Tag: Taoism (Page 3 of 3)

Episode 6 — God?

October 5, 2015 / todperry / 0 Comments

The show opens with some thoughts on the nature of the universe: is it friendly or hostile? Later we delve into a discussion of how the concept of god fits into the Taoist philosophy. The show closes with Dr. Carl’s thoughts on Chapter 5 of the Tao Te Ching.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00] [Music]

[00:30] Tod Perry: You’re listening to What’s This Tao All About? A lighthearted look at Taoism, featuring Dr. Carl Totton and Tod Perry. Carl is the founder of the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Tod Perry knows a little about Taoism and is mainly here because he owns a few microphones. Now, let’s learn: What’s This Tao All About? Let’s see here. So welcome back everybody. Thank you for listening to What’s This Tao All About? Our continuing not struggle but our continuing path to get to return to the heart of the Tao. My name is Tod Perry with me is Dr. Carl Totton. We’re here at the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. And on today’s show we’re gonna we’re gonna tackle the heavy topic of God and how that Relates to Taoism and whether there is a god and Taoism or what the thought on that is. And then later we’re gonna get to a chapter of the Tao Te Ching. See here which one we have today in my notes. We have chapter five and before that just to get everything going. I found a quote the other day on Twitter which I thought was pretty heavy. You know, I want to get your opinion on it. It’s basically it’s I directed 2001, a space Odyssey, which is one of my favorite films. Barry Linden, Ise, Wed, Shut, The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, all these great films and he’s a kind of guy that in all his films there seems to be this big universal grasp. 2001, a space Odyssey might be the most deep, penetrating films, you know, I’ve ever seen and every time I watch it I get something different out of it but there’s a universal conscious. Bye.

[02:30] Tod Perry: I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen it till I watched it. It was like on an HD channel. I watched an HD version for the first time. I was like, what? Nothing looks better than it. And it’s, you know, how old 40 over 40 years old and there’s nothing that looks better than 2001. A space odyssey on the screen. It’s just amazing. But Stanley Kubrick once said, the most terrifying fact about the universe. is not that it is hostile but that it’s indifferent. But if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death, however mutable men may be to make of them, our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. So it came back to a basic idea of, I think, the average person has some idea on some A level of the universe is hostile, whether they believe it’s a safe place or whether they believe it’s indifferent. And when I read this, I thought I do believe that the world is indifferent. It squashes the good, the bad indiscriminately. When the lava comes down the mountain and wipes out the village, it wipes out everybody in the village. It’s somebody on the African savannah. It doesn’t matter who that person is. Life is just that way. But of course we can navigate it and not necessarily bend it to our will but exist within it in harmony and then increase our chances of survival or its friendliness. Or extract the friendliness out of it, right? So do you believe within the Taoist philosophy that the universe is hostile, good and different? I think the universe just is what it is

[04:30] Dr. Carl Totton: It day by day if something that an individual interprets as beneficial or good did happens, then does that make the universe good? If something negative or they perceive as negative happens, that makes the universe bad or hostile? Or if they’re just kind of going and it doesn’t seem to affect them one way or another, it is the universe neutral. So much is dependent on our perception and so much of our perception, of course, dependent on our senses. Our senses are dependent on what? Our things are internal mindset, we interpret everything. Exactly. It’s very difficult in one respect to really say. So probably neutral is probably the best thing to say. Because that can go either way. And then how we perceive it, how that perception then acts on our life is up to us. One of the things I told people all the time, particularly clients and therapy, I’m a psychologist, is that we like to get to a place in our life, in our head, in our psyche, where our contentment, our happiness is not dependent on our life. What’s happening externally? That’s very difficult for most people. They have good fortune, they feel good. They have bad fortune, they feel bad. I call that being a slave. Being a slave to the external world. Good things happen. We feel okay. Bad things happen. We feel okay. Because we’re okay.

[06:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Little control over what happens out there. Certainly other people, politicians, corporations. How much control do you have over any of that? It’s not zero. Okay. So why should their actions of these external forces affect your contentment? It shouldn’t. But it does every day. And so… And we choose the things that bring us down, right? We are focused determines our

[07:00] Tod Perry: The things we look at and the things we put in front of ourselves because you could probably of highest mind and have a difficult point of this. You could sit and look at a blade of grass and go, that is growing correctly. The universe is good. All this is great. Or you could turn on the news and go, ah!

[07:30] Dr. Carl Totton: And of course most of us have been conditioned to make one choice or another. We’re all creatures of habit. We’re all creatures of habit. In psychology it said that the number one predictor of current and future behavior is past behavior. What people have always thought, believed, done, they will tend to continue thinking, believing and doing. That’s very undouished, however. The Taoist exists in the present moment always. And the present moment is right now just past. Gone forever. Gone forever. Yet we keep clinging to the illusion that what happened a minute ago or a year ago, or 20 or 30 years ago, that that is still dominant and controlling our thinking, our reactions and our behavior. That way we’ll never be fully present in the moment. We’ll be a slave to our own, limiting and imprisoning thoughts, feelings and memories. We have the key. We’re both the prisoner and the jailer. And the purpose of the Tao is to give you the key. You can unlock the cage and just take a deep breath and go wow. And actually begin to rather than be the victim of your fate. So all these things that have been stacked up in the past and conditioned you to think, react, behave in a certain way and instead liberate you to actually source into the future. Into the future. Life goes backwards, life is always pulling us to tomorrow and to the next day and the day after that. So the momentum, the momentum trail needs to be

[09:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Ord, as long as we’re living in the past, we’ll never get there. We’ll never get there. So we want to be the masters, if you will, of our possibilities, rather than the victim of our fate. We want to be sourcing towards destiny, rather than towards the past and fate. Fate-bound realities. You want to be busy being born, as we’ve said previously. He not busy being born is busy dying. Bob Dylan said

[10:00] Tod Perry: So that was happening. You know, I was thinking the beginning of the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching about ever desiring one sees the manifestations ever desirly one sees the source or the you know. I desired an answer from you. Tell me is the universe indifferent? Is it hostile? Is it a safe place? And you did not give me what I wanted to hear.

[10:30] Dr. Carl Totton: I said it is what it is, which probably translates to it being neutral. But it’s more than neutral though. Remember the Tao has been compared to a field. You look at an apparently empty field. And yet what does the Tao do? Continuously it provides it with rain, it provides it with sunlight, it provides it with oxygen, and then out of this apparently empty field abundance of light. A Tao, neutral, positive, look at all the good that it just did right there. But yet, if you look at that reality, if you look at it closely, you’ll see, ooh, that those birds are eating those plants. Ooh, that animal, that bird is eating that worm, didn’t have the right to live. So is it neutral, is it hostile, is it, are it all just part of this big picture of, Be coming and going back. Creation and returning. It’s perfect. So I’d say ultimately the Tao is perfect. It’s perfect. What’s this Tao All About? In the Western concept of God, right? You have, you know, it’s

[12:30] Dr. Carl Totton: A person in charge of everything, created everything, is the mind that brought everything into existence. He’s a kind of a particular fellow that wants you to behave in certain ways. He’s always a man. Oh, well. So he says he, right? Right? That’s kind of the concept of the Western God. It’s Allah or the Old Testament God or the New Testament God. I don’t see how does that play into Taoism. Is there a Taoist concept of God? And something that’s eternal without limitation, the source of all creation. That’s often how people think of as the Tao and starting the sound of an awful lot like God, isn’t it? So even if the traditional, certainly philosophical Taoists don’t posit a man with a beard sitting in a throne somewhere. Oh, Te, they don’t posit that. But they do posit that there certainly is this energy, this consciousness, this thing that we can’t put a word on. So for lack of a better term, they call it the Tao. You know, that encompasses many of the attributes that I think many cultures would ascribe to the notion of God. Right. Right. So is there a, a God or is there

[14:30] Dr. Carl Totton: This nameless, eternal, formless thing that is known that for lack of a better term we just referred to as the Tao. The Tao sees all things as part of itself, it’s beyond distinctions, that’s something that we do and we make distinctions, the Tao doesn’t. And I guess the Western concept of God does make kind of distinctions. It’s separate from itself. It’s something to attain, something to, you know, through good deeds or something, you die and then you ascend to heaven and sit in the throne, right hand of God, left hand of God. You sit somewhere. You will be sitting. And it’s not now, it’s later, you know, it’s after this existence.

[15:30] Tod Perry: And in the Tao of Poob, Benjamin Hof writes that in the Western civilization we’re looking for the Great Reward. Eventually I will make this money and I will find success. I will find favor with the Neeternal God that will then bring me into Heaven and then I’ll be happy. It’s this Tao and the Road thing where is the Tao, it’s boom right here. It’s right now. Right now. See it’s not a separate experience. Because Exist, eternity and infinity. It’s already here and once we transcend the aspects of ourself that prevent us from being one with that, then we will be there too. Right. We’ll be there too. Was it the eldest, huxley, the doors of perception? Yes. You know what? What the full line when… Oh darn it. You do something and then once you break down the doors of perception, all is infinite.

