The Ancients: LaoTzu

alright ladies and gentlemen thanks very much for coming out Wow okay we're packed in I think we're maximum standing room only this evening we're gonna talk about Lao Tzu and Taoism and this is number why we three or four three in the ancient series we did Confucianism last month and the closely related idea of Taoism is what we want to talk about tonight now I was trying to figure out where to begin and I started to begin with the knot because the idea is the Dao which can be spoken is not the eternal Dao so let's not speak it how about we'll do that instead we'll start with the great what it's not and so at the beginning I have some titles from some books you can get these on Amazon change your thought meditations do the down now not the Dow of leadership and no the Dow of business using ancient Chinese philosophy to survive and prosper in times of crisis and it's not that either some other famous ones is the Dow of physics know the dancing wheel I mastered no the only thing that quantum mechanics and Taoism have in common is one is complicated mathematics and one is complicated ancient Chinese which nobody knows and so you can combine those and make anything you want but basically a gross misrepresentation so it's not any of these things in fact in preparing for this like I was reading many Taoist parables in fact I spent a lot of time just because it's so pleasant reading endless Taoist parables then I got interested in their interpretation and well things you run into is the almost inevitable incorrect interpretation and the struggle that we have I think with with some philosophical concepts there's two kinds basically I would say one kind is that the philosophical concept itself is subtle and difficult and challenging and so we have a hard time getting our minds around it or those can be presented in such way that it's hard to understand what the philosopher is driving at she caught a manual or and I believe this is the case with Taoism and lotsa and Trunks knew that the concepts are actually very simple they aren't complicated they are not remote from us or difficult they're just run so counter to what we usually think how we think about the world that we can't quite get them in our minds they seem confusing they seem odd they seem evanescent because we just can't quite get at them not because they're difficult but because they're just simple but they run counter to our thinking and all of these titles that I've read are examples of this but the greatest example I could come up with was in Sartre so I was trying to think what's a really good clear example of this and the clearest example I'd come up with is this passage from Sartre and it's not such Sartre fault by the way he was not trying to be a taoist he was trying to be Sartre whether it's good or bad I don't know but he does I think articulate with great clarity why we get Taoism wrong so consistently he says if one considers an article of manufacture as for example a book or a paper knife one season has been made by an artisan who had a conception of it and he has paid attention equally to the conception of a paper knife and to the pre-existing technique of production which is part of the conception and is at bottom of formula here then we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint and we can say that production precedes existence this is the essence of I something the idea of something precedes it coming into being the existence of something right you can also think of just the world the Platonic forms he's he's working with the Platonic ideas here that there's this world of perfect forms that then manifest themselves in the world the essence the idea the totality of something exists before it can come into being in the physical real imminent world mmm-hmm here then we're viewing the war I'm sorry thus there is no human nature because there is no God so the problem for existentialism and philosophy at this turning point is well if you get rid of God who's the conceive who's the pre conceptualize ER the answer is no one this is the existential crisis this is the fundamental problem and he says because there is no God to have a conception of it man simply is not that he's simply and that he is simply what he conceives himself to be but he is what He wills and as he conceives himself after already existing which is to say we exist and then we have to make up a reason for our existence which is the other way around from Plato and everything as he wills to be after the leap towards existence man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself that is the first principle of existentialism and it is what people call its subjectivity using the word as a reproach against us but what do we mean to say by this but that man is of greater dignity than a stone or a table Sartre now this is very clearly articulated in Taoism however there is absolutely nothing greater than a stone the whole notion that you could aspire to be greater than a stone is absurd we will never be as great as stones I'm not making that up this is absolutely true and clear throughout every principle of Taoism the great Chinese text from the 18th century the story of the stone as it's called or the dream of the red chamber has as its main character a stone that's the stone drives the plot this is because the stone is the best possible thing we could hope to be this is one of our problems in Taoism if you want to know an answer to something you look to nature the question you ask is what would a stone do I know that sounds fun it's I'm not kidding this is really the idea and it's why we always get it wrong we struggle with this because we this well we can't maybe we'll talk about if we can't know what a stone would want but but our struggle is we just think that's silly sar just says that look no look we're better than stones and he says earlier in there as well another fundamental concept that he violates the balance he says thus there is no human nature because there is no God to have conception