrum so difficult and easy to complete each other because something is only difficult if it's compared to something that's easier than it he goes on to say that long and short form each other high and low fulfill each other tone and voice harmonize with each other front and back follow each other it is ever thus so think about that right high is only in reference to something that's lower than it long and short something is long if it's longer than something shorter than it and front and back right there is a front here and a back here but if you take away the front you're kind of taking away the back you can't have one without the other that there is no two-dimensional object because it doesn't have a front door back you get a point for these reasons the sage dwells in the affairs of non action and carries out a doctrine without words notice how complicated our words are there right as I'm talking about front and back we're asking the question what is what counts is my back all right turn about my check - right but you know if you were to shave my butt off where I still have a bat well yeah there would then there be there the back would be whatever's below the butt right and then what have you shaved that off then that would be the these words don't really fit on to nature because there's not like a back or a front we're just labeling this side front and that side back why it's just arbitrary right nor itself there's just arbitrary turns to say it that way it said why don't we put our map upside down right why isn't the South Pole on the top always in the North Pole on the bottom it's arbitrary we just chose this because most of the landmass is in the North so we put that one on top to say uh you know better than the stuff ons in the south or something like that and these are just words that don't really that don't really comply with what the Dow is trying to get at so he says the sage dwells in the affairs of non-action and that's one of the most important concepts of Taoism so the most important concept is the dow but the concept of wuwei is the religious solution it can be translated as the effortless action the absence of doing or no unnecessary action action with no action these these terms don't really translate well into English do you see why we don't have a word for this in our language the Chinese have a concept of like doing things without any effort and that's one way it's that you're not trying to do something you're just letting it happen so farming is a good example of this you can't make plants grow there's a famous story in the Taoist scriptures where a farmer has he's too old to farm himself so he has his sons all go out into the field and they they tell the soil and they plant the seeds and they they have to wait for all the plants that grow up so they go on vacation while the father stays at home when the boys come back from their vacation they return and they can't find their father and they're looking for him they they see him in the field and he's actually pulling up all of the the vegetables that are coming out of the ground and then like what are you doing dad and he's like I'm helping the plants to grow faster so that we can pull our harvests out earlier and make a little bit money earlier this year and they're like no you can't make the plants grow faster all he's done is up rooted to plants and killed them so this is something you have to understand in nature you can't make people be something they're not you can't make people be religious you can't make people you know follow your you know version of sexuality or your norm of cultural practices right people have to identify that they have to they have to feel that what from themselves they can't you can't make someone be good you know if you force someone to give to charity that's not goodness so way is saying you just have to let back and let things grow naturally yep I can't make you learn this material I I've tried when I first started teaching I would try to like make people learn it and they and some people were just like no in fact the harder I pushed them the more they ran away because if you try to force someone to become a college student some people just aren't ready for it I'm talking from experience when I was in college I was not very good at college because I was goofing off I I went to too many parties say you know goofed around I didn't study didn't read my textbooks and I got FS it was a ball state actually I just started getting FS because I I didn't care about learning those things I was so burnt out it I was just like I don't even want to do these things and so one of my girlfriends at the time said well maybe Brian maybe college maybe you're just not cut out for college and I was like that is so offensive so I broke up with her but the point is I thought about that afterwards and I was like maybe she's right you know that maybe I wasn't ready for college yet I was still in my adolescence I was still like 19 or 20 and I was just like you know maybe I'm not ready for college yet so the next year I took the year off and I came back to college after a year of being just myself for a year and then suddenly I got all A's cuz I was like I'm going at this and I'm going at at full throttle and and that's when I found philosophy and I just started to thrive in my in my particular course of action do you see what I'm saying the whoo way is just sort of letting people grow naturally if you try to make someone learn material you're just gonna find resistance but if you let them grow naturally they will we will come to maturity in their own time you can't make a plan grow faster than it it naturally does so think about how we treat chickens in this country right or or cows or pigs sometimes we pump those chickens full of steroids to make them Meteor we've made chicken so much larger than they are naturally that a lot of chickens can't even hold up their own weight that there are tiny little stem legs can't hold up the weight of their bodies so they end up collapsing and breaking their legs this is unnatural folks what are we doing my gosh pumping steroids into chickens and then eating that don't you think that maybe some of those chemicals could get into our system and then suddenly we're having all these weird side effects kind of wonder if that's not what's wrong with us right now but there's something unnatural about the way we've raised animals in this country it's it's just not it's just not natural so the daodejing says in the pursuit of learning one knows more every day but in the pursuit of the way that is the DAO one does less every day one does less and less until one does nothing at all and when one does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone it is always through meddling that the Empire is one should you meddle and you are not equal to the task of winning the Empire so nuts there's two things he's saying in this passage one is that the wrong way means that you try to don't try to do things just do things and you'll find eventually you'll get it all done but if you're like trying to like fit all these things enough you know today I'm gonna like do this this this and this and this and then you can't get any of it done because you're so stressed about trying to get all those