[16:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Yes, you know, it’s what I call a timeless state of Greece. You know, this state of being this itself. And who can ask for more than that? You know, we’re talking I think the last show about how everything manifests as this interconnected field of energy, this quantum field, we are immersed in this quantum field, but how many of us know that? How many of us experience that as an actual reality? And so once we transcend, it’s

[17:00] Tod Perry: I’ve been blinders. Once you move away the blinders, it’s not that you weren’t there. If I put my hand in front of my eyes, I can’t see you. You were always there. I just have to remove the blinders. And then what was always there is just manifest. And that’s the Tao. You’re stripping away to get to that sense. Yeah, we’re removing the separation, the illusion of separation and then returning to That energy can either be created or destroyed. It’s eternal, it’s infinite, it just changes form. It changes shape. Much like the worm to the bird we were talking earlier about the indifferent universe. The worm becomes internalized by the birds. The birds food and then the droppings actually nurture new life, right? We were talking between shows we were talking about something about how to grow a garden. You need manure.

[18:00] Dr. Carl Totton: And so waste becomes the source of new life. Isn’t that a miracle? Waste begets non-waste. Yeah. Right. Talk about returning to the source. Right. See, it makes perfect sense. Yes. It really does. Yeah. You know. So it’s a matter of altering our own perception to be more inclusive. Because most people’s perception is very much like a horse, you know, with blinders on and we only see what’s right We are comparing what we see right in front of us to what we’ve seen in the past or making associations and then creating a label and putting on what’s right in front of us. Now, in the Western mind, you have the idea of heaven. Once if I act according to God’s law, if I accept, I have faith, then eventually I will have this kind of eternal state of bliss after and heaven and playing the harp and hanging out and everything. So, I get my mansion. So, I’m maybe even some virgins. Yeah, depending on which god. Yay, why not? So, that’s what now Tao Te, Ching Taoism doesn’t really have that kind of afterlife, promise or anything like that. No, no. Remember, this field of energy, remember, it can only change shape, you can’t kill it. Yeah, there’s no way to kill anything. Really? It can only change form. And then, like the droppings, it’s gonna become some other form later. And so, I think that the Taoist way, this returning, is returning to where. Remember, I think the last show we were talking about, there’s actually a place in the heart of unity consciousness. Our brains is what does all this separation, of this and that and judging and critiquing and keeping us from fear.

[20:00] Dr. Carl Totton: We’re all feeling our connection to the fullness, the holistic totality of the infinite. Once we let go of that so much and return to this sacred space in the heart and find this place of unity, we’re home. We’re home. We’ve gone to heaven if you will. We’ve found heaven right here in our own immediate experience. And it was just our this separation that was keeping us Really in a type of how? Because separation, almost by definition, leads to conflict, judgment, conflict, killing, death, war, etc. A hellish environment. So I think that if we’re living externally separate from ourselves and from other people, we literally have already created how. And heaven, if you will, is going back to this original state of innocence to this time. I’m a place of eternity that’s returning. It’s returning and the action of the Tao is always returning. Always. Remembering who we, I remember how we say, where do you come from? Who are you? Why are you here and where are you going? Yes. And that’s a remembering process. It’s not something that you have to create so much. You have to let go of the obstacles that keep you from being in touch with your own. And then what’s external to bring what’s internal into external existence so that we’re living our dream. We’re living this internal reality of who we are in the external world. The moment you do that, you are in the flow you are surfing the cosmic wave. You are in the Tao.

[22:00] Tod Perry: Who are in the now and it’s beautiful. Let’s wrap up today’s show and today’s session we did three shows today sitting down here. Let’s wrap up with chapter 5 of the Tao Te Ching. Ah yes. Another interesting chapter. Ha! Kind of provocative if you will. Yeah, I wonder if this is going to relate in me or what we’ve been discussing earlier.

[23:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Surprise. Yeah. Depending on the translation, heaven and earth are ruthless. They see the 10,000 things as dummies. Sometimes translated as straw dogs. Yeah, that’s what I ever had. The wis are ruthless. They see the people as dummies are straw dogs. Oh, the space between heaven and earth is like a bellows. The shape changes but not the form. The more it moves, the more the more the Hord yields more words count less. Hold fast to the center. Hold fast to the center, which of course is the really important part of this. Oh, chapter. That’s the admonition. That’s the answer. Return to the source. Hold fast to the center. The opening, I think it talks about, almost we were talking about the indifferent universe. And at the beginning about how it’s kinda got the Tao doesn’t really play favorites.

[24:00] Tod Perry: And then the people are like straw dogs and I was reading up on that and the straw dogs I guess in ancient times were used for like rituals. You would make dogs of straw and then they were discarded after use. Right. Right. So in the same way, that kind of almost neutral universe of as humanity, you are all disposable. And I think that there’s in one way that’s kind of disturbing and in another way it’s beautiful because it’s let go,

[24:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Sposable, this will all end, so participate. And there’s a sense of unity and equality in that notion as well. You know, whether you’re a king or you’re a popper, the universe, you’re all gonna be breathing the same air, you’re gonna eat whatever you eat and it’s going to break down in your body and provide nourishment for you, and you’re gonna live and you’re going to die. Right? No amount of No amount of lack of money will change that either. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s in different. What do we laugh with though? As a human being in this kind of neutral universe. But yet we’re all interconnected. We all are part of the source. We all have infinite potential. But yet we also have been conditioned. We’ve had experiences. We were born in a certain genetic lineage. You had biological events that formed much of your capacity to think and to feel and to experience and to relate. And it built in some limitations, which of course can be transcendent, but right now, they’re perhaps limitations. You have an external reality, you have parents, you have school, maybe you’ve got the church, maybe you’ve got the intellectuals, if you will.

[26:30] Dr. Carl Totton: up structures and strictures about how you can live your life and yet you’re being asked to find your own way in the midst of all of that. Jumping these hurdles and yin. Jumping the hurdles navigating the course. And so what can the Tao offer us as we navigate our way to this path, this Tao? I think what the Tao has to offer is A way of taking everything that we experience as gris for the mill. Things that look like they are a barrier, very often provide the exact learning experience you need to do something even greater down the road to transcendent. Exactly. And if it wasn’t there, it’s kinda like a knife, right? You need to rub it against a stone. No, the short sharpened it. Don’t we learn through adversity and difficulty? Yes. The worst thing you can do for a child is to give them everything and they never have to do anything. They never have to lift a finger to do anything to help themselves or to learn how to navigate the environment. No skills. The worst thing you can do to a child. What’s the difference between Tao and Lao?

[28:30] Dr. Carl Totton: You used it all the same. You took it in, assimilated it and moved on. You learned so. I always say either you are winning if you will because you’ve learned or you’re learning. You’re winning or you’re learning. You’re not really losing. You’re winning or you’re learning. You’re like that. I like that. And so it’s a new way of looking at obstacles in life, difficulties in life. And none of us knows where we, from whence we came, you know, we don’t know where we hear at some in a different existence, which then put us in a particular position right now, where we needed certain obstacles or challenges in order to grow even further. It’s an opportunity. It’s an actual Tao-given opportunity to grow and to change and to learn. And the fact that it comes around again, it gives us a chance to prove that this time we’ve mastered it. And now we’re ready to learn a different lesson. And if you don’t, it’ll come right back again. The universe is very patient. You screw up a thousand times and it’ll always give you a thousand and one chance.

[30:00] Tod Perry: That’s a nice place to wrap up chapter 5. Do you have a take away for this week that people can do and keep them on the path of the Tao to keep them returning? Remember the curse if you will, the problem, the illness, the disease is separation.

[30:22] Dr. Carl Totton: Leaving things is separate than us. When actually, or as a Chinese say, the universe is a sea of chi, a sea of energy. We are all interconnected, we are entangled as they say in physics. We are entangled in this field of energy. So a great exercise is to walk around and everyone you look at say, you know, that’s me. They look different, but that’s really me. That’s an extension of me. What if you look at a chair or a wall and say, you know, that’s really me. Be and see how seeing everything is being a part of you as opposed to being separate then you how that changes your reality. And changes how you relate to everything. And a great way to do that is to breathe. Because breath, breath is a rhythm. Everything you look at has its own natural energetic rhythm. Whether it’s another person, an animal and insect, the land, a tree, And so as you see this thing is being kind of an extension of me, I’m that tree, I’m that other person. Now let’s see if I can actually breathe with them or it. And see this feeling of connectedness, it will. I guarantee you, then you’ll, your self will kind of disappear a bit and you’ll, uh, right, because you expanded. Yeah. Beyond, you know, the limitations in your brain that made you think This notion of separation. It is the biggest illusion of all. In the entire universe it is the biggest illusion of all. The biggest Maya, right? The biggest Maya. And so if we can transcend that then we don’t hold on so much to our own emotional baggage, our old antiquated ideas about how this is this and this is good and this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. All the things that separate and divide us,

[32:30] Dr. Carl Totton: And instead we see that, you know, we’re all in this together. We’re all just part of the life force. And if we return to the source, the source being this knowledge that we’re really all the same, that we’re all interconnected, life becomes so much easier. It becomes perfect. Just become conscious of it. It becomes beautiful. Beautiful. Because that is the Tao. The Taoist life itself, the Taoist death itself,

[33:00] Tod Perry: Which doesn’t really exist. It’s perfect and it’s beautiful. Thank you Dr. Carl Totton for sitting with me today. My name is Tod Perry and you can we’ll be back next week with more What’s This Tao All About? and have a good one in his Dr. Carl signs off his emails to me May the Tao be with you. To learn more about the show, check us out online at WhatsThisTao.com. Follow the show on Twitter at @WhatsThisTao. Follow Tod Perry on Twitter at @TodAPerry. Now, don’t follow leaders and watch our parking meters. Hey man.