of it man simply is yes stop full stop Taoism says right done you're finished needy you wants to go on that's not enough what in fact if you look at the title of all these books that I have here the notion is that the DAO must be instrumental it's a tool that we use for something else in fact everything is a tool that we use for something else I want to suggest quite strongly that again the first principle of Taoism as you look at nature and in nature nothing seems to be doing anything else but what it does stones are not leveraging their position to make money in the sand market water is not using its thoughts to meditate now trees are not growing with the notion that in some future that will move to Florida and retire quite happily by the coast it's not instrumental it's not it's not trying to do this to achieve that it's not on its way someplace it just is it's the great business of the universe and we hate this idea we just haven't we can't because we want it to be for something we want it but what it what the hell is the universe for an awkwardly large paperweight you know I don't know what would universe possibly I mean and we're always asking what does it mean nothing what's it for nothing why does it exist we don't know for no reason see these are all unacceptable answers we will not we just say no no no you can't say that you can't save the universe is meaningless you can't say it has no reason you can't say it's an awkwardly sighs paperweight you know it just we it must it must function in some way and releasing that concept of functionality is hard and so even while again it's a perfectly simple concept go to nature look what nature does do that I think literally thousands of parables poems lines tell us this over and over and over again and we think right go to nature learn something to apply someplace don't know it's not a it just no but we struggle so I thought it was Tim parables of course we have to have our parables because they're so wonderful one another this is the picture this is the picture of the useless tree and and this parable comes in several forms trunk says in his collection originally but it's it's you can find many versions of them but essentially it boils down to I just put the picture there it boils down to a woodcutter often a monk also but sometimes just a woodcutter or wandering through a village under this old ancient twisted tree that the woodcutter just walks past because it's useless doesn't give a second thought to its soul not it's so pitted that no one has ever bothered to cut it down because no one has ever been able to figure out what possible use could you have for this old rotten twisted tree and the idea is it's useless this is clearly the multiple repeated versions of they always say look this is useless and some versions the tree then comes to the man in a dream and says you say I'm useless like it's a bad thing now if you look at the interpretation or the reading of this that you'll find in various places they often will then move on in the in the West and our tradition to say yes but look how beautiful the tree is and often the depictions of the tree we can almost can't help ourselves but make it beautiful because we think oh it doesn't have a functional utility it must be beautiful now it think of an ugly useless tree think of an ugly annoying bothersome horrible useless tree it's just not bothersome enough to make you cut it down but there's no reason to have it there you know that what we want we just we take the parable and we really want to make it use it's got shade in the summer the birds like it no useless just like the universe it has no use so yeah we can't do it another one here this one is my favorite when I think of the ones I found again another famous one if a man crossed a river and an empty boat collides with his warned skiff even though he'd be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry but if he sees a man in the boat he will shout at him to steer clear if the shout is not heard he will shout again and yet again and begin cursing and all because someone is in the boat yet if the boat were empty he would not be shouting and not be angry if you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world no one will oppose you no one will seek to harm you become an empty boat floating aimlessly on the River of Life now that seems pretty damn simple and clear now it could be a horrible idea I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying it's clear and yet you can find many I would say perhaps even the majority of interpretations in English about this passage say see you shouldn't get angry at empty things you think they write about the guy yelling don't be angry at the empty boat no no no no be the empty boat floating aimlessly on the stream of life just just empty yourself out then you'll be useless too right see you want to be useless you don't want to prosper and survive in times of crisis right that's using ancient Chinese no we're not trying to prosper and survive we're trying to be empty like a stone or like a boat with nobody in it floating aimlessly on light and then you'll have no troubles so that image is it couldn't be any clearer it's and couldn't be any simpler this is what I always strikes me is that the clarity and the simplicity of the parables somehow baffles us because again it runs so counter not because it's complicated because it runs counter to our thinking of course the great example of this is the daodejing itself now that I Ching is somewhat subtle and elusive just because it's in the form of a long poem so it has its poetic issues and it was written a long time ago in classical Chinese which is very dense so I'll give it that by the way there are hundreds of translations of this text people love to translate this because it's very short and seems easy there are not hundreds of translations of the Mahabharata because it's really long and it's in Sanskrit and because of no one translates the mahabharata-- everyone translates the dotty king so if