What's This Tao All About?

Tod talks with Noah Rasheta, the host of the “Secular Buddhism Podcast,” about his path from Mormonism to Buddhism. He also shares some practices that can help quell your anger and anxiety and explains why you’re already enough.

Noah’s website: Eightfold Path

The Secular Buddhism podcast

Episode Transcript

There’s no George today because we have a special guest on the show, and that’s Noah Rasheta, better known as the host of the Secular Buddhism podcast. And wait, you’re probably thinking, Tod, this is a podcast about Taoism.

Why in the world are you interviewing a Buddhist? Well, first of all, I love Noah Rasheta’s podcast. I listen to a few podcasts on spiritual matters, but it’s the only one whose episodes I never miss. And I think there’s some overlap between Taoist and Buddhist teachings, so why not have a little inner spiritual, art of living, or whatever you want to call these things, dialogue? Now, Noah’s take on Buddhism is a bit different from traditional beliefs.

He thinks that Buddhist teachings can make you a better whatever you are already, as he always says. And it’s something that can be additive to your life, no matter what your spiritual path. And it’s been a big help in my life.

So I wanted to share him with you. The interesting thing is that this interview started as an article I wrote for my job as deputy editor at Upworthy, the website that brings the best in us. I gave our PR gal a list of people I’d like to interview for the publication, and Noah was among them, and he responded.

Who hasn’t responded yet? Damon Albarn from Gorillaz, but we’ll work on it. So Noah and I decided it’d be great if I could post the interview on the What’s This Tao All About podcast. So I kind of did the interview for Upworthy, but also for What’s This Tao All About at the same time.

So I really hope you enjoy our talk. I think Noah is just a really interesting, open guy, and his journey to becoming a Buddhist, or a Buddhist influencer, or teacher is really interesting, because he started off as a Mormon, you know, an LDS member. So before we get into that, on the last episode, George and I went over a chapter from Dr. Totton’s book, The Tao of Now, the next 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching.

And we received a lot of responses from listeners asking where they can read the entire book that Dr. Totton claimed that he quote, downloaded from Lao Tzu. And it’s 81 chapters, it kind of works as like a sequel or a complement to the Tao Te Ching. It’s kind of done very much so in the same form, with the same type of writing.

And now you could take that for what it’s worth, whether Dr. Totton was given this sacred information from Lao Tzu. I’m not going to weigh in on that. But regardless, the book is a fantastic summation of Dr. Totton’s understanding of the Tao.

And it was written shortly before he had a series of strokes that compromised his ability to communicate. So in a way, it’s like his final understanding of what this Tao is really all about. And I’ve read it, I really enjoy it.

We may read a little more of it on the regular podcast. But now I’ve made the entire book, all 81 chapters available to you. I uploaded a PDF and an EPUB version of the book.

So you can read it on your e-reader or Kindle, however you use an e-reader. Or you can just read it off the PDF, download it, print it out, whatever. And it’s on our Patreon page.

So it’s open to everybody who subscribes there. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s how you do it. You go to patreon.com, that’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N, patreon.com slash what’s this Tao all about.

And it’ll be the first post you see there. Or you can click on the collections link at the top of the page at patreon.com slash what’s this Tao all about. And you’ll find it amongst other fun stuff, like nine episodes of the 10,000 things that Carl and I did on topics outside of Taoism, over 30 episodes of the Tao of Tod, which is like a little audio blog I’ve done, this fantastic book, and also episodes of what’s this Tao all about that Carl and I recorded kind of in his final days that never went out to the general public.

It was our little private conversations we had on here. So, oh, and how much does it cost? You get all that for $5.99 a month. You can cancel anytime.

You can come, download the book, cancel, run away. That’s all. Yeah, just $5.99 and you get to support us for all the work we put into the show for over 10 years now.

Noah Rasheta’s journey to Buddhism

And now let’s get on to my talk with Noah Rasheta, the host of the Secular Buddhism podcast. As I recall, when you started coming into Buddhism is after you were raised like a Mormon. Was it when you raised a Mormon or was your ex-wife was a Mormon? And then you made a transition into Buddhism.

And what was the catalyst for that? So, yeah, I’ll give you the full context because I was raised Mormon and went through all the milestones you go. Go on a mission, two years of proselyting, married a fellow Mormon in a Mormon temple the way you’re supposed to, and started raising family all within the framework of Mormonism. And then came four years into the marriage.

I’ve always said there was a breach of trust by a close loved one. The rug was swept out from under my feet, pulled out from under my feet. And I was trying to make sense of it all.

And I leaned heavily on my religion, on the belief system, on the framework. And at the time, I actually blamed a part of it was I wasn’t Mormon enough. I should have been more righteous because that stuff doesn’t happen to someone who’s uber righteous.

And so I started to just devour the content of our church history books and trying to make myself super devout. I remember a time when I was like, I won’t even listen to any music unless it’s sanctioned by the church. That’s how entrenched I became.

But it backfired because then I started learning all kinds of things that I didn’t know about church history or doctrine that was a little more controversial than anything I knew about. And the more I went digging, the more I started to feel like a second betrayal, a betrayal from the religious organization itself. And then that was when I went into the freefall.

I felt like, man, the two things that I thought I could trust the most in life, both kind of lied to me. And it was during that inner chaos that I, I mean, I remember having the thought meditation is supposed to help with this stuff. But I don’t know why.