things that you're just gonna wear yourself you're gonna burn out so that's one thing he says just do less until you eventually find yourself being more effective I think Stephen Covey once said the quality of your yeses is determined by the quantity of your nose the more things you say no to the more likely the times that you say yes you're actually gonna get it done because if you say yes to everything yeah you're just not gonna be able to do all that stuff the other thing it brings up in this is that government is sometimes trying to meddle in people's affairs by saying right you can't do this or you you know you can't be this way or you can't you know get married or whatever it is right all of these things that meddle with our affairs but if you stop meddling then you were to bring the Empire then the people will be like oh thank you for allowing us to be who we are allowing us to express ourselves our way if you meddle with people's affairs you mess it up so he's kind of saying that the best form of government in a Dallas perspective is a government that you never ever see in fact that's a quote from louses teachings he says government should be like cooking a fish you don't want to overdo it if you if you cook a fish too long it just burns up it's worthless but if you cook it just right a little bit on the pan and then take it off and it's just right so another concept of that wasn't is the concept of simplicity where Dallas don't like having an excess of things they they want to just live a very simple life so they have very few clothes very few possessions that way they can just sort of be free to follow nature and that way thereafter always worried about like you know to have to pay for car insurance you have to you know buy computer protection from a computer do I have to have these accessories for my computer you know it doesn't make my phone compatible with this computer and all these things just it just keep it simple I just all you need is like one device all you need is like you know food and clothing and in a good backyard right maybe a dog or a cat they also valued gentleness because the wise person loves peace and restraint and avoid all unnecessary violence right for them whoo ways about being passive so when you're trying to be aggressive that you make things worse and think about what time period lives in we're in the middle of the warring States period where all of these different families are trying to fight one another and trying to take over China and they're messing it up there's all this bloodshed the economy is shattered you know there's no order there's no laws or or you know a sense of common purpose and and everyone's in disarray anything it's all because you're being so aggressive right and you didn't see the Qin Empire form but sure enough the Qin Empire was so aggressive that the people just rioted against them he says you just need to back off and let people be who they are in other words stop trying to make things be a certain way then you'll find peace in that think about it all of the wars that have been fought have been fought by men right men are the aggressive side of the yin-yang symbol so lots of if you were asked which side of the yin-yang symbol would you favor you might think well he's gonna say neither right because he thinks that they should be in balance but lotsa actually says no you should favor the feminine side because he thinks that if men acted more like women there'd be more peace in the earth now the reason he says is because there's that stereotype of women being more passive more graceful more compassionate and he's trying to foster those in men who tend to be more warmongering more aggressive more violent you know most mass murderers are men so therefore he says that we could benefit by following the the passive part of that Dao because if we're more passive we're more prone to feeling the doubt moving through us whereas if we're slightly more aggressive then we're more likely to go against the Dao so you see what I he means that right if you had to choose between the twos choose slightly more passive nature because that will allow you to feel the motions of the Dao but if you choose the more aggressive nature you're probably going to mess it up then the last concept I want to tell you about is cheap and that's the vital energy the life force that lives in all things the Chinese believe that everything has this Chi energy in it and what you want to do is allow that Chi to kind of flow through you and if you do you'll live a longer life you'll be healthier you'll you'll actually be able to accomplish more because you've got more vital energy within you and so they actually have a form of exercise called Tai Chi which represents the different movements of life right notice that every motion in Tai Chi is a very natural motion to have whereas if I were to do this motion right this is natural cuz I can't even breathe and so that's not healthy right let's get the autumn look back in my brain I think I cut off the oxygen in my head because I'm a little woozy right now Tai Chi is about going with the natural energy and therefore a room motion that you make is something that is natural to the body and helps you to achieve balance and that's what makes it good exercise for especially older people who need that exercise to keep their muscles toned and their their body in balance later on that form of Tai Chi was then used as exercises for the military and then the military started to adapt it to use in forms of military training and that's where we get the martial arts now when I say martial arts the truth forms of martial arts according to Taoism are those that are non aggressive so if you're thinking like karate or jujitsu or judo those are not good martial arts they're all fake they're Americanized right and so the Chinese are like no no no the good forms of martial arts are things like Aikido in which everything you do is going with nature and not against it so if you were to throw a punch in America most people would try to block it right that if you can have a stronger force blocking it than that it's coming in to hit it then you can actually resist the punch and stop it from harming you but notice that in order to do that you're gonna have to hit it with as much power as it's coming at you and that's gonna create bruises isn't it in other words that's not good a lot of boxers end up with bloody knuckles or you know you just a lot of pain involved in boxing or kickboxing or a mixed martial arts and all those things but the Aikido says instead of resisting the punch go with the punch and let it use use its energy against itself so someone throws you a punch instead of resisting it the Aikido master takes the punch and accelerates it so that the person falls down and you neutralize it and no one's harmed boom right that's true martial arts from a Taoist perspective so that's the idea is that you want to kind of go with nature don't go against it or you're going to be constantly bruised and bloodied and Taoism is about trying to live in harmony with nature so that's Taoism in a nutshell you're ready to take your next quiz on that we're gonna skip back to India and go to the religion of Sikhism in the next chapter I'll see you guys then