you're looking for a translation by the way I would say just read Pines just go get red Pines the notes alone are worth the price of admission it's just a brilliant work of scholarship but when you read it you encounter all these ideas that seem odd but often because we're just not thinking simply red pine emphasizes this in this translation other people have as well for instance the couple of the key terms Dow the Dow is a way or a path or a road and as this evolved in a concept it took on the larger philosophical meaning to say there is a way in the universe the universe has sort of a rule or a law or it's like gravity a field that you will that permeates everything and the way you learn the way is to go into nature because it is the best unretouched example of the working of the Dow and if you do that you will learn and when you learn then you'll know the problem is that what you learn and what you know turns out to be hard to describe and kind of ineffable and not very applicable this is why the the Taoist masters always wander off and disappear though the world is called the red dust it's the place of all the noise and commotion that's where you get misled so you can go out and you can look and what you're gonna find nobody knows only you can go and find it by the way this is one reason that the path that is a path is no path because if it's a path I mean somebody else found which means you aren't finding which means it's not the path unless it is that's your that's the very helpful taoist process so again this is not complicated in the way much philosophy is complicated is very simple it's just hard to get in your mind if there's a set of rules if there's some order if there's some guidelines they're wrong we know that by definition because the universe doesn't it has a pattern it has a way as soon as you find that you're in good shape but what is it just be like the universe and you'll be good to go um but it's tricky and then you have so you have this whole notion of the path and trying to find the way and connecting with the way and then you have the day that they doubt a-qing the virtue but virtue here is a very elusive term it's been translated all kinds of ways but one way think of it as it is sort of the virtue in the sense of what are the virtues of salt and the virtues of a pomegranate and the virtues of banana are different they have their virtues but they aren't virtues in the sense of here's a list of Rights and wrongs their virtues in the sense of being true to themselves bananas are virtually always like bananas right there very banana like and their characteristics and that that is the great thing it really I know see it sounds funny it sounds stupid but it's not it's but net if imagine if bananas were not like that imagine if bananas were of like humans like changing all the time doing crazy would drive we wouldn't no one would buy bananas we did I'm not buying a banana because you never know what you're gonna get when you peel that your dad's a dog no I don't want a dog I wanna see what the virtue of the banana is it's consistency with itself with its banana nature we love that we absolutely we don't think about it we just take it for granted unless it's not right but when things change and when shift we go so it's virtue in the sense of being like itself being true to itself being a aligned with what is the isness of things and so again we want the moral judgment we want the yes and no we want the black and white the good and evil and if the Dallas has anything it says just just stop just no let go of that it even says the good creates the evil the evil creates the good the dow is the manifold of all things it's all part of the universe by the way this gets rid of the whole why do good good bad things happen to good people problem right because people say oh well there's this benevolent God I'm like man that benevolent God is drunk cuz he is paying no attention to what the hell is going on in the world so you have to do all these theological backflips to try to explain how you have an all-powerful benevolent God and yet some less than benevolent seeming activities does not have this problem because the world is like yeah they don't say when bad things happen to good people they say when things happen to things process has happened and Taoism says this is what you need to figure out that when you're throwing the goods and the bads often this just baffles us it's not helpful to our thinking to our understanding of the isness of things and so we struggle with that and so the daodejing is really this notion of a path that probably isn't a path and the way that is the universe that we need to respond to but that there are no rules by the way it shares this with Confucianism intron says writing there's this I think as much Confucius as there is that lots of Taoism the daodejing you know so Confucianism also uses the Dow all the time the Confucius response to this idea is completely different than the Taoist response but they have they share this common notion that there the universe just is a way and you have to figure out what that way is and go from there but it's not a moral way it's not a way that has meaning it's not a way that has utility it doesn't have all of the things that we want to invest meaning with you know what is it why was it invented all those questions just should vanish from our thinking so this one when you're thinking about Taoism a doubt a Ching you know this is the this is our course struggle some examples of this and I steal this example is such a wonderful one as they talk about who's the good emperor who's the good leader on the good leader is the leader who absolutely you've never heard of and you don't know what they're doing things just happen and and the great example is who is who manages the sewer system here I have no idea somebody may know generally we don't know and we don't care because the sewer works the invisible person makes it all happen we don't want to know we need to know or happier not knowing this