And I wanted to research why. And that line of thought took me down the rabbit hole of mindfulness and then Buddhism. And once I entertained it from that perspective, my notion of trying to come to grips with reality shifted drastically.

And the world view, the Buddhist world, you just resonated so much more deeply for me. And I left Mormonism. I mean, for a long time after.

But that was also the ultimate thorn under the skin that was always there that ultimately led to the separation as well. Hmm. It seems like the Mormon church was playing what they call the no true Scotsman fallacy, like the logic that, you know, if someone does something and it doesn’t work out the way it’s supposed to, therefore they really weren’t into it.

It’s kind of like a manipulation technique. Yeah. Where, I guess, and why did you draw the line between just practicing Buddhism, I guess, in its full scope versus, you know, being secular about it and maybe not being as into the kind of, I don’t know, what would you call it? The more Wu elements, you know, nirvana and things like that.

Where, where, why did you draw that line? Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s because my initial mindset emerging from that faith tradition was I never want another ism in my life. Yeah.

And I didn’t understand Buddhism enough at the time to even know that it’s a non-theistic tradition. So as I was learning the concepts and the teachings, I was first because of the fear of being an outcast in my own community, which was still very Mormon community, my own marriage, a very Mormon marriage. I didn’t want to swap the label.

And from a doctrinal standpoint, it’s like to leave one religion and join another one. It’s like, you’ve betrayed us, right? And I thought, well, if I approach Buddhism as a lifestyle, not as a religion, then they can’t claim that I have replaced the religion. So the combo of all of that made me feel very drawn to the idea of, of secular, you know, making this feel secular.

Ironically, the more I learned, the more I realized, I don’t think you even need that distinction. But, you know, I was already encountering at the time other disaffected Mormons who were like, I want to learn about Buddhism. And it was much easier for them to feel interested in learning about secular Buddhism than it was saying, hey, anyone can benefit from Buddhism.

So I just stuck with it. And I found that to be a useful way of getting people introduced into the overall ideas. And then they can adopt the mentality of at the end of the day, the label doesn’t matter at all.

You could be Buddhist or non Buddhist or whatever you already are. Let’s not even worry about these labels. Yeah.

And so do you also think that that opens you up to a broader audience that wants to hear because I know maybe a reason I was attracted to the show was because I knew that I wasn’t going to encounter kind of the more fantastical supernatural elements that is in Buddhism, and it was going to be something that even I could learn kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that was definitely my mindset as well.

I thought I can see that there are a lot of useful ideas in here. But I don’t want to spend time someone trying to explain to me anything that’s supernatural because I’m just not interested in that. So yeah, I thought that would be a clean way to make it very clear up front that we’re going to talk about what’s useful and skillful here and not get lost in any of the woowoo or yeah, the more like supernatural sounding claims.

Why are people getting into Buddhism?

Yeah. Okay, so let’s get into some stuff for our Upworthy readers. When people come to your retreats and go to your Dharma talks online, what are they most concerned with these days? What do they need help with? I’d say most of them, they show up because something in life suddenly changed shape, and they have no say in it.

You know, they’re looking for help with regaining stability after their proverbial rug has been pulled out from under their feet. And in my Sunday group, for example, just this year, people who are new have come because of a recent cancer diagnosis or a 30 year marriage suddenly ended or a faith transition is happening a retirement, robbed them of their identity, kids going to college and the house is now quiet. And those are all very real scenarios that people go through.

And what they usually think they want is they want to regain the stability of what now feels like shaky ground. They want some sense of control or certainty. And they want somebody or something to give them a concept, an idea, an answer that will cause that ground to stop moving.

And I understand that because that’s what I wanted to. And for years, I approached life as if it were a game of chess. You know, yes, it’s complex, but it’s solvable.

And if I just find the right teacher or the right teaching or read the right book, or meditate hard enough or long enough, I can maybe figure this out, but life isn’t chess, life is Tetris. And you just don’t know what shape is coming next. And there’s no strategy to master.

Because all you get is how do you respond to the shape that shows up? And when that finally clicked for me, it didn’t feel like defeat, it felt like relief. And I think that’s what people are looking for when they come to these things is relief. They may initially think they’re looking for answers.

But what they’re really walking away with is relief from needing any answers. Because life’s going to keep delivering these new shapes and pieces. It’s interesting, I think, the way we are socialized, we are taught to kind of think that in life, we’re doing it right, or we’re doing it wrong.

And therefore, that’s how the outside world is reacting to me. I’m not thinking about things clearly, therefore, the mailman didn’t deliver my package today. We kind of have a weird relationship with cause and effect.

But in the Buddhist way of looking at things, in the Taoist way of looking at things, we realize it just is as it is. And as the old saying goes, S happens. And it’s hard for people just to believe that because maybe it puts it out of their locus of control.

Why is life like Tetris?

But you’re right. I love the Tetris metaphor that you use. And so when people come to you in this kind of anxious state, what’s the first step you recommend to them? Um, when it comes to anxiety, or an anxious state, I’m usually careful with presenting the notion of overcoming it, because that sounds like that maybe there’s a version of you or a version of life where there’s no anxiety in it.

And that version is the one that you’re trying to reach. And if that’s the goal, you’re going to be at it forever. Because while clinical depression and anxiety disorders, those are real medical conditions.

But what I’m describing here, and what I think Buddhism is describing in its teachings, is the ordinary human version of this, the emotions that we experience. And there’s a Buddhist teaching about two arrows. And the first arrow is the pain itself, the anxiety, the heaviness, the feeling of dread.