Epiosode 4 — Meditation

September 21, 2015 / todperry / 0 Comments

We open the show speculating whether some of the greatest minds of the last century were secretly Taoists. Later, Dr. Totton teaches the basics of starting a meditation practice, and we end with a breakdown of Chapter Three of the Tao Te Ching.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00] [Music]

[00:30] Tod Perry: You’re listening to What’s This Tao All About? A lighthearted look at Taoism, featuring Dr. Carl Totton and Tod Perry. Carl is the founder of the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Tod Perry knows a little about Taoism and is mainly here because he owns a few microphones. Now, let’s learn: What’s This Tao All About? Hello everybody and welcome back to What’s This Tao All About? My name is Tod Perry and here is Dr. Carl Totton, Sijo and we’re gonna continue our discussion on the Tao Te Ching today. What we’re gonna talk about our big stuff is chapter 3 of the Tao Te Ching and we’re gonna talk about meditation a bit and we’re gonna open up a little bit. I’m gonna discuss some people throughout history that might have been seen Crit Taoists, some people who have said things that are, I think in line with the Tao, kind of quotes I’ve liked throughout my life. So I’m gonna run these by Carl and see what you think. Excellent. Alright, one of my first things is, it’s a George Bernard Shaw once said that life is not about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself. Now is that, is that with the Tao? Because the Tao is a lot about finding

[02:00] Dr. Carl Totton: And so the art of finding verses creating, you know, building on to something, not sure. Yeah, you know in a way, it’s like a different way of saying something else. As so much is Tao. Tao, a lot of it has to do with discovering, uncovering what’s already there. Right. And then when you allow that to just manifest naturally to flow and And goes with the flow. Then one is at one with the process of ongoing discovery and creation. And so it’s not in the sense that we are thinking about something and planning it and then experimenting and trying this and trying that and creating something in that manner. It’s a way of uncovering something that has already been laid down. But because we’ve been so busy thinking Planning and scheming and manipulating, we lost it, we didn’t see it. It’s also like the act of creation and destruction is kind of simultaneous. Right? Yeah. And the Tao, everything is both being created, if you will, and being uncreated at the same time. Right. No. No. Every time anything is said or done, it’s there for that moment and then it’s gone. Right. Yeah. It’s gone, wu, where did it go? It’s gone, it happened. It’s like, quick, quick, too late, too late. It’s like, uh, it’s with the Dutch boy with the the wall and there’s a leak in the wall and he puts his finger in the wall and put his finger in the other one and then the other side of the water is coming through and this is not enough fingers and hands to, but that

[04:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Just let it be because if it leaks what we will also do, oh, the water all of the crops and then everybody will be fed. And so sometimes things have to allow space for things to happen and at the same time be mindful that there might be a plan. You might be a bigger picture. And too often, almost always we see things from what position our own narrow perspective. Almost every human being does that.

[04:30] Tod Perry: Unless we actively do something like meditation to counteract that and try to go on to bigger things. We’re gonna get to that in a minute. Meditation. Another great quote I’ve always liked is, life has become immeasurably better once I’ve been forced to stop taking it seriously. By Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. But I like reading Hunter S. Thompson’s work. And it’s very true that I every once in a while I look up around I go, you know, why am I taking life so serious when, you know, it’s fleeting, it’s going to go. I’ll be gone, I’ll be with the dust at a certain point or everything around this that I’m attached to. Life is a joyous experience and not to get too pulled down into the weeds and not

[05:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Walk through it with such heavy feet, I guess. Yes. Every moment is here for just the second. Then it’s gone forever. It’s gone forever. And yet what do we do? We try to cling to those moments. Like it’s a life raft or something. That’s somehow gonna save us. The cling to what happened just the second ago. Our job is to be fully present every moment and then let it go. Why? So that we can welcome

[06:00] Tod Perry: You’re a kid and you’re at like Disneyland or whatever. The whole day like this is just the best perfectest thing ever. And then you have that weird moment where you go, oh no, I’m gonna have to leave Disneyland. And then you don’t enjoy anything. It’s like on Sunday you go, oh I got work tomorrow. I’m at this we’re doing Sunday right now. I might have just ruined my day. But you know, oh man Is the nature of the Tao.

[07:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Something on a previous show we were discussing, I was saying to you, do you think that most people are walking around concerned with the bigger questions of life or asking what why they’re here or the meaning? And I was like, I’m sure people are just not talking about it and you said, no, no, maybe lots of people just kind of aren’t. You know? I agree, I think most people are just busy living their lives. Yeah. But unfortunately

[07:30] Tod Perry: Clinging to moments and trying to create or extend or just adjust or adapt to something that they miss the bigger picture. And often, the old saying you can’t see the forest for the trees are only too true. I found this great, it was like this sheet of notes by the jazz player, Thelonious Monk. Oh yes. And he had this whole thing of notes that he wrote for himself. It was almost like to reflect, you know, to Put himself in the zone when he’s playing music or you know just kind of true you know the true things he learned in life. And one thing he wrote was the inside part of the tune, the bridge you know your big change in the middle of the song is the part that makes the outside sound good. So if he puts in a big a big change in the middle of the song that takes you out of the your normal verse chorus it’s by going way out there The rest of the song then sounds fresh. Yes. It’s almost like I went to Hawaii a few weeks ago and the fact that I got out of my element, I took it way out there and I went to another place, different frame of mind. I came back and I

[08:50] Dr. Carl Totton: appreciated my normal everyday life. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Often by going to the extremes, we absolutely learn to appreciate what we have here in the moment It gives us that sense of dimensionality that makes life seem richer. Right. Yeah. And also by contrast, here in a third dimensional world, in a world that is framed by yin and yang, if you will. It’s by exploring the things that look like their opposites of each other that we come to find the totality of our experience. Ultimately it’s really all one whole existence. We see the forest from the trees. Right. But most human beings, most of us can’t do that type of just being one with the flow and integrating all of the extremes simultaneously, moment by moment without clinging or holding on, few people can really do that. Yeah, no. You would probably become schizophrenic or either that or sage.

[10:00] Tod Perry: What’s This Tao All About? is recorded at the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Check out the TaoistInstitute.com. See there’s schedule of classes including Taoist meditation, kung fu and qigong. That’s TaoistInstitute.com. Alright, so let’s get into this here. Let’s talk a little bit about meditation. And I know you teach meditation classes right here at the Taoist Institute. Oh, yes. Now my big question is I’ve, I’ve, from time to time sat and attempted to meditate. I’ve had a couple positive experiences with it. I haven’t integrated into my daily life. And, and one of the questions I always have is, I feel like there’s different forms of meditation, right? And different ones like there’s like transcendental meditation and you gotta pay 1500 bucks to learn it. And I always go, is that a scam or is it, you know, why don’t they just make this available to everybody? You know, why don’t they reveal their secret, you know?

[11:30] Dr. Carl Totton: You want? Oh great, yeah. That’s awesome. Just on tell anyone. Yeah. Our little secret. This is how publicly now come. So is there a better way in order to say what is the difference in the different forms of meditation, if you will? Or is it just all the same thing that people are calling different? No, it is an all just the same thing. People have been trying to kind of solve this riddle about who am I, And where am I going? In other words, what is the meaning of life? And almost everyone, sooner or later comes to the realization that all of this doing and trying and thinking and thinking and overthinking is taking me away from realizing this essence of what is the meaning of my life. And so sooner or later, people around the world for thousands of years have realized that unless I sit quietly And so all cultures and peoples and spiritual groups have at one point or another come to the realization that they have to alter something about what they’ve been doing. It’s in the doing and overdoing and overthinking while overdoing where we get lost. So I think that ultimately meditation is really a very natural state. It’s what happens before we start doing. It’s what happens before we start talking and thinking. And our thinking of course is always in what? Words, right? And words as we know, words are a representation of something, they’re not the thing. And so meditation is to try to get to the thing.

[13:30] Dr. Carl Totton: And so if you’re talking and thinking too much, it’s going to be very difficult to realize the nature of what underlies our existence. And so that’s what meditation is for. Now, there are 100 ways about knowing more than that, a thousand ways to actually try to do that. Essentially, meditation can be divided in general into active forms of meditation and more Past of forms of meditation. Act of forms of meditation, you do something. Maybe you chant something. Maybe you focus on something. It might be something even very peaceful like focusing on a cloud drifting across the sky or a river flowing down the stream. But so something grabs your attention and as something grabs our attention and we begin to follow that, track that, guess what happens? As that immersion increases the internal chatter that self-talk does to decrease. I could use that. Yes, we can all use that. So that’s actually very useful. So that’s active. That’s active meditation. Because you’re doing something in order to decrease our attachment to what we usually do. Which is doing and thinking and planning and on and on and on. Okay. What’s your…it’s actually probably more difficult. You know, is it more rewarding because it’s more difficult? Not necessarily. You know what they say? All roads lead to Beijing or Hong Kong or Rome or someplace, right? So, however one gets there, it’s fine. As long as you get…again, return to the source. Okay. So passive forms of meditation, it’s more difficult because sometimes people will tell you what, I’m sure