is the ideal leader keep the people ignorant keep them fed that's what you want to do very Socratic actually there socrates has a fair bit of this particularly Plato's Republic you know people know things that creates trouble it confuses them they get hard to rule they mess themselves up but we don't need to know how the sewer plant works we don't want to know where the sewage goes as long as it goes away we're happy the invisible emperor if the entire state can be run this way then it's perfect and you have the perfect leader as soon as you know or think or things aren't working oh you've gone from the path this is this this really this is a very strong impulse it the invisible it seems odd it seems weird but really who's a sewer manager I have no idea I don't want to know I just want it to work like we don't care about electricity until it goes off they're like oh man if it goes off for six minutes right the world has come to an end and then it comes back on and I don't think we ever asked well that was great I wonder what the name is of the person who did that no we just think oh the world has returned to its right course and we can move on this when they talk about this notion of like an invisible emperor it's these kinds of concepts that again seem contrary to what we think of as a leader a leader of summoners out front whose vocal charismatic who has ideas and concepts and says things and does things and is active and woo as opposed to someone who's invisible we've never heard of I always think it would be hard to recruit people into politics so how would you like to be anonymous no discernible power and the only reason we would ever know about you is if you had messed up see this is not very attractive people like well wait a second I want power and I want some fame and probably some money so Dow ISM doesn't offer any of the above like we see all that's gonna get you in trouble and so we we struggle with it another key concept that gets brutalized is we way which which which is often translated as non action which is okay ish but actually the loo there doesn't mean not or no in the sense of anti it means empty or vacuum or nothing so it's an action from nothing and so it better ways to translate this because they all say oh this is the paradox of action through non action no it's not a paradox at all by the way if you want water to flow downhill what do you do leave that alone right because it's gonna flow downhill this is what water does it's not cut it's not confusing in any way right as it doesn't throw if the light is on and we want the light on we don't think what should I do no we just do nothing and the lights on which is the way we like it so one it's not really paradoxic at all we do all kinds of things by not doing them it's really the fact think if you had to do everything it'd be very time-consuming you know it's it's it's so mostly what we do is not doing things but what Taoism wants emphasizes even mostly not doing things is probably too much we need to even do less and what we need to do is those things which come very naturally to us those things which we don't have to think about we don't have to reflect on we don't have to force ourselves to do what is instantaneous spontaneous easy simple and again this is not a deep I'm innocent I think it's an important significant idea it's not complicated in any way I was driving to the hardware store the other day and I ended up at the coffee shop because that's where my truck knows to go and and I wasn't thinking or my mind was doing and just what do i do spontaneously I arrive at the coffee shop and so since I was at the coffee shop I thought well I better go in the coffee shop because there I am it's just spontaneous just natural I don't mind going to the hardware store much rather go to the coffee shop you know what comes easy what comes naturally those things that we do automatically without thinking about Taoism says we'll cultivate that what what interferes with what comes naturally what comes easily it's probably unnatural it's certainly not the Dow because again if you watch a rock for a long time it never does anything unrack like it really doesn't I know again it sounds odd but watch trees rarely do weird stuff I think I can't believe the tree did that right if you and if you watch and hey I know it sounds funny but I want to give you an actual exercise on this which is straight from the Taoist tradition I've done this in classes before pick a bush a rock a tree something that you pass every day like at your front door someplace that you go all the time and I just do these three simple things when you pass it in the morning say good morning to it at some point during the day try to think about how it's doing and in the evening or in the afternoon when you come home or when you're cut moving back say good evening good afternoon when you pass it that's it run this experiment and see my students have reported amazing things this slowly or actually not as slow as you'd think I mean in a couple of weeks that thing starts to become alive and the two stories I like to tell is one of my students GC said she was if she was done this for a couple weeks there was a rock out in her yard that she did this to feeling completely silly and stupid and she said then one day it was rainy and kind of cold and she just as soon as she got home she went and built a little Hut over the rock she says she doesn't think about it she just went home and just built a little Hut over the rock because all of a sudden and then you realized she said it looks like all the little huts over all the rocks and tree that you see all throughout the world that had come a live tour all of a sudden she started feeling resonating with the natural world in a way she never had another student he reported back that he was fighting with his girlfriend out in front of his apartment and she storms off and got her car and drove off and the bush that he had been talking to started laughing he said he heard that bushland said he swore he