And you don’t necessarily choose that. And you often can’t stop it. When you’re dealing with a loss of a loved one, or a significant life change, you don’t know how you’re going to navigate what’s coming next in life.

It’s very normal to feel anxious. And it’s very normal to feel a heaviness. That’s the pain of the first arrow.

But the second arrow is what you do next. It’s the anxiety you get about anxiety. It’s the shame you feel for the fact that you’re feeling down.

It’s the anger you feel for experiencing the emotion that you’re experiencing. And it’s the story that says something’s wrong with you for feeling this way. You shouldn’t feel this.

That first arrow hurts. But it’s that second arrow that hurts more and lasts a day or weeks or months or even years. So the first step isn’t to try to feel differently.

It’s to notice what is it that you’re feeling? You know, imagine an example I give, imagine you’re driving down the highway and in the middle of driving, you’re angry at whatever you’re angry at, but you suddenly notice that you’re experiencing anger. And you could ask yourself, is the part of me that notices I’m angry, in other words, the observer, is the observer of this anger also angry? And if you ask that, honestly, you’d realize, well, the observer isn’t. The observer is just noticing and it’s observing.

And that’s the gap, right? Noticing what we’re experiencing or what we’re feeling. That isn’t the cure, but it is the difference between the pain of one arrow and two or more. That’s powerful.

And thank you for explaining, because I remember you’ve, I’ve heard you explain that before and it’s great to hear it again. What’s the best way for someone to approach really noticing what they’re going through and what they’re feeling? Um, that may, cause that may sound a little abstract to some people. Um, how, how does, how does the noticer notice to sound like Alan Watts? You know, so I usually try to describe experience as a three layer event and that’s at the very least three, probably more, but so there’s the experience, whatever’s happening, there’s awareness of the experience, and then there’s the, the meaning or the story we create around, uh, the experience that’s happening.

And emotions are, are very difficult to, until you think through it, they’re very difficult to, uh, separate into those layers, right? Anger, for when you’re angry. And this might even be partially because of our language. We say, I am angry.

Um, we don’t say I’m experiencing anger, but anger is an emotion and it’s something you experience. So that simple shift could be the difference of, of recognizing, wow, I’m, I’m really feeling anger right now. Where am I feeling it? Like, is it my hand that’s angry? Is it my heart that’s angry? Is it where, where, what does it feel like? And to start to think through, okay, there’s experience, then there’s awareness of experience, like how, with an emotion, where is, where is that separation that happens in the, the noticing, which you could also say is the curiosity of this, you know, just get curious.

And that’s how, for me, at least, that’s how in my practice, it’s become much more natural now to separate the experience from the awareness of the experience. And that’s when the noticer emerges as, oh, I’m noticing that I’m noticing, you know, I’m noticing that I’m feeling, I also noticed that I’m noticing what I’m feeling. And, you know, you have these different gaps.

Oh, very good. Uh, let’s see here. Uh, another thing that you’ve talked about, which I’ve really enjoyed on the show was the idea that as, as humans, we are already whole.

Why is that such a valuable message in this day and age? And then also give me a once-over about what that means. And then why is it so valuable to people? Yeah. So, you know, I’ll tell you the quick story about a statue in Thailand, and this is where, where that idea of already whole comes from.

But hundreds of years ago, there was a golden Buddha statue and monks covered it with clay to hide it from an invading army. And when the army arrived, the monks ended up being killed. And along with them, anyone who knew about the golden Buddha statue.

So for about 200 years, people would walk past this statue thinking it’s just an ordinary clay statue. And then in 1935, it was moved to a temple in Bangkok. And it sat outside in a courtyard under a tin roof for another 20 years, because it was considered an ordinary clay statue, you know, not worthy of sitting in the main hall.

And in 1955, they moved it again. And in the process of moving it, the clay had cracked and somebody noticed gold underneath the clay. And I think that story represents the case for most of us.

And it matters now because we live in a, in a society, in an economy that runs on telling you that you’re not whole yet. If you buy this, if you need if, you know, you need to fix this about you, you need to become the person who finally deserves feeling whole, but it always takes something right. And Pema Chodron calls self improvement, a subtle aggression against who you really are.

And I think that’s exactly right. And when you think of the story of the Golden Buddha, it was not covered in clay as an act of vandalism, it was an act of, of protection, it was armor, put it there to protect something. And I think our societal norms, our conditioning, our family dynamics, religious upbringing, all of these things unintentionally cover us in clay to protect us from the harshness of the world.

And that protection serves a purpose, but it also blinds us to the fact that underneath it all, you’re already whole, there isn’t something you can do to become whole, because you were whole all along, you just hadn’t noticed it because of all the layers. That reminds me of going back to the beginning of this conversation where you’re you weren’t holy enough, right? You’re you had that that was the the the trick pulled on you as you weren’t holy enough. And in many ways in this world, whether I’m always reminded of the whole Listerine idea where they they made up the idea of halitosis, to tell people that bad breath was a disease.

And so then everybody went out and bought Listerine. And I’ve, you work in marketing, marketing, I’ve worked in advertising, we know exactly how this game works. And it’s still funny, I still get caught up in it, of course.

I’ve got to convince you of the problem first, so I can sell you on the solution that I also conveniently offer. Right, right. Yeah.