[15:30] Dr. Carl Totton: of nothing but who can do that? I’ve thought of nothing like four times in my life. And then I go, I’m thinking about nothing. Right. And so typically what is easier for people is to think about something different than what they ordinarily are thinking about. So again, it might be a word, it might be a breath. You know what I tell people to do? What’s going on in your mind right now? Oh, okay, that’s interesting. Now, look at that. Watch those thoughts. And while you’re watching those thoughts, what’s going on in your body right now? Notice that too. Don’t think about it. Just notice it. Oh, how about your breath? You notice that? Oh, okay, just notice that. So, as you sit here and you’re noticing your mind and you’re noticing your body and you’re noticing your breath, what part I don’t know. Great. Now, just stay with that experience and just see where that takes you. And now I’ll put on some nice music. I’ll turn out the lights. I have a black light here. I’ll put on black light and it looks kind of mysterious and kind of kind of, no it’s really soft in there. And what happens is that people get so engaged in this exercise and really mindfulness. You know, being able to not be In your body, in your breath, but rather coming from a place where you are all of these things simultaneously without having to divide and separate them. At that moment, an amazing thing happens. We stop thinking. You might realize, I know this has happened to you. Haven’t you been driving sometimes on the freeway and you noticed that, gosh, I just drove the last

[17:30] Dr. Carl Totton: 10 miles and I didn’t have one thought in my mind about driving. Yes. It’s the same thing in meditation. How did I get here? How did I get here? Why am I in the valley? Like I was in the valley. I switched lanes, I avoided cars obviously, I drove the speed limit, I wasn’t bumping into people, I didn’t drive off the road and I did not have one thought about driving. The same thing happens in

[18:00] Tod Perry: You can just be. Right. It’s beautiful. So, about let’s see. So if I wanted to kind of start going towards that place, just by myself, at my house, you know, maybe woke up in the morning, had a cup of coffee, and then I get ready to go to work and I want to take this 20 minutes to get to that state. What are the kind of real simple ways to get into that? I always talk people,

[18:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Natural state. I think a lot of what we do and say and think all the time is really quite unnatural. Okay. Alright. And so there’s something that pervades that, that’s beneath that and above that and beyond all of that. Something that just is. Right. And so the easiest way. That’s the easiest way. You know, my teacher taught me when I, the first day of meditation, my Taoist teacher, he said, just said and Observe your breathing. Feel the air come in. Feel the air come out. Just notice that. Just watch that. And as I watch that and then began to just watch my thoughts and watch my body. Maybe I had some imagery in my mind. Maybe I was remembering something and event. Do you try to then stop that or do you just let it play out? You just watch it. You just observe it. You don’t participate in it. You just let And now you’re back to square one. You’re out of it. You’re out of it because you’re too into it. Right. Okay. So it’s a matter of this. It’s interesting because on one hand, people always say that to meditate, you have to do what? You have to focus. You have to concentrate. You hear that all the time. It’s a brilliant experience. And when that will kill meditation

[20:00] Tod Perry: Cold for me.

[20:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Ultimately, we’ll be capable of. It takes a while, just like anything else. It took you a while to learn how to ride a bike, drive a car. Anything. And it’s the same thing. But once you’ve kind of groove that pathway into this deeper aspect of the self, it definitely becomes easier and easier. And you know what? You like it. Because you like it, you want to do it more. So so much better than Dorfins in my brain. Why do I not do this every day? But at first it does what? It’s a pain. It hurts. It hurts. I walk up a trepago. Oh my sore back. This is gonna hurt. We actually move into a state of what’s often called pure awareness, where a whole other world opens up inside of us. Busy doing those other things, there’s an entire dimension of experience that will miss. That will miss. That is in everyone. It’s in every human being. It’s in a we’re all part of the Tao. One spirit. And so the Tao being vast, having no beginning, having no end, existing on all dimensions throughout time and space, can you imagine? No, you can’t imagine. It’s beyond our imagination. How much there, how rich and how deep this experience of this domain actually contains. Okay. And so meditation, every time we do it, we’re allowed entry into another, another little corner of experience in that realm. And it is so rich and so nurturing that it’s like tasting pure honey years. Right. It’s so sweet. I love it. Okay. So I was reading a book and it was,

[22:30] Tod Perry: See, this is me. I read all these books, right? But the practice and the discipline of the practice, it alludes me. But it was a book called, Catching the Big Fish by a filmmaker, David Lynch. And he was saying that when he… Oh, he’s good. Yeah. When he started meditating, he realized as a creative person that the big fish were at the deeper levels, the big fish, the big ideas, that he And he was working and bringing into his art. He would meditate and the deeper he got, the bigger and more nurturing the fish were. Is what he said when he would dip into it. And I thought that was a wonderful metaphor for what I should strive for when attempting this

[23:20] Dr. Carl Totton: practice. So, what’s the best time to meditate is it in the morning at night? Anytime. Anytime. I mean, everybody’s, you know, their lives are different They have zugging things to do and they don’t have time and so the evening or night before they go to bed is a better time. You know, ultimately, I think we want to get to the point where meditation is not this separate experience where we have to, it’s only when we’re sitting down doing meditation that we are engaging in meditation. We would like meditation to just become part of our natural, normal state of being. Because that’s what meditation is It’s a state of expanded awareness, awareness of what? Awareness of what is? Well, what is? Well, you’ll know when you find it. Ah, that’s a nice way to go out on it. Do you have any more words on meditation? Just that don’t complicate it. It’s very simple. And our tendency, particularly here in the West, is to complicate things. And you’ll find books and books and books and things Written on how to meditate. And there’s all these different ways and so a seeker can get very easily confused. Yes. Because every many of the books say something very different. But if we remember that meditation is a natural state and it’s a state of immersion into what is. Because a lot of what we’re doing is an avoidance of not doing and meditation is definitely associated with not doing.

[25:00] Tod Perry: We’re doing less. Doing less. The minimal of us. Yeah. Because when you get to zero, where you’re not doing anything, then you can finally live and be everything. Is it kind of like if you look at an hourglass, right? You have the stuff at the top of the hourglass and they have that real thin waste, right? And then you have a different thing on the other side. Where we’re normally on the top of the hour

[25:30] Dr. Carl Totton: That there’s a whole other vessel of consciousness or whatever it is. Is it like that? At that moment we are fully in tune and in touch with the Tao and we are just filled with inspiration. It’s almost like a download from the field of consciousness, a field that we are part of but because we’re so busy, we’re not aware of it. Once we let go of those expectations and just immerse ourselves, In the Tao, the richness of that fills every moment. And at that moment, those questions, those eternal questions, who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? And where am I going? The answers become crystal clear. And that’s precious. You can’t buy that. Let’s move on to The chapter of the Tao Te Ching today. We’re gonna do chapter 3 of the Tao Te Ching. Who’s a meditative existence? Not just a practice, but a meditative existence as a prescription for living wisely. And so in chapter three, it’s very short, almost all of them are, is he says not exalting the gifted prevents quarrelling, not collecting treasures prevents stealing, not seeing desirable things, prevents confusion of the heart.

[27:30] Dr. Carl Totton: What’s he talking about here? And then he goes on and he says, the wise, therefore, rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies. By weakening ambitions and strengthening bones. If people lack knowledge and desire, then intellectuals will not try to interfere. If nothing is done, then all will be well. So this letting go of attachment from the heart or the mind while focusing on essentials like health, eating, right? right. allows things to kind of just settle into place and define their own innate rhythms. You know, every organism has a rhythm and the rhythm is trying to do what is trying to ensure survival. Through adaptation to create homeostasis, balance. And if we can do that then everything just flows and everything is beautiful and everything is fine. But look around. Is everything just flowing? Is everything just beautiful? And is everything just fine? No. And therefore things since so much is being done that is not in a course. Or with our inner natures, people aren’t feeling what they need. They’re feeling that what they’re doing is meaningless. Or has a meaning maybe to someone, some things, some outside entity but not to them. It’s not the heart’s desire. Then they wind up feeling dissatisfied. No matter how much money they’re making, you know, no matter how much of the material external rewards they may be getting, they’ll at a deep level.

[29:30] Dr. Carl Totton: If you ask them they will tell you something is missing. I feel like I’m just spending my wheels. And yeah I’m doing everything that everybody says I should be doing. And there’s nothing is gaining traction. It’s not, you know, it’s not amounting to anything besides you know, paying the rent. Yeah, and life is a lot more than going to work and paying your bills. Yes. I assure you. And so he says if people lack So we’ll not try to interfere. If nothing is done, then all will be well. Now the intellectuals trying to interfere. What is that relate to? Well, there are always people in every society who try to guide what people are doing by claiming that they know best. The intellectuals. The intellectuals. Often it’s politicians, critics, who are offering critiques about society. I’m sure people would call him a big thinker in a way but yet he’s constantly advising us to do what? Not think, right? Not think so much. And so here maybe the biggest thinker of them all is saying don’t think. And what was the very first thing out of his mouth in the Tao Te Ching? The Tao that can be spoke with. And is not the eternal Tao. Right. And what are our thoughts? Words. Words. Right. So the very first words out of his mouth are don’t trust this. Right. Don’t trust this. And don’t trust the authorities that are trying to tell you how to live your life. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Trying to push you one way or the other. Exactly. There’s so many levels of abstraction away from the immediacy of what he taught.