said I heard that Bush laugh at me and I turned around and looked at and it was very quiet and he said I was true story said I was so shamed by that Bush that I realized that I was just being an idiot and I went and apologized to my girlfriend said Scott was the bush had just said look right he's just he's just the bush just laughed at me and I knew the bush was right the bush was right the bush and the rock will always be right so that this notion of a living natural world that really has something for us to learn from to teach us to be like a stone that's why I think that's such a perfect quote from Sartre but what we do mean to say that man is of greater dignity than a stone you will never be greater than a stone and taoism is impossible it truly is the most dignified thing because it is this pure expression of the dow and you can't get better than that and so these concepts like Blueway come in and we think Oh non action action non action several different ways to think about it but none of them are particularly paradoxical and none of them are particularly subtle or difficult what can I do without doing it essentially this runs counter to everything we've ever been taught you listen to everything about vironment is a great one because every solution to the environment involves us doing something besides for instance not using so much energy let's just not use so much power nope electric cars hydroelectric hydro thermal solar you know clean coal or the hell that is you know fracking your nuclear fusion energy really come on people you know we're gonna do everything except like Oh use less energy not do something that'd be genius but we're not going to do it because we know that you do things so part of the ways to just say look ask yourself what can I achieve without acting what can i stall out by the way I always recommend this if possible stall out right you must have done this where you just realize if I don't do anything bad thing goes away if I stick my hand and it bad thing bites me right just just you know but we're terrible at this because I'm by the way I'm the worst at this of anybody I just I'm hyperactive so do something I gotta do something gotta get in there no no stop time ah no way so what can I do without acting what do I do that just come naturally spontaneously I mean another coffee actually another coffee shop that I go to regularly I go to all of them regularly has a big pile of toys for kids which I looks I just love to see kids and they're having a good time but you watch kids they run over to the pile and they look and they pick one and then they run someplace else and they start playing with it what comes spontaneous what comes naturally what comes easily what toy do we all love which one do we just pick up we given our given a choice if we're flowing downhill like water where do we land where do we end up what do we do without thinking about it but what we hear of course consistently is grit and drive and grind and effort and commitment dedication and suffering and pain why can I just play with the toys I like I like these toys these are fun toys no apparently not we'll have none of that you know that's that's you know you have to take these classes to be educated you must take these classes whether you're interested in them you like them you're good at them doesn't seem to matter hey I'm really good at these classes can I take some more no I'm bad at these classes yes you have to take those why we don't know just cuz it's good for you like eating Brussels sprouts I don't know it just wait so on one hand it's a very simple concept has some nice subtleties but it's not complicated it's not remote it's it's again what can you do without acting what can you do that comes spontaneously to you that is easy effortless natural and how do I make more of that simple not paradoxical and yet again that the comments on this will just drive you mad because it's not that hard another example also would be diets by the way apparently the religion of the 20th century is the diet because we always have more and more and more and more of them right which is why we keep getting healthier and healthier and healthier as a people because more diets make more health so that's not working so why don't we stop with the diets already we just go on a diet diet as it were just wear them off everybody just eat the that makes you feel good and let's see what happens I'm thinking it couldn't be any worse I really am but we can't have that we're so messed up now that I think it may be it's impossible to even figure out what we would actually like to eat if we were allowed to choose you know that but but again the notion of just keeping adding more just more do another diet lord I do another adjustment to it have another layer another layer it more must have dude yeah ah it's always there that press is always there for us let's see another parable here which I love again there was once a man and some who carved mulberry leaf out of jade for his prints it took three years to complete and an imitated nature so exquisitely and it's down its glossiness and its general configuration from tip to stem that if placed in a heap of real mulberry leaves it could not be distinguished from them this man was subsequently pensioned by the song stayed and rewarded for a skill Liat su heard of it and said if it took the Creator three years to make a single leaf there would be very few trees with leaves on them the sage will rely not so much on human science and skill that's on the operations of Dao late to now right we have a smart building our new building which is lovely over there they call the smart building smart building very nice how do you keep it warm and winter maximized the sunlight and keep it cool in the summer wouldn't it be great if there was something you could do that allowed light in in the winter and blocked light in the summer hmm what would that thing be called potentially a tree that is deciduous and drops its leaves in the winter it yep so factor letting the