Let’s see here. And so I also, I’ve adopted the use of the word skillful into how I approach things. Because you always use it.

And it seems like you’re intentionally using the word skillful when you’re talking about things instead of using other, I guess, verbs or adjectives, I guess it would be an adjective, ways of describing things you always talk about as a skillful thing. And when you say skillful to me, and it means considered and a response, not a reaction, like I think there’s a lot built into that word. But I want to hear your reasoning behind always using that term.

Yeah, I use that very deliberately. The original word used in the teachings is a Pali word. And it doesn’t mean morally correct, in the sense of right versus wrong.

It’s a word that comes closer to meaning complete, whole, effective. And the teaching of right view, one of the classic Buddhist teachings, could just as easily as been have been translated as skillful view. But somewhere in that long journey from Pali to Sanskrit to Chinese to Japanese to English, over 2500 years, someone chose the word right.

And that one choice has flavored how people hear these teachings ever since. So I’ve been very deliberate to use the what I consider to be the more relevant or more appropriate, skillful. And the reason I care about it is right and wrong produces a sense of shame, and shame is learning.

Shame doesn’t say, I did something bad. Shame says, I am bad. And that becomes an identity statement.

And if you’re familiar with the fixed mindset versus growth mindset, identity statements feel fixed. There’s nothing left to learn, because the problem isn’t what you did. It’s who you are.

Right. But then watch what happens when you swap that one word and instead of the thought in your mind of, I’m wrong for saying that you think that was not a very skillful thing to say. And now you have a completely different relationship to it.

Because one of those thoughts feels like it shuts you down. And the other one makes you curious. And I’ve believed curiosity is a superpower.

Through curiosity, the practice or the path becomes a mirror instead of a judge. And there’s another old story where the Buddha talks about practice in the context of a stringed instrument. And if the strings are too tight, they snap.

If they’re too loose, it doesn’t produce a sound. And the key is finding just the correct amount of tension, right? The skillful amount of tension. It’s a process that you really never finish.

And like with an instrument, you would tune it, and then you play it, and it sounds great because it’s tuned. But then you put it away, and next time you take it out, you’re going to have to tune it again. And any music knows this.

And I feel like our path is the same. It’s a process that never ends, because life is always changing. We’re always changing.

And that’s how skillful relates more closely, I think, to Buddhist teachings. It isn’t an assessment or a grade, like you’re doing it right or you’re doing it wrong. It’s the recognition that this requires continual calibration of how you practice and how you apply these teachings in your life.

And combining that with the Tetris analogy of earlier, every new shape that shows up, it asks for a new adjustment. How do I fit this into the life that I’m living? Because what was skillful at one stage of life may not be skillful at another. And that’s the whole idea.

A whole new Tetris piece to be skillful with in a different way than previously. So I’ve also noticed in your show that maybe people really relate to you because you are vulnerable. You’ve talked a lot about the death of a close friend, talked about issues in your family.

And what gave you the courage to be so vulnerable? Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the question. I’m not sure I would experience it as courage. Courage is feeling fear and doing it anyway.

Talking with me is probably less impressive than that. Over the years, I came to understand the stories that I was carrying about myself, who I’m supposed to be, what people expect of me, what I think I might lose if anyone sees the real me. I had a lot of them, a lot of stories.

And when somebody would poke at one, I would defend it. Like, naturally, we do. But at some point, it occurred to me that the story and reality are not the same thing.

And then to make it even worse, everyone carries a different story about you. And you can’t even see all those stories, much less protect or defend those. And once you start to see that, you realize there’s really nothing left to defend.

And there’s no story to protect. There’s also no fear. What’s left is just wanting to be seen exactly as I am and wanting to see other people as they are, recognizing that a lot of what I’m looking at is probably a mask.

But underneath the mask, there’s something real. There’s something vulnerable, whether they want to show that or not. And I wanted to be deliberate about just showing the real me.

And I don’t mean vulnerable in the sense of being unfiltered. I think there’s a difference. Yeah.

So, there’s a story of the six blind people who come across an elephant, right? One touches the trunk, one the leg, the ear, the tail. And they argue because each one is certain that what they’re holding is the elephant. And I think the part that people miss is they’re not wrong because each one is correct about the piece that they’re touching and yet incomplete about the whole thing.

And the real mistake, the one that I try to watch for myself is thinking I’m the one in the room who isn’t blind. So, when I share something, share something personal, I’m not reporting on the elephant. I’m describing the sensation of my hand on it, my experience.

And I don’t share because I think my experience is unusual. I share it because I know it isn’t unusual. I share about the real things happening in my life because they’re things that everyone has experienced or will experience.

Business failures, career changes, relationship changes, the death of a loved one. Those are all ordinary human experiences. And my philosophy for life for a long time has been life is an experience to be had.

It’s not a game to be won. And being alive might be the most extraordinary thing any of us will ever get to do. And life, like that elephant, is too big to experience completely from a single perspective.

None of us gets to touch the whole thing, but we can tell each other what we’re feeling and what we found in our own lived experience. So, that’s what I try to convey with that vulnerability. No, that’s great.

And you know what? It gives a little bit of credence to the practices you’re talking about because it shows how you’re using them to stay moored on unsettled ground. Like lots of people come to you because you say they’re feeling unsettled ground. You say, okay, then here’s how we do it.