[31:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Person is experiencing. And every person has to be the arbiter of their own experience. Nobody else can tell you what you are experiencing, what you should be experiencing, what you’re thinking, what you should be thinking, what you’re doing, what you should be doing. Nobody has that authority to do that, unless you give it to them. Unless you give it to them. And unfortunately, if you look at the history of the world, what do we see? People are very willing to give up to the author. And then authorities are more than willing to try to take control through power and manipulation in order to attain more material goods. Or even worse power over others. Power over others so they can increase their gain of material goods. And so now look at the world. We’re in a crisis. We’re in environmental crisis. We’re in economic crises. We’re certainly in political crisis. It’s sad in many, many respects to see how far away we’ve gotten from this self-regulation, this homeostasis, this balance, we’re all organisms, especially us, getting our needs met and we’re filled and creative. It’s about creativity. You know, I tell everybody, the most important thing that you have is your imagination. Because think about it for me. And this fuels it, I feel. Yeah, I agree. Because if you look at human history, has not every advance come through imagination. Yes. Every single thing. We thought being the caves, right? We didn’t have imagination. If someone didn’t look out there and go, you know what? We could do

[33:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Fish was cooked. Yeah, right, yang. See, it allows us to creatively meet our needs in a fuller manner. And by unleashing greater creativity, you’re gonna unleash a greater more creative, you know, better society. Yes, for us. Yes, it’s a living. So I’m advocating for what? A new Renaissance. Yes. We need a new Renaissance. Right, yeah. A creative liberation. Yeah, the creative liberation of the human spirit I’ll take up a banner and wave it behind you. It’s like be free, be free. But to do that we have to claim and own our freedom. And too often society conspires to get us to subvert our freedom. To give up our freedom. I think it’s a natural state of having it subverted to begin with and then realizing it later in life. You know, not to say that I’ve come to some great point. I’ve completely gotten, you know, gotten, become liberated from all the structures around me. But I’m just saying, yeah, you do get to a certain point where you see the matrix. Yes. You know, you see the cage that you’re in and then you realize two things. One, number one, I’m in a cage. Somehow I’m restricting my life. I’m constricting and restricting my life. I’m in a cage. Now, where And most important, who has the key? And is it some force out there? Is it somebody else? Did I give somebody else the power to confine me? And therefore my liberation is dependent on them, some external authority or some intellectual or better and worse at the same time that I lock myself in this cage. And I’ve got the key and I’m not liberating myself.

[35:30] Tod Perry: Oh my goodness. What do I do to myself? I mean with the moment you see that, you go, oh no now I have a response to my self to enact that to fully unlock that cage. 100% responsibility to do that. That’s daunting. That is very scary. Scary for me, I think it’s probably scary for most people.

[36:00] Dr. Carl Totton: This writing is like the Tao Te Ching. Really is to ultimately give each human being courage that there are other people who have gone down this path, down this road and we know how difficult it is and we support you. You’re not crazy to think that you want to get out of your cage and be real. That’s great and we support that. Wonderful. You’re not alone. Yes. So do we have any takeaways for this week? Tickle stuff that people can get into before our show comes out next week. Things to think about. Well, I always like to give a practice, of course. Yes. Because practice makes perfect. Yes. And so a nice exercise is to simply notice what you have in your life that you personally are grateful for. Every day, every day you should get up and think. Hmm. What do I have to be great for people? For Rather than the lack of abundance. Because when you’re feeling lack, you tend to attract what you’re feeling. So you’ll just attract more lack. And number two, you’ll never be satisfied. You’ll never be satisfied. You have to choose to be satisfied. So just appreciation of the simple things, synthesizes us to the natural beauty of life as it is. Just as it is.

[38:00] Dr. Carl Totton: At the sunrise, how about the smile on a baby’s face? The gracefulness of a cloud, the sound of a court of music, the taste of good food. All of these little appreciations bring joy to life and went overlooked because we’re pursuing the big things, then life tends to lose its vitality and we wind up feeling frustrated and unsatisfied. Let go and let it be. Just let it be what it is.

[38:30] Tod Perry: You’re like it! Awesome, well, for this week it’s time to let it be and we’re gonna let this show be for right now and we’ll be back next week with more What’s This Tao All About and preview for next week’s show. Now we’ll just let you see what happens. We’ll talk you soon. Thank you.

[38:56] Tod Perry: To learn more about the show, check us out online at WhatsThisTao.com. Akan, Fall The Show on Twitter at What’s This Tao? Follow Tod Perry on Twitter at @TodAPerry. Now, don’t follow leaders and watch your parking readers.

[39:30] [Music]

Episode 2 – Busy Brags vs. the Art of Non-Doing

September 6, 2015 / todperry / 2 Comments

In this episode, Tod and Dr. Totton explore how being busy for the sake of being busy can be a detriment to being connected to the Great Tao. They also try to uncover the secrets of wu-wei, or the Taoist art of acting without doing.

The conversation also dives into Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching, where beauty and ugliness, having and not having, and action and stillness arise together.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00] [Music]

[00:29] Tod Perry: You’re listening to What’s This Tao All About? A lighthearted look at Taoism featuring Dr. Carl Totton and Tod Perry. Carl is the founder of the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Tod Perry knows a little about Taoism and is mainly here because he owns a few microphones. Now let’s learn: What’s This Tao All About? We’re in the episode two here. We don’t have a name yet for the show, but it will appear in the credits of the show. So we will know the show that cannot be named like the Tao Te Ching. So, uh, Sijo? Yes. Sijo. I was, I found this article the other day online and I love that when you open yourself up to things like we were discussing on the last show, the magic happens, right? And I was, I was thinking to myself, I said, you know, I need some ideas to talk about on this show to help get into things. You know, you need these sparks that help, you know, the conversation happened. And so being open to it, a buddy of mine on Twitter posted this article and I, that’s what we need to be speaking about. I allowed for the magic to happen and lo and behold, the magic happened. So I found this article the other day called the Cult of Being Busy by a lady named Dina Kaplan and says, over a leisurely lunch recently, a good friend lamented that he was too busy to read. I smiled. Our meal lasted an hour and a half and then we strolled to a nearby restaurant evaluating the menu for an upcoming dinner party. My friend then headed to a meeting about a conference. I like the, going to a meeting about a conference, right? That’s a busy man, right? You can’t just go to the conference. I have to have a meeting about the conference because he’s a successful entrepreneur. And he didn’t plan to attend, but he ended up going. And by the time he returned to work, it would be 430 more than four hours after he left for lunch. He had filled the day. He was busy, but the things that made him busy were the result of his own decisions. He didn’t lack the time to read, he was simply choosing not to. Throughout the day, we faced a number of decision points about how to spend time. Too often we approach these decisions passively, as if our hand was being forced, our free will compromised. Let me add one caveat. If you’re, you know, if you have young children, a bad commute, several jobs, this piece should be meaningless because you are generally busy. My friend at lunch reminded me of what the Buddhist monk, Sogyal Rinpoche, I’m not sure, Rinpoche, calls active laziness, the filling of our lives with nonessential tasks so we feel full of responsibilities or as he calls it, irresponsible. And I was thinking to myself, I said, you know, active laziness that when I heard that I was like, it kind of hit me like a mild lightning bolt. I said, my day is filled with active laziness whether I’m sitting on social media, looking at stuff that really isn’t germane to my life or I’m sitting in an office when I could have got my work done in about three hours and been done with it, staring at a computer screen and this active laziness pulls my focus from anything of importance. And I become kind of a slave to those random noodling thoughts. And I think, and then on the, another side of this, we’ve, as a culture, plays so much importance on being busy. We’re like, if you’re not busy, then you’re not important. You’re not doing anything worthwhile. And people, they call it a busy bragging or like, you see people, oh, I’m so busy. I worked till 11, like there’s a guy on my office like I was here till eight. And I’m like, that sounds horrible. Why would you want to do that? You know, I want to think to myself, gee, maybe you’re not very efficient if you were here till eight, right? You know, maybe you’re working too hard on the wrong things or, you know, whatever. You know, one thing I liked about that article is that is where she says in there that maybe, maybe being busy should be a confession, not a boast. Yes, yes, I love that. Yeah. Oh my God, I’m busy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Poor me. Yeah. What are we busy doing?

[04:59] Dr. Carl Totton: We’re busy filling up our time. with things with chores, with jobs. And at the end of the day and at the end of a life, what does it all mean? You know, I’ve worked with people who are dying and on their deathbeds, I guarantee you not one person ever regrets that they were not more busy. Right. In fact, their big regret is that they were too busy, too busy to enjoy life, too busy to have fun, too busy to spend more time with the people they loved, too busy doing everything except living. Yeah. Really living. Yeah. And I think the Tao is a way that it’s like this little bug on your shoulder that’s going all the time. Are you living? Are you living? Are you just talking? Are you just existing? And at the end of that of your days, are you going to look back and bemoan the fact that you weren’t busy enough? Or that maybe you were too busy? And now, and you missed it. And you missed it. Yeah.

[06:12] Tod Perry: You missed it. Yeah. And the Taoist feels it’s a shame to miss it. Yeah. Right. It’s so missing. It’s happening right now. It’s right now. Yeah. That’s why I love the title of that book by Ram Dass, Be Here Now. Yes. That’s very Taoist. Yes. Definitely definitely. And so this might be a bigger topic. We’re going to discuss wu wei on today’s show. And the second this the second verse of the Tao Te Ching. Now how is you know, we’re saying don’t, you know, don’t occupy yourself unnecessarily with busy, don’t. But how then does one quote be is being sitting down meditating is being taking a walk is being because those are almost activities in their own way. You know what I’m saying? What is, what is the antidote to the busyness? Is it just allowing life to happen and not planning anything and just sitting down and interacting with the world in a non desiring way?

[07:17] Dr. Carl Totton: You know, there’s the Taoist gathering every year up in Oakland. And a few years ago, I was the keynote speaker. And my topic was being and becoming as a matter of fact pertinent that you should bring that up.