light end and then shades us in the summertime us cooling the building quite lovely and about which we have to do absolutely nothing except perhaps plant a tree no that's not how you do this of course you put computerized control mechanisms you have things that go up and down on the windows you have all these feedback loops all in the name of energy conservation and efficiency and environmental friendliness but we're not going to plant any trees will have no tree planting trees are old-fashioned right so that just that simple notion what can we let nature do this is that this is the hilarity of this why carve a leaf we have leaves you're not going to carve a better one because it's impossible so a skill yes but pointlessly applied in the wrong direction if we didn't have mulberry leaves very impressive but since they did have mulberry leaves and you don't even have to do anything to get them this is the point they're so beautiful you can pick up for instance a stone on the beach that is quite lovely you don't have to even do anything pick it up or even just leave it there and admire it in place you must walk along the beach and you see the water as it comes off the stones in this glistening it's just like a like a field of jewels right there's just endless expanse of just beautiful glistening colored stones and I think our desire to have that says oh we want to get that jewel like thing bring it home with it make it ours so we must do something I think what you must do is go on the beach and look at the beautiful stones glistening and the light right that's the easy how hard is that ah but you know we can't get our hands on it's not enough for us somehow and so he talks about this says you know if the universe took three years to make a leaf Wow we'd be really short on leaves so don't do things the universe does automatically and the things of the universe does automatically just go with that because it's because it's easy what what does the universe do for us that is easy simple no problem there it is go there another example comes from this is a poem actually from gia Dow trying to listen to I think Lin Yutang is this his translation I believe if I remember correctly seeking the master but not meeting I asked the boy beneath the pines he said the Masters gone alone herb picking somewhere on the Mount cloud hidden whereabouts unknown so why is the master not there this is one of those peculiar poems somewhat elusive but when you start pondering from the Taoist perspective the reason he's not there as someone is looking for them that's a bad thing it's just going to create problems that if someone is out looking for you they ask you questions and badger you know the Taoist master is always someplace else because it does not want to be bothered I'm up gathering herbs in the mountain I always think it's actually the boy who is the Taoist master just lying I always think that is the real interpretation of this poem is the Taoist master is just saying they're going oh he's it he's up over there something I don't know where look it's foggy can't see him could be weeks before he's back lovely to see you go away yes so these you know these kinds of parables cuz we think Oh wisdom is supposed to be applied and wisdom is supposed to make the world a better place see no world is as the world is you do not make the world a better place it's not your job if you think it's your job the dollars think you're gonna have a rough time of it knock yourselves out with that one kids will be up in the fog in the mountains right I think it's just it's perfectly clear that you know this concept of making them doing something being something helping being out in the world doing stuff which we can't hardly avoid we love this I love this I can't help it myself I'm like least Dallas person ever you know there's just but this can be applied in in limited ways right at least just start small how can I stop thinking I need to change the world how can I stop acting what do I want to do spontaneously if you read the daodejing with these questions in your mind I think it'll become much clearer because it's just it's very like I said it's very clear it's not that confusing of a work many possible interpretations not one but these questions will help guide you there's another parable I wanted to use but it turns out not actually to be a taoist parable but you may find this it's often quoted as one but it took me a while to actually track down where this came from and it comes from a friend of Carl Jung and Carl Jung exploded it so often and in various different forms that people then Mis attributed as Carl Jung talking about some ancient Taoist parable but it's not it's actually a sort of a modern Taoist parable that you like very much I think for good reason but the parable is simple and lovely and it says that there's a village in China and there's been a drought this is terrible and everybody is going hungry and they're worried they're gonna die and by the way if you're an agricultural land drought bad right everybody starves to death and so they go get this Taoist master and they say will you come help our village and he says sure and they say you come make it rain you're the Rainmaker he says okay and they said okay so he shows up he says well what do you need and he says well I just want a little hut where I can sit for a few days and maybe Garman okay so they provide that form and they're watching and every day he doesn't seem to do anything he just hangs out in the hut does a little gardening hangs on the hut does nothing so they're getting a little nervous then the fourth day it rains the fourth day it rains and they're like overjoyed so they go to him and they said what did you do and he said I didn't do anything he said I came and took the hut because I didn't feel well I felt like my life was out of balance and now I feel better and this is often misinterpreted again as Oh bringing himself into balance brought the world into balance this is not the right interpretation the right