And I always think in those types of things because I like a lot of Daoist teachings and practices. And I always think to myself when I feel like I’m not being perfect or and then I always just think like, but what would I be without this? You know? So, let’s see here. So, to kind of tie things up, if you could suggest one activity or practice that our readers should try, even if they aren’t necessarily into being Buddhist and they just want to do something that will improve their lives, what would that practice be? Yeah, you know, as you well know, I always start my podcast episodes with the statement that you don’t need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist.

You can use what you learn to simply be a better whatever you already are. And I think one practice that could help anyone to be a better whatever they already are is to ask the question, what else is here? Not what should I learn? What should be here? What am I allowed to feel? It’s just a practice of noticing what else is actually here right now. And it’s a form of practicing curiosity.

And I think it’s harder than it sounds because most of us were trained to think that, you know, every moment comes with one correct assessment or one correct emotional label. And our job is to pick it. So we pick, and then we spend real energy pushing away everything else.

But it almost never comes in single feelings. You know, if you’re stuck at the red light, and you happen to be late for work, you’re probably feeling annoyed. And that’s okay.

But what else is there? Then through that curiosity, you might notice, well, but at least I’m in a car and not on a bike. Or at least I have a job that I can be late to. You know, and those things can, both things can be true.

At the same time, you can still be annoyed that you’re stuck at a red light and yet grateful that you are in a car. And this is different than like, positive thinking. It’s not positive thinking.

It’s because you’re not trying to swap the annoyance for gratitude. You know, positive thinking is dismissive of real difficulty. But this is a practice of addition, not subtraction.

So you’re not trying to feel better. You’re trying to be better at feeling. And this practice, I think it’s really powerful.

If you do it regularly, when the big things happen, when life’s biggest moments come, the most difficult Tetris pieces. And I remember going through this when my dad passed away for cancer and sitting with the real heaviness of losing someone that I love. At the same time, feeling tremendous gratitude for all the memories and the experiences and the fact that I get to be here with him at the end.

And I felt it again going through the recent separation and divorce and holding the complex emotions that come with the end of a long relationship while also holding space for the gratitude of an incredible life that we had built and the kids that we brought into this world. And two things can be true at once, you know, because life really is just a continual process of things coming together and things falling apart. Yeah.

And yeah, and I think you’re right. It really puts things in perspective. You know, it doesn’t cover up the feeling, but it may dilute it a little bit knowing it exists in a larger ocean than what was assumed.

So, you know, thank you so much for talking to me today. It’s funny, I’m like half trying to do an interview and half like in my podcast brain. I don’t need to talk that way.

I can talk like a normal human. What’s the best thing for me to link to in the story? If we can link to multiple things, maybe my personal website, because that kind of has all of it, right? Or at least the podcast, Eightfoldpath.com. Yeah. So probably those two, NoahRochetta.com or Eightfoldpath.com or both.

In this episode, Tod and George unpack Derek Lin’s thoughts on natural balance, explore the concept of “pro-anoia” (the antidote to paranoia), and delve into the philosophical writings of Dr. Carl Totton that he claims could be a successor to the “Tao Te Ching.”

George shares how to relax your nervous system through breathing, including his “LSD through the nose” technique. They also review Derek Lin’s “Best Time to Learn” and the parable of the Mexican Fisherman.

Tod recently read “The Original Tao” (aka the Nei-Yeh), a Taoist work likely written before the Tao Te Ching, and he shares its central theme. Also, George shares the concept of response-ability, and the two review Chuang Tzu’s thoughts on the need to win.

Episode Transcript

Key ideas discussed:

• What the Nei-Yeh is and how it relates to the Tao Te Ching
• Cultivating tranquility in Taoism
• Reacting versus responding
• How our beliefs shape our perception of reality
• Meditation and emotional reactivity
• Chuang Tzu’s warning about becoming attached to winning

[01:02] Tod Perry: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to What’s This Tao All About? My name is Tod Perry, and I’ve studied Taoism for nearly 30 years. I’m on a journey to take the mysterious words of Taoist sages such as Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and share them with the world in a fun and practical way. With me is the wonderful George Thompson.

[01:22] George Thompson: Hi, my name’s George, and I’ve had the privilege of studying in the Wudang Mountains in China. I’ve dedicated my life to exploring Taoism and sharing what I’ve learned. [Final words of introduction partially unclear.]

[01:37] Tod Perry: Now, before we do every recording session, we do, like, a little Google News search to see if there’s anything new in the world of Taoism, which is weird because, as we know, Taoism has been around since the fourth century before the Common Era, so there’s not a lot of news happening in the world of Taoism. But I did find this funny story. It was in Taiwan. Taiwan BTS fans are turning to Taoist love magic in hopes of scoring concert tickets. And for those who don’t know, BTS is a huge K-pop group.

[02:13] Tod Perry / George Thompson: [Brief joking aside about BTS and K-pop; several words are obscured by crosstalk.]

[02:30] George Thompson: One thing I noticed when I was in the Wudang Mountains was that, in the old-school religious Taoist culture, local farmers would come and bring offerings – a thing of rice, for example – and basically say, ‘I’m giving you this rice. Can you make sure my rice crop is okay for the next year?’ It can become quite a transactional relationship with the divine.

[03:10] Tod Perry: Yeah. You know, I’m not really that big on the idea of a transactional relationship with the divine. I think it’s more about harmony, and, you know, ‘What can I do for the divine?’ The funny thing is, the divine can usually do things for itself. It’s divine. It doesn’t need my help.