[07:54] Tod Perry: Yeah. What are we supposed to be doing? Are we supposed to be doing anything? Yeah. It was funny. When I was in, I went to India and I noticed it. Everybody in India was in a hurry to do nothing. That was my takeaway from that country. And there were people, they weren’t homeless, they weren’t, they didn’t appear to be homeless, but people would just lay down on the sidewalk or in the middle of the street and just, you know what, I’m just going to lay down for like nobody in LA unless you’re drained. You know, just lays down on the phone. But you’d walk and you’re like, who’s not the guy just just doing the most nothing you could do? He wasn’t even trying to be in a specific place of doing nothing. You’re just like this street right now, I’m just going to lay down and this to nothing. Talk about not doing. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I not do all my couch. All right, not doing this guy was just not doing nothing. You know, it was like, there was part of me that really admired him. You know, I was like, this guy has got it. He’s got it together. Yeah. But, but you know, but I think it’s an important question,

[08:42] Dr. Carl Totton: because all of us, every human being is certainly here in the West, we’re confronted with every day. What are we doing? And what does that doing have to do with our being, yeah, who we are and who were in the process of becoming? Yeah. And can all of that be somehow harmonized so that they don’t conflict? Yeah. Um, since Taoism encourages us to really fulfill our own inner nature, you know, there’s every human being has a clock kind of going off inside of us. You know, we start off very yang, right? Yeah. In fact, if you go back before birth, we’re just a little cell, right? Yeah. Then what about four cells and then eight and they keep dividing? See, so the nature of things, certainly from the beginning, is to grow and expand and become more, right? And we’re born in every day, every second, as any parent will tell you, the kid gets bigger, it seems every few minutes, right? After they’re born. So we’re busy being born as Mr. Dylan said, yeah. And then we contract. And in fact, if you look at the universe from a prospect of a quantum physicist, They will tell you right now that the universe is doing two things simultaneously at all times. It is expanding, ever since the Big Bang. But at the same time, it is contracting, it is like breathing, it is expanding and contracting, and out of that interaction of expansion and contraction comes reality. Things are birthed into being. I think every human being, as a Taoist practitioner, I look at every human being every second as becoming, expanding, but yet contracting. Because we are heading towards what? Non-being. We are headed towards death. And what is the cause of death? Birth. Birth is the leading cause of death. Exactly. In fact, it is the only cause of death. But in between, what happened? We were busy. We were busy. We were being. We were doing whatever we were doing. And if we took the fact, if we go to the end and we take death, and we look at that at all times as something that is stalking us, haunting us, calling to us, because we are moving there. It is calling us. But if we know that, rather than death being this awful, horrible, scary thing out there to be afraid of, death actually becomes a teacher. It teaches us every second to make the choices to really live in a fulfilling, complete manner that will make us at the time we get to that last day in our final breath, say, you know, I did okay. I’m ready now. I wasn’t so busy. I missed me. I missed it. I missed this whole adventure. I was too busy doing stuff rather than being me. And that’s what I think that’s getting to. Can I be me every moment? And what does that take? What type of courage does that take? Am I able to choose my freedom to do that? Understanding that I don’t understand at all, but still be willing to keep going. Based on what’s in my heart, what’s in my heart. And the Tao is a reminder. The Tao, to me, is kind of like a correction. You know, we get so busy doing this and doing that and then the Tao is going, it’s like this little nagging thing on our shoulder going, you know, you’re going to die. You were born and you’re going to die. But in between, what are you doing? What are you doing?

[13:06] Tod Perry: What’s this dal about is recorded at the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Check out the TaoistInstitute.com. See their schedule of classes, including Taoist meditation, kung fu, and qigong. That’s TaoistInstitute.com. Sijo. Yes. Wu wei? Wu wei? Sometimes thought of as being kind of like effortless action or not doing, if you will. What does that mean? What does it mean to do something without effort to simply allow something to be? How is that going to give us a guideline for how to live in a more fulfilling way?

[14:15] Dr. Carl Totton: And, you know, the Tao recognizes, as we’ve been discussing, the things have their own natural rhythm, things progress in their own way. As long as the basic ingredients are there for life and for progression, things will have their own inner clock. They’re going to progress in a way that is natural to them. And we have our own inner clocks that we have to learn ourselves, which is the weird thing. It’s my clock. But only now as I get to the age of 38 or whatever, I have an understanding of it. much deeper than I did when I was 20. And the clock keeps changing. But I feel

[14:58] Tod Perry: It often referred to as circadian rhythm, right? Yes, yes. .owned biological clock that every human being has. But because I think we’re so busy, we often are out of sync with that

[15:13] Dr. Carl Totton: biological clock. And when we really feel like we should be resting, what are we doing? We’re working over time. When we really feel like, “I’m kind of hungry, I should be eating.” Well, we might take time to eat, you’ll go grab fast food and just shovel it in and then get right back to work. Or we might just kind of starve ourselves and then massively overeat at the end of the day or something. What we didn’t do was when we were, they know that Chinese say when the sage is tired, he sleeps. When he’s hungry, he eats. He’s a tune. The sage is a being who is a tune to their own inner nature and their own inner clock. And they don’t get so busy doing that they avoid not doing when that’s in their best interest. Since everything has an ebb and a flow, in order to shoot an arrow, what do you have to do? Pull it back, you have to increase the tension and then you have to let it go, you have to release it. So all of nature is following this rhythmic cycle of tension and letting go and releasing and then it starts a new. When we violate that, because we’re so busy doing something or we have a desire and going into something that we have to violate the natural rhythm of something and then you probably get a non-satisfactory result. And think about this in your own life. It’s certainly been true in my life. Think about something

[16:57] Tod Perry: you really, really, really want it badly. Yeah. And the trash compactor in the Star Wars story when I was a kid. I just wanted the Death Star playset with the trash compactor in it. So I wanted it. And two things frequently happen as a result of this attachment to desire. One, we get it and then it’s not what we thought or it breaks or it’s our interest evolves and this thing we wanted so badly yesterday, now we couldn’t care less about. Or we don’t get it and we find out that the best thing possibly that could possibly happen is the fact that we didn’t get that because not getting that opened up the possibility of getting what we really needed down the road. That’s happened to me with jobs, with all sorts of things. And so this being so stuck on doing often works to our disadvantage and the book of the Tao indicates that sometimes through not doing, through pausing, through waiting, through being patient, things move into their own natural harmony and rhythm. And then when we put our energy behind that, it works better. Yeah. But it took us pausing and allowing things to develop in their own time in their own way for it to manifest in its suchness and its fullness. Right. So to let a completely bloom or you know, I found that this concept works in my relationship with my wife as a married man. I realized this the way the Tao of Mrs. Perry is that whenever she’s introduced to something new or whatever, she always first pushes against it first. No, this is terrible. No matter what, no matter what news is, it’s just no matter, even if it’s good news sometimes she’ll push against it. But 10 minutes later, it sits, it sticks in her mind and she absorbs it and then she’ll always come back and go, you know what? That’s not such a bad thing or that’s a fine. Now, for years, I would, the moment she’d push back, I then push back. Right. And then it would become a fight. How’d that work out for you? Terribly. And so it’s, I feel like it’s almost like a wu wei thing that I say it, she has a reaction. Yes. I wait. I acknowledge. And then 10 minutes later, she, oh, that’s fine. So now it’s no longer a conflict in our relationship. Right. But it took me so long to not, my desire was to have her react in the way I wanted her to react. And it’s never going to happen. Right. So, but the moment on your own time table, to my exactly, the X and Y axis, it had to be the outcome that I want. A, B and in the time I wanted it, the actually I get the outcome I want, or else maybe I wouldn’t stay married to, so 10 minutes down the road, and now it’s fine. But that feels to me almost like what Wu Wei is, but not just in dealing with my wife, but in dealing with, if I’m pushing a wheelbarrow, right, you know, I’m working with the wheelbarrow, or if I’m cutting a tomato, my dad used to always say, he would say, Todd, let the knife, make the effort. Don’t try to chop the tomato using your hand or your muscles, the knife is a perfect instrument that cuts it. You just don’t get in the knife’s way. See, your dad was a Taoist, I like that. He was a West Virginian Southern Taoist, yeah. That’s cool, yeah, yeah, that’s cool.

[20:38] Dr. Carl Totton: And as a psychologist, you know, and I have to do marriage counseling sometimes, and family therapy sometimes, you see this, of course all the time happening in relationships, where people just push and push

[20:50] Tod Perry: and push each other until they push each other

[20:53] Dr. Carl Totton: right out of their lives. Right, right. Whereas if they did what you just suggested, just pay attention, be patient, wait, listen,

[21:02] Tod Perry: often people really just wanna be heard. Yes, right, yes.

[21:06] Dr. Carl Totton: Then if it’s meant to be, it will happen. If it is, and it won’t. Yeah. And that’s a very Taoist way of looking at things, that is a Wu Wei way of looking at things. Right about the Wu Wei of marriage.

[21:19] Tod Perry: Also, I’ve learned that, I don’t know who said it or where I learned, is you know, you can’t change people, but you can always change how you react to them, and then they will change. Like so, I can’t say, “Sijo, stop doing this” or that, right? I can’t do that. But if I react differently to that behavior from you, because everybody’s in a symbiotic relationship, you will change. Exactly, exactly. And I’m sure you’ve discovered that with your wife. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure you have. I’ve learned to stop acknowledging certain behaviors that maybe drive me up a wall a little bit. I love the gap, but yeah.