interpretation is he did not care whether the villagers died in a drought or not he meant exactly what he said he came and sat in the hut because he felt his life was not going well and that this would help him and it did the raining was just correlated and that's lovely good for you I'm leaving now goodbye because I feel better see we can't we have to think that oh there's some message there were he brought himself into peril the university universe brought itself in with him and then when things were harmonious the rain came that if we do well good things happen if you read the data it could be nothing could be further from what its driving at you can do very well and get hit by a bus we know this we absolutely know that unjustified things occasionally once in a while happen it may not be a perfectly just world I'm just saying and the message we send to derive from this is we're doing something wrong or other people are doing something wrong what we don't derive from this is the Dallas message which is your your your theory and expectations of justice in the world are all messed up get rid of them this sounds like quietism an ethical retreat because it is of the first order generally Daoists were older men sorry generally men again ancient China not the most female-friendly land who was drew from the world it was the withdrawing from the world that gave them the wisdom they withdraw generally into nature although the true Taoist master could be in the city and not disturbed but you would never know he was there that was the key that's how he knew he was the true Taoist master because he couldn't find him again know it I've gotta make that up because it would bother us it's the great Diogenes quote from ancient Greece who I think was on the taoist line a little bit where he lived in a tub sort of naked all the time and when alexander conquers athens he goes and says you know you are my great hero philosophically i am the great conqueror you just tell me what you want and I'll do anything for you and he says I want you to step aside because you're blocking my sunshine right just leave me alone go away I live in a barrel I'm doing fine thank you very much see we can't that's just not we can't we can't we can't accept that and so it is this very strong counter to the impulse of Confucianism which is to order the world live by the set of rules be directed by them change and make it harmonious and human and livable again like I said in the last lecture it's a very humane message one that we can understand I think can really come to grips to disagree with parts of it but we can get it Taoism says just leave all that alone just let go just stop already I mean we're just driving ourselves crazy with all of this be ignorant so the the the scholar learn something every day the Taoist wise man forgets something every day it's not hard to learn things it's hard to unlearn things right you lose most of all experience this where when you once you've learned something and then you have to move you learn that you probably need to not have known that or to unlearn that it's really hard to break that a mental habit or that thought and you just catch yourself over and over again lapsing into whatever the the thing you had learned is yeah the Taoist master forgets every day every day I forget something new how wonderful until you're an empty boat seeing again we don't think we don't go to school and say all right what should we forget today class everybody forgets something but I actually think this was a great exercise make a list of just stupid that you've learned that you would love to get out of your head right that just just if I could adjust pitch that out of my mind and if that had never been in there how much free or what our thinking be how much more natural what our response to the world be how much more like ourselves would we be if we hadn't been trained into this whatever pattern of thought way of being type of motion right how much do we need to learn how much do we need to unlearn Taoism again heavily emphasizes the unlearn and as far as I can tell we just don't believe that at all right we're always need to learn something new just like we need a new diet and we need a new source of power and we need some new weapons and we need some new cars and then things are going to be great because what could possibly go wrong see so unlike empty empty that boat get just throw as much overboard as you can if nothing else Taoism strongly suggests that we should examine closely the things we've learned and really say do I should I keep this ask a stone for instance would you keep this would you find this helpful if yes keep it if the stone goes you must be kidding then pitch it out because the stone knows the stone knows everything it needs to be a stone and like I said will never be that great but we can try maybe so you know this this is what frustrates us with Taoism you get this notion that is this opaque exoteric you know obtuse difficult struggle it really I would argue it it's not in its concepts it just is in the fact that it tells us roughly the opposite of everything we've ever been told you know and and that you know go out in the nature to get healthy I mean sure but no just go because nature even if it makes you sick go out into nature god this is would be the taoist argument your health is irrelevant they suspect you're going to be much healthier but that's not the point it's not a utility issue stop with the utility in fact one thing I like to think would try to work my rind around this is to think all the stuff we do that is really totally onion 'that is just really deft I have a hand coffee grinder Jasin how still stain you just grind well that's just ridiculous the Joe at the coffee shop will grind them for me with a machine that will do a very much better job more consistent more even much nicer than I can ever do you can buy electric once but they make noise I don't like the noise I guess that drives me mad but it's certainly much easier this is a completely