[03:28] George Thompson: Yeah. It’s like when I was a kid and my dad had a bad back, and I would pray to Jesus, like, ‘Can you fix my dad’s back?’ Then my relationship with Jesus becomes, ‘I pray for something; you give it to me.’ It’s a transactional relationship. For me, prayer now is more like asking for support, or connecting to something larger than myself – consciousness asking another, greater consciousness – rather than sending a specific request and expecting a specific thing back.

[04:10] Tod Perry: There was actually a study they did with people who prayed often when they were sick, especially with a serious or terminal disease. They found worse health outcomes in some of the people who prayed because some of them didn’t take their self-care as seriously. They thought, ‘Well, I’ve got God working on it, so I don’t have to follow my medical protocols as much.’ Their faith was so strong that, in some cases, they didn’t take care of themselves. I thought that was a very interesting way of seeing things.

[04:50] Tod Perry: So, I am excited about the Nei-yeh – and I don’t know how to properly pronounce this, and George is very good with the Chinese pronunciation.

[05:00] George Thompson: [Brief pronunciation/terminology clarification; partially unclear.]

What is the Nei-Yeh or “Original Tao”?

[05:10] Tod Perry: So there’s a book by a gentleman by the name of Harold Roth called Original Tao, and it’s based on the Nei-yeh, which is seen as a precursor to Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching by possibly 50 to 100 years. So this was among the original, kind of primordial Taoist ideas, which is kind of fun – the primordial soup of the whole thing. The book is about inward training, and the Nei-yeh has 26 chapters. What I find interesting is that it’s not as nuanced as the Tao Te Ching, and it’s not as nuanced as Chuang Tzu, with all the jokes and stories. It’s more direct.

[06:10] Tod Perry: One of the basic tenets running through it is the idea that when the mind is calm and at peace, your external world will mirror your internal world. It’s the basic idea that your focus determines your reality. It does give you a bit of a locus of control: if you have some control over your brain, over your mind, that can give you some control over your experience – in no way control over all external circumstances, obviously. It’s something Taoism touches on quite a bit. George, what do you think?

[07:00] George Thompson: What strikes me is that this is such a distillation of a foundation that later comes through Taoism itself. The Tao Te Ching has these 81 short chapters, and you can feel this collective wisdom that has resonated through generations. Different thinkers and teachers are synthesizing and distilling ideas that keep resurfacing through the centuries.

[07:45] George Thompson: It makes me think of Viktor Frankl and the idea of responsibility as our ability to choose our response. There’s the classic Frankl line: between stimulus and response there is a space. That space is where we have freedom and power. And that idea of space is crucial to practice.

[08:20] Tod Perry: I love that quote by Frankl. That’s amazing. And I’ve found meditation is the quickest way to increase that response area. Maybe when I was ten years old – or just less developed – that space was very small. I think there are a lot of people in this world who are operating with almost no latency between what happens and how their body reacts.

[08:50] George Thompson: Responsibility normally sounds like taking the world on your shoulders, but I love thinking about it as response-ability: the ability to choose your response. Because, to use Frankl’s quote, between stimulus and response there is this space, and in that space is your freedom and your power. The word ‘space’ is crucial. I still get reactive, but practice makes it possible to notice when I’m lost and come back. There’s more spaciousness. You can ask: ‘Where am I right now? Do I need to be in this reaction?’ That capacity is an incredible development because then you can respond to the world instead of simply reacting.

[09:50] Tod Perry: That’s where all the problems happen. So, back to Original Tao here. I pulled out a few passages. Some of them are embedded within chapters, so we won’t read the whole chapter. My belief is that the main point is: when you perfect the mind, the world outside of you will become more ordered as well – or as close as it can get. Nothing will ever be perfect. There will be ups and downs. But maybe there will be less unnecessary movement.

[10:30] Tod Perry: Here it says in Chapter 3: ‘The true condition of the mind is that it finds calmness beneficial and, by it, attains repose. Do not disturb it, do not disrupt it, and harmony will naturally develop.’ So again, repose – that space we’re talking about. Don’t disrupt it, and harmony will naturally develop.

[10:50] Tod Perry: And in Chapter 5 it says, ‘Cultivate your mind, make your thoughts tranquil, and the Way can thereby be attained.’ Again, it starts in the brain.

[11:10] Tod Perry: Chapter 10: ‘With a well-ordered mind within you, well-ordered words issue forth from your mouth, and well-ordered tasks are imposed upon others. Then all under heaven will be well-ordered.’ Again, right into this point where the ordering in the mind is what you see out in the world.

[11:27] Tod Perry: And it almost makes me think that, in your immediate life – not necessarily the world at large, but your circle and your immediate experience – if things are constantly chaotic and unpredictable and just popping off for no reason, maybe some of that can be a reflection of the mind.

How does Taoism distinguish reality from projection?

[12:00] George Thompson: I like this one because it gets into the power of the mind to create our reality, and secondly the limits of thinking that it literally creates every external circumstance. Taoism talks about how we project onto reality. Think about a projector: if you put a red lens over it, the whole image looks red. Put a blue lens over it, the whole image looks blue.

[12:40] George Thompson: So, for example, if I believe human nature is inherently selfish and therefore it’s a dog-eat-dog world, I will interpret every piece of information through that lens: humans are selfish. Everything looks red. But if I believe humans are generally good – not perfect, but generally good – that’s the lens I project through, so I interact with the very same facts differently. Our projections condition how the world outside of us feels, through our own history and experience.