[21:59] Dr. Carl Totton: And when I talked to couples that have been married for 50, 60 years, you know what they tell me? That, the reason they were able to make a 50 year marriage work is because they accepted each other in all of their idiosyncrasies, and in these different time alignments, they, you know, an old man said, You know, sometimes she’d say this or that and I’d go, you know, she doesn’t really mean that. It’s okay. He’d just wait and then the moment would pass and then they’d go right back to loving each other. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s doing nothing. And then the moment with the Western mind, it’s kill it, hit it with the hammer, hit it over the head. Thanks. Not just, it just let it go. Right, right. And that’s a very, that’s very telling of the kind of the Western way of trying to accomplish a lot of things. We want to beat it over the head. You know, if we have a germ, we’ve got to kill it right back out antibiotic, you know, where is the Chinese way Chinese medicine. It’s much more let’s support the system that support the immune system that’s make the entire organism healthier and then it would just balance itself out. Right, we don’t have to try to kill this and kill that. You know, it’s a system is healthy. It will do naturally what needs to be done. It will naturally do. And that’s a way allowing things to just happen naturally the way they occur. But that only happens when a you respect that there is a natural rhythm to things and b you create an environment and milieu within which that can happen. It involves a lot of trust. And total, I think that’s the hard thing. You’re you’re it’s a complete almost devotion or faith in the Tao in the way to let it go. You know, my life control things. My life became a lot better years ago when I realized something that nothing ever turns out to be as bad as I think it will. Yes. Once I got that to my thick skull.

[24:07] Tod Perry: It’s a lot of hard thing though to get through your skull. Right. You know, it’s very hard because we want to try to control the outcomes. We want to try to fix things. We want to try to make things happen. We want to try to impose our ego our will on reality and the world is looking at us going. Yeah, right. The line is a lyric by the songwriter Pete Taogherty says, you know, boy kicked out at the world in the world kick back a lot harder.

[24:38] Dr. Carl Totton: And there’s an F bomb in there somewhere. But that’s always the way it works. You kick out of the world. The world always, you know, come kick back at you. People always ask me about way and I just like the Tao or Yin and Young. And we could talk about wu wei. I’m sure forever. Yes. forever. Not doing, not doing. Doing without doing. Effortless action. You see, not doing doesn’t mean that you do nothing all the time. It means you do what needs to be done, the amount it needs to be done at the time that it needs to be done. And in the way in which it needs to be done. In other words, you’re moving so in harmony with the flow of how something is naturally different. The second verse of the Tao Te Ching, under Heaven all can see beauty as a beauty. Only because there is ugliness, all can no good, as good, only because there is evil. Being in non being produce each other, the difficult is born in the easy, long is defined by shorts, the high, by the low, before and after go along with each other. So the sage lives openly with apparent duality and paradoxical unity. The sage can act without effort and teach without words. Nurturing things without possessing them, he works but not for rewards, he competes but not for results. When the work is done, it is forgotten. That is why it lasts forever.

[27:08] Tod Perry: So the chapter? Yes, our chapter of the day is chapter 2, correct. Yes. All right, and I will read the English portion, not the Chinese.

[27:26] Dr. Carl Totton: on the book. And this is chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching. Under Heaven, all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having a not having a rise together, difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other, high and low rest upon each other. Voice and sound harmonize each other, front and back,

[28:28] Tod Perry: He’s a big fan of his beauty, only because there is ugliness. These things are always thinking to myself that you’re never going to get out of certain cycles in life because if we lived in a perfect world where there was no quote unquote violence, there would always be violence because you wouldn’t have somebody shooting somebody but a slap from one human being to the other would be the most worse violation, right? It would be almost as serious as a murder if you just change the spectrum, right? You’re always going to have inequality because maybe if the richest man in the world had two dollars, a very impoverished man would have one dollar versus a billion dollars versus twenty dollars. You’re always in these cycles that are inescapable in a certain way.

[29:23] Dr. Carl Totton: This ability to kind of tolerate, even appreciate the rule of polarity in life, I think is at the heart of much of Taoist philosophy, yin and yang, you will. We’re challenged every day with people, nations, traditions which insist that their way is the only way. And many of us individually have become attached, even addicted, right? It’s things that we feel, you know, we have to have in a certain way. But yeah, look at your own hand. You know, you have the top part of your hand and you have the bottom part of your hand. You have the smooth part of your palm and you have a rough, more grainy part of your palm. And in fact, if you actually turn your hand over the other side and all that suddenly just got reversed, right? Yeah. But yet, do you need only the top smooth part of your hand or do you need the other part too? Yes. You know Having some money, having no money— See, that’s the same level of anxiety. So, all this abundance, what did it mean? Because we keep adjusting our activity to be at the level with where we think we can afford in terms of just monetary. Taoism, a Taoism knows when they have enough. That’s tricky. Which means that we’re conditioned to want more. It’s never enough. If you have $10 million, the next thing you want is 20. Once you get 20, oh you want 40. There’s no end to it. There’s never enough. You’re always busy. You’re always striving. And then when you get it, are you satisfied? No. You want still more. Where’s the happiness and peace and contentment in that?

[31:57] Tod Perry: It doesn’t exist. And I think if you look at our society, you see that everywhere. It’s right around the corner. I’m gonna have, I’m gonna finally be happy once I get that. Once, yeah. The grass is always greener. Yes, somewhere else. I was, sorry to cut you off here. I was thinking back to the first sentence here and to under Heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugl He goes to the gritty streets, like downtown LA and he takes pictures of skid row and he takes pictures of homeless people and my brother-in-law said he says you know you always take pictures of things that are ugly you know and I was thinking no the fact it in his whole work he is taking photos of these things that are ugly that we don’t want to see because they make us appreciate the other side of things but it almost I feel like as a Taoist in correct me if I’m wrong looks at that so-called ugliness and says this is amazing I’m so glad for this ugliness because without it I would not appreciate beauty it’s like the idea of the vinegar tasters right where you have a Confucius tastes the vinegar and he’s upset about it because it’s bitter and the Buddha

[33:21] Dr. Carl Totton: takes the vinegar and says oh life is suffering how bitter this is and Lao Tzu tastes the vinegar and smiles because it’s supposed to taste that way that is its nature. Its nature. Exactly and so like I also that story tour I love that that you say your father. Yeah my father-in-law. Yeah I love that I used to spend time doing that too actually going down to skid row going down to poor parts of town and just watching how people exist yes they have struggles yes they have challenges but yet you know if you go to a small village somewhere where people by our standards have almost nothing yeah and yet you look at the smiles on their faces you see how they treat each other you see how they enjoy the play of their kids the kids may have quote nothing except some rocks and some twigs and some leaves and they are just engaged in the most imaginative adventure you you’ve never seen yeah whereas over here all I need my Xbox and I need you know all of my equipment in order to have any fun you know kids over here whereas these kids with just a string and a rock and a leaf are totally engaged in life and being creative and that not having allows them to develop that where which you may not if you just if you have the Xbox but just having those rocks and twigs that child’s mind could expand to be even more creative you know and the people there who are living so simply They truly are appreciating every moment that they have with each other. You can see it in the way they look at each other. Whereas here we’re too busy to really look at each other most of the time. We’re just seeing each other in passing. And of course most of our time we’re looking into our smartphones have half the time. I want to set it on fire. Just get away from me. You can see what you can make out of the things you find on the ground. And what does it feel like to have your feet in hands actually on Mother Earth. While you’re looking up at the stars, I’m telling you it gives you something that you can get any other way. You’ll never find that in your Xbox. So you will find it in just having a handful of soil out of which the Earth comes what? Everything. Everything that we have. So

[36:57] Tod Perry: Yeah, that is what was, there’s not an atom in your body that wasn’t forged in the furnace of the sun. I think that was Carl Sagan. And that’s the most powerful thing. You think about the petty kind of things you deal with on an everyday basis and get wrapped up in and focused on anything. I am made of the coolest thing in the world. This is amazing. This is, I get to experience this right now is

[37:57] Dr. Carl Totton: And when people miss a lot, they have to replace that with something else and that something else I think are all the things we tend to be concerned with day by day. Just to get back to this, we don’t miss out in any of it. We can juice this fruit here, we have in front of it. Therefore, having and not having arise together. You need, I had to experience where I had like a job interview for a job I really wanted

[39:27] Tod Perry: So, this dynamic balance between having, not having, getting, not getting, appreciating things just for what they are. And if you don’t get something, appreciating the fact that because you didn’t get that, A, it may have opened, it did, opened up other opportunities. Because if you had gotten that, other doors would have closed. Right. That’s something that maybe wasn’t in your best. And that’s why I say a little while ago that my life became a lot easier once I realized that nothing ever turns out to be as bad as I think it will. Often it turns out to be much better. And that’s forget about it being bad. It becomes so much richer. If I had taken that, I never would have done all these other things that were very good.