irrational pointless not utilitarian approach at all and and I like it think of all the stuff you do that just isn't utilitarian we can art and then think of all of the intellectual backflips we do to make it utilitarian oh this were a sailboat practically pays for itself you know when you think about it yeah when you really think about it yeah no no this is daf-2 sailboat no we have mono I just make any sense at all well they're wonderful we love them many people do you know what's so great why there's no just no you didn't stop rationalizing I think maybe one way to think about them is this taste don't rationalize anything ever there's no reason to because it's not rational it's not a reasonable universe and in a couple of years the Sun is going to expand and destroy all life in the universe isn't that I mean in the in the solar system is that rational that reasonable it is so what's the utility value of that zero I think as far as we're concerned not that helpful you know but but but that's what's gonna happen so look at and then rash on your own life really does it does it matter do you need to rationalize why are we always rationalizing it says well you know just just knock that off a couple of just two more quick points here just because I do I think these course the concepts are not that difficult part of what we get in contemporary cultures that Taoism philosophical thousand but we've been talking about I want to make a quick distinction between sort of the same monistic traditions of Taoism that have grown into the I Ching for instances and and if you know Feng Shui is geomancy right is is the arts of organizing things gardens and houses and also if you've ever seen Chinese gardens and thought wow these are strange it's because the intellectual approach they have to gardening is completely different than ours so I highly recommend this I think the best ones around here are in LA they have a beautiful large Chinese gardens but they're just weird they're weird to us because the way they're conceiving of how you interact with and what you're doing in a garden is so different but I think it helps to think about the fact that it's a different way of thinking when you can just inhabit it and go we would never do this this is not how we would ever build a garden and they're amazing to spend time in and the i-ching because I mentioned this last time as Confucius is also with the Taoist is this notion that fortune-telling means something predicts the future gives you guidance allows you to know gives you insight into mystical processes and this is why in which is all little bump right science will explain to you quite clearly that this does not work the theory of the I Ching from Taoism is quite different and if you read the chain look at it you'll see this pretty clearly with the I Ching says it again here's how the universe is this this is the way the universe works it's the Dao and so it does not give you passages like don't make new friends today and beware of crossing long trips on water right these sorts of vague like what it says things like carefully way taking on new obligations because they may weigh you down does it I mean you ask a question it just it just gives you these sort of pretty good insights into life and if you think about it for a long time you might think well that is completely unhelpful and has anything to do with the question that I thought I was asking but often you kind of go huh that seems like a good idea not in the specific sense of oh yes definitely by IBM stock but in the general sense of what how do you think about problems and am i thinking about this problem the right way here's a different way to think about the problem they gave one way to think about is it's just a whole bunch of different ways to think about all your problems you could think about it this way or this way or this way or this way and if you have 64 different ways to think about a problem and you go through all of them eventually you'll probably get some insight that it really this is this is it's a machine for thinking it's a pondering it's like a big pondering box asking 64 very different people for their advice what would you do what would you wait you what would the stone do right that just just running through that eventually go that resonates oh I see the oh now the light goes how often have you realized people I say this if I can just figure out the right question to ask the answer is easy and so this is what it has this is sort of how its focused but again it's a different way of approaching the world so to come back around you know what the Dow is now be talking about what it love let's not how to think about it but it's a collection of not that terribly complex ideas but that just systematically run counter to what we've been trained to think and so we struggled mightily with them and so like I said I would highly recommend looking at red Pines translation of the Dao de Jing and and just peruse through the the the parables of trunks and leads they're probably the two most famous collection there's many other ones and ponder them but try to ponder them from the notion of you know they're not trying to help me they don't care about me they really care about them mostly right and so it's tough to think about but but this is the core principle what Sartre says articulates very clearly what we think and the struggle of the Western philosophical tradition that's why he's a great philosopher our essence our existence its meaning its source how can we know about it Taoism says just forget all that no no no and stop we're done you don't matter we don't care that you exist there's no reason to expect it has any meaning congratulations so just empty your boat and float along thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Wes Cecil

Views: 20,415

Rating: 4.8062282 out of 5

Keywords: HumaneArts, Wes Cecil, Taoism, Lao Tzu, Tao Te-Ching, Philosophy, Wu Wei

Id: mAUOgbARoL0

Length: 59min 13sec (3553 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2017