[13:30] Tod Perry: And that goes exactly with this line: ‘When you have no delusions within you, externally there will be no disasters.’ But you have to get down to that truth, and that’s the hardest part. How do we know what’s true? It’s not easy. We can look at empirical evidence. We can understand more about psychology. We can try to see things with clarity and without desire, because desire can get in our way.

[14:00] Tod Perry: Some people have a desire to see the world as dog-eat-dog and full of hate, and that can excuse their own behavior in the world. Or you can choose to see that, yes, people have harmful elements in them, but most of the time people are good. That affects the way you walk through the world, and it gives you more responsibility toward the world when you see people as having goodness.

[14:34] Tod Perry: I always look at the debate around homelessness, especially living in California, where you see a lot of it. One person sees someone who’s homeless and says, ‘That person is lazy. They don’t work hard, so they don’t deserve my help.’ Another person says, ‘That person suffered some misfortune,’ or tries to understand them, and therefore feels that person deserves help. The answer can vary from person to person, of course. But often there are terrible experiences, trauma, mental illness, or other circumstances involved. Having the automatic idea that ‘that person is lazy’ frees you from feeling any responsibility toward that person.

[15:30] George Thompson: That’s a nice example. Projection is what human consciousness does. We have experience, and in order to simplify the world we project onto this infinite mystery using the experiences that we’ve had. A story like ‘people are lazy’ can become a strategy that protects me in some way. It’s a story that organizes reality for my consciousness. The practice is to notice: this story is not reality itself.

[16:16] George Thompson: And that leads to the beautiful question: how can we know what the truth is?

[16:28] Tod Perry: We were talking recently about the Crusades. The Christians thought they were being told by the Pope that they were doing the right thing, and then you’ve got the other side…

[16:40] George Thompson: Exactly. One side can feel, ‘I’m doing good,’ while the people on the other side can feel, ‘We’re protecting our land against foreign invaders.’ Both can feel like they’re in possession of the truth. So often people say, ‘I’m right. This is the truth.’ The question for me is: how can we see clearly? How can we not be fooled by an illusion or a delusion we’ve created for ourselves? For me, part of that is really coming into the body.

[17:20] George Thompson: But even that isn’t foolproof. You can imagine a crusader feeling conviction in his body and saying, ‘This feels true.’ Projection is going to happen. Delusion is going to happen. So the body is information, but it isn’t an infallible truth detector.

[17:50] Tod Perry: If the body is telling you something is true, do you get a sense of ease? And if something isn’t true, do you feel constricted? But, as you’re saying, the body can be wrong too.

[18:10] George Thompson: Exactly. The body can give false signals, just as the mind can, because the signal itself can be conditioned by projection. It’s about integrating these things – noticing what’s happening in my experience, with a level of presence. I can say, ‘This feels true,’ but that’s not the same as claiming absolute certainty.

[18:40] Tod Perry: And I think there’s sensitivity to identity too. Am I coming to this understanding based on an identity I have about myself? A political identity? A religious identity? A socioeconomic identity? These are different ideas and labels that the external world puts on us, or that we put on ourselves, and they greatly affect our projections.

[19:08] Tod Perry: They interfere all the time. Am I trying to think of this through the lens of some identity I’ve placed on myself, or is this the objective truth? Taoism is always about shedding those identities and coming into the idea that you’re an evolving, changing person. A rigid identity can possibly be a recipe for disaster. And truth isn’t simply what makes us feel good or what affirms us.

[19:50] George Thompson: Exactly. Truth can also feel bad. I’m an evolving organism; everything’s changing. Even the sense of a fixed self is a story. We can make that story closer and closer to the underlying reality, but it’s still a story.

[20:10] Tod Perry: There’s a good one toward the end of the Nei-yeh – Chapter 25 in this edition – that says: ‘When the mind can hold on to tranquility, the Way will become naturally stabilized. For people who have attained the Way, it permeates their pores and saturates their hair.’ For me, my pores, because I don’t really have much hair.

[20:40] Tod Perry: I think that’s a beautiful thing. It’s a reminder to all of us to affect our brains in a healthy way. I do it through meditation. That’s one way. Obviously if we eat healthy and exercise, all these things help too. George, are there any other types of behaviors one can do to get their mind right in order to respond to the world with more response-ability?

[21:20] George Thompson: One of my routes of healing is observation and investigation. Observation is presence. It’s being with my own experience. We’re talking about delusion and the constructs of the mind; observation helps us get closer to reality because you can notice what’s here without immediately doing anything with it.

[21:50] George Thompson: That alone can be life-changing. Observation is the first part. Then there’s investigation: explore what’s beneath these recurring delusions or stories. Why does this keep coming through again and again? What need is underneath it? Maybe the story is, ‘I need love,’ or, ‘I need to take action,’ or, ‘I need money in order to do this.’ You can investigate the attachment beneath the thought.

[22:38] George Thompson: And then you can come back to surrender and trust – allowing the Tao, loosening the attachment, returning to flow. Observation and investigation are two really useful tools.

What does Chuang Tzu say about the need to win?

[23:10] Tod Perry: All right, let’s move over to a little of the Chuang Tzu. We’ve really been focusing in this version of the show on Lao Tzu, so this is another good passage I found. It’s on page 107 of the Merton version. I understand the Merton version may not be the most literal translation ever, but it’s bite-size for what we do here, so we like it. And that’s all that matters, right? I haven’t gotten any emails about it, so that’s good.

[23:50] Tod Perry: This is called ‘The Need to Win.’ ‘When an archer is shooting for nothing, he has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind or sees two targets – he is out of his mind! His skill has not changed. But the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting – and the need to win drains him of power.’

[24:30] Tod Perry: That’s the whole bit. When you think the game is on the line and you’re playing basketball and you’ve got one minute left and you’re taking your shot, that’s way more nerve-racking than the one you take in the first quarter. Or you’re standing over a putt and maybe my buddy and I have got a beer on the line – I’ve got to buy the beer or he’s going to buy me a beer. There’s a big box on the line there.

[24:58] Tod Perry: You get more nervous when you’re thinking about winning. Or if money is on the line for work, you might be more self-conscious instead of being your full self in that moment because you’re thinking about the outcome. Or even worse, you’re thinking about losing. There are studies showing that the pain of losing tends to feel worse than the good feeling that comes with winning. It says a lot about human nature.

[25:36] Tod Perry: So, when we’re under stress, is there a way to think about it like nothing is on the line? Is that the way we do it, George?

[25:50] George Thompson: I love how funny Chuang Tzu is here: he goes blind, he sees two targets, he’s out of his mind. It’s funny body language for what pressure does. When you’re present, you can just shoot. The moment you’re thinking about everything outside the act itself, pressure builds.

[26:18] George Thompson: Another example is love. There’s this energy of, ‘Is she the one?’ Suddenly there’s all this pressure. Instead of, ‘This is a fun conversation,’ the story around the bigness of the thing can become the block.

[26:48] George Thompson: I love to share an exercise at retreats and in teaching where we freestyle rap together. There are basically no rules: you don’t have to rhyme, and if you mess up, just keep going. Take the pressure off. Don’t limit yourself with all your own beliefs and constructions. Just come back to presence and see what can emerge from presence.

[27:30] Tod Perry: I like that. And going back to the archer thing and putting it into romantic relationships: there’s nothing worse than a person who has desperation on them, who is really trying to impress somebody. It’s always the person who’s most laid-back who is the most attractive.

[27:58] Tod Perry: I mean, Natalie Portman could come running at me in a desperate way and I’d go, ‘Whoa, hold back.’ [Laughs.] That’s probably not true. But there’s a lesson in there. The person who’s shooting for money, shooting for victory, shooting for all these things – that competitiveness can hold you back.

[28:25] Tod Perry: That’s something to think about, especially if you’re in a situation where you want to cooperate. If it’s a basketball game, you want to play hard. If the environment rewards competition, great. But if it’s an environment where competitiveness actually hinders you, that’s different.

[29:00] George Thompson: The archer is a great image for the whole cultivation of a skill. There’s the object, the goal, the prize – and then there’s the actual skill. The external construction can get in the way. That can happen with any skill, like playing a musical instrument. Suddenly I’m thinking, ‘Am I good enough?’ instead of simply playing.

[29:28] George Thompson: And it comes back to what we were talking about: what’s within reflects without. Where the intention goes, the energy follows. It always comes back to presence – observing what’s in my mind. Why do I need to do that? Why am I so tight? Can I soften? Take a breath. Come back to the present.

[30:00] Tod Perry: Fantastic. George, give me your final thoughts for the people on their way this week – or month, depending on when we decide to put this one out.

[30:10] George Thompson: I guess with what we’ve been talking about – observation and presence – just ask: where am I? Where am I in my body? Where am I in my mind? What stories am I in? That’s one way to see more clearly.

[30:28] George Thompson: There’s one form of clarity which is knowledge, and there’s another form of clarity which is seeing clearly that I don’t know. Seeing clearly the mystery. Being comfortable in not knowing can be a clarifying release. We surrender into the unknown.

[30:48] George Thompson: One of the big Taoist themes, and part of this collective wisdom, is a sense of trust in the mystery. Notice when you’re contracted and stuck in your mind, and use these skills to return to balance – to find that clarifying release by embracing the mystery.

[31:20] Tod Perry: Beautiful. I’ve been trying to do this. There’s the Taoist idea of waiting for the muddy waters to clear before you make a decision. And there’s also this idea that I don’t know everything.

[31:31] Tod Perry: I was in a Mexican restaurant, sitting at the bar a couple of weeks ago, and there was a gentleman next to me who was quite intoxicated. We had those wildfires in California about a year ago, really terrible, and the guy asks me, ‘Who do you think was responsible? Was it the mayor? Was it the governor? Was it this person?’ And I said, ‘I have no idea. I’m not a fire expert in any way. I have zero answer for you.’

[32:00] Tod Perry: And I felt so good. There was no argument. It was just: I don’t know. I don’t know anything about fire. So come at me with questions about fire and water – maybe. Maybe not.

[32:18] Tod Perry: Everybody, go to Patreon.com/whatsthistaoallabout and subscribe. You get the episodes before everybody else, sometimes by up to six weeks. And we also have episodes of Tao of Tod, which is me talking for about 12 minutes about different Taoist ideas, and we have episodes of The Ten Thousand Things, where Dr. Totton and I discuss topics outside of Taoism. It’s a beautiful thing. So go to Patreon.com/whatsthistaoallabout, jump on, support us. It does take a couple bucks to keep the show on the road.

[33:00] George Thompson: Thank you very much. [Closing words partially obscured by theme music.]

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William Martin’s website

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