[40:29] Dr. Carl Totton: But if we look at things that, oh, I didn’t get where I wanted at this moment as being a tragedy, that attachment limits our opportunities. And I think that’s one of the things that Lao Tzu was getting at when he wrote these words. Therefore, the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no talking. What is it by teaching no talking? Like meditation. In other words, for meditation. And pausing. And remember, words can only express a portion of reality, a tiny portion of what we’re thinking. Right now, on so many levels, we are experiencing all kinds of things. There are hormonal things, neurochemical things. There are things in our subconscious. If you listen to a lot of the traditional psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, they say that maybe what 5% of our entire consciousness is actually in the conscious domain. And the rest is subconscious or unconscious. There’s things going on of which we are unaware. And only a teeny fraction of that can we actually put into words. Right. So, by not doing, by not talking so much, we allow ourselves to participate in that rich inner life. That much deeper substantial. Yes. Yes. And if you’re talking all the time, you’re going to miss it. Yes. You’re going to miss it. There’s no room for it. And think you’re too busy. And thinking, thinking, thinking, talking because we think and what, words. We’re thinking in words. And so, all that was spent a lot of time not talking, not thinking, not doing, because that allows more of reality to actually come into existence. Yeah, it was already there, but it wasn’t in our existence because we could not perceive it. We were too busy thinking, too busy talking, too busy doing, too busy working, too busy doing something, then allowing these things that are already there to become a part of our existence. So it’s like not talking, not doing is its own act of creation. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I’d like to thank everybody for tuning into our

[42:59] Tod Perry: I’d like to thank Dr. Carl Totton. I pronounced that correctly. Perfect. And I’m Tod Perry and we’ll be back on the next show and enjoy it. To learn more about the show, check us out online at whatsthistao.com. Follow the show on Twitter at What’s This Down. Follow Tod Perry on Twitter at @TodAPerry. Now, don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters. Oh, really?

[43:51] [Music]

Episode 1 — The First Step

August 28, 2015 / todperry / 6 Comments

In the first episode of What’s This Tao All About?, Tod Perry sits down with Dr. Carl Totton, founder of the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California, to explore a mysterious question: What is Taoism?

This first conversation (of many!) also covers Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching, with the cryptic message: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” Along the way, Tod shares how The Tao of Pooh first sparked his interest in Taoism, while Dr. Totton reflects on his background in psychology, martial arts, meditation, and Chinese philosophy.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00] Tod Perry: Now, how should I, what is your official title here? Because? And then which one?

[00:10] Dr. Carl Totton: Well, I have lots of titles.

[00:12] Tod Perry: You know, um, what would be the good one for this? Because if I just call you Carl, it has less weight. And you don’t have to say, it’s like Grandmaster Carl people are like, whoa, this can be show. Carl says what the grandmaster Carl was way more than people will fill up. They’re doing.

[00:32] Dr. Carl Totton: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. I guess I got lots of titles. You know, my students, you know, they call me a Sijo, which means kind of like founding Grandmaster. Oh, wow. I was the founding grandmaster of my particular system. I’m a doctor, a licensed clinical psychologist, my clients, patients call me Dr. Totton.

[00:58] Tod Perry: Oh, okay.

[00:59] Dr. Carl Totton: Some people have called me, you know, Reverend, Reverend Dr. Totton, professor. I’m a chair of a department of psychology, so they’re a professor, Totten, you know, so I have, I have a zillion titles. And I like Sijo.

[01:16] Tod Perry: I like Sijo. I like Sijo too. I think that sounds Sijo.

[01:29] Tod Perry: What’s This Tao All About?

[01:30] [Music]

[01:39] Tod Perry: What’s This Tao All About?

[01:42] [Music]

[01:49] Tod Perry: You’re listening to What’s This Tao All About? A lighthearted look at Taoism, featuring Dr. Carl Totton and Tod Perry. Carl is the founder of the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Tod Perry, who knows a little about Taoism. And it’s mainly here because he owns a few microphones. Now, let’s learn. What’s This Tao All About?

[02:10] [Music]

[02:20] Tod Perry: Sijo. Explain to me in the audience what is Taoism?

[02:31] Dr. Carl Totton: That’s a great question. I hope there’s a great answer too. You know, so I mentioned to you that some old man came into my school once many years ago and just to get out of the sun, I’m sure. And I have a place to sit down. And he’s very hot. Hot here. Yeah, it’s warm here in the valley. So he was sitting down. He’s looking around. He’s going, what is this place? And so I tried to explain, well, you know, this is a school where we teach things that come from the philosophy of Taoism. You know, I teach Tai Chi and I teach about philosophy in Chinese medicine and all of these things, you know, have to do with balance and harmony and being in touch with yourself in nature, you know, things like that. And he goes, well, that’s very interesting. But what’s this Tao all about? And he kept asking that question, what’s this Tao all about? And so I often try to ask myself because people call and text me and you get a text saying what is the Tao? Well, what is Tao? And as we know, Lao Tzu or someone or someone, many centuries ago wrote a book of the Tao, the Tao Te Ching, supposedly explaining what’s this Tao all about? Right. I think we have a name for our show here. What’s This Tao All About? I’ve been thinking about writing a book with that title, actually, but I think it’s kind of cool. Yeah. And it’s kind of like a Tao, depending on how it’s translated. It means something like the way or the path or a road. It’s really kind of a series of ideas, concepts, precepts, if you will, about how to live a life that’s balanced and harmony with one’s own nature and with the greater nature. One of the things Taoist always look at, I think, really nicely is the big picture, the macrocosm and the little picture, your life, your thoughts, your feelings, your existence, the microcosm and how those two things connect and balance each other. I think is something that every human being has questions about what human being, thinking human being, because some human beings don’t really think much. But what thinking human being doesn’t have questions about, who am I? Am I here? What’s the purpose of my life? Where did I come from? And where am I going? And I think that, in my opinion, that’s what the Tao Te Ching is here to give us, not an answer, but guidelines for each individual to really find those answers for themselves. There are no Taoist evangelists. They won’t come to your door, asking for, you know, you to believe anything or asking for handouts on Saturday morning or something. You’ll never find a Taoist anywhere in the world doing that. There are very few Taoist establishments out there, and at least in the United States, I dare you to go to find a Sunday service on Taoist something. The thing I liked, I was reading a book, I was studying up for this podcast, and what I

[05:48] Tod Perry: really enjoyed is, again, there’s no evangelizing, there’s no punishment for not getting what– I mean, the punishment is maybe leading a less fulfilling life. But the idea of the Taoist is that it’s basically, here’s this book, try it, it will work for you, and you will continue practicing it. It’s no– If you don’t practice this, you’re going to burn in hell, or you’re not going to go to heaven, or anything like that. It’s just like, this works, try it out, people dig it. And I find that much more comforting than here, you know, carrots and sticks. I’m going to whack you with a stick if you don’t get into this. How do you genuinely learn something if it’s on the other end of punishment? It’s not a genuine experience, I feel, but this is like, yeah, take it, I’ll leave

[06:40] Dr. Carl Totton: it. Exactly, exactly. You know, Taoism is very strange in one sense, most philosophical and spiritual and certainly religious practices have a set of beliefs. And if you don’t believe in these things, then something negative is going to probably happen to you. And certainly you won’t gain admission into the exalted status of being a follower of their system unless you testify, sometimes literally, that you believe, I believe in this and I believe in that. Taoists have none of that. But instead this idea that there are certain things about this world, about this universe, that are constant. For example, one day follows the next. We know that this day has a beginning, it’s going to have a middle, it’s going to have an end and then seamlessly it blends right into the next day. And every day the sun rises, thank goodness. So far it has, so far, so good. I’m not betting on it tomorrow, no, no. Billions of years, you know, the world has turned, the sun is spinning around and so there are repeatable patterns that we know. And when it’s hot, what should we do? We should probably do something to make sure that we stay relatively cool. When it’s freezing cold, we probably need to do something to get a little bit warmer. These ideas, that notion, what I just mentioned, as the Chinese would say, in and young, in something that’s more cool, that’s more quiet, that’s more gentle, young, something that’s more fiery, warmer, hotter, active activity, the sun, the moon, the day, the night. These notions are part and parcel of really what allowed to the purported writer of the Taodet Qing, I think was getting at. And if we can live our life in harmony with these ongoing natural cycles, we’re going to be much more fulfilled. We’re going to be happier. And if we don’t, if we cling to one end or another, no, I only want the day, I only want the hot, I only want, you know, that’s beginning to sound familiar too, I want this, I want that, and I need something to be a certain way. Once we get attached to extremes, one end or the other, that’s when life tends to become very unfulfilling and challenging. And I think that the Taodet Qing for centuries now has given us kind of a little gentle nudge in the right direction. Yeah, again, there’s no hard and fast rules in this text, but there are gentle nudges

[09:37] Tod Perry: to think about things. Now, do you find that it, because there aren’t all hard and fast rules, that it’s actually almost more difficult for someone to be with a cultivator of the Tao versus the House shall not do this, shall not do that. And have this really rigorously prescribed way of living versus how am I going to find harmony in today? How am I going to be grateful today? How, you know, it feels much more challenging, but then again, maybe it’s more worth it in some way, if it is more challenging.

[10:10] Dr. Carl Totton: I agree, it is more challenging, because, you know, I’m famous psychologist, Eric Frum, years ago, wrote a book called Escape from Freedom, Escape from Freedom, where he said that, you know, mankind’s natural state of being should be free, to be free. But yet we run from it with a passion. We want other people or some other system or some book to tell us exactly what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s true, what’s false. And we escape, we don’t want the responsibility, the total overwhelming, awesome responsibility of having to find that out for ourselves. And so we give up our freedom to other people, to other systems, to authorities, to tell us what’s real for us. And in my opinion, what the Tao did, what the Tao has always done is said, look, it’s all about you. It’s about you existing as a consciousness in this universe. As far as you are concerned, the only reason this universe exists is because of you. If you weren’t here, none of this would exist for you. And so if you are in fact the kind of source of your universe, then who is there out there to tell you how to live your life and what to do and what’s right and what’s wrong and what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable. Now if you are conscious and paying attention, you’re going to get feedback from others and from your environment about what’s working, what’s furthering. And there’s a famous Taoist saying, everything furthers, everything furthers.

[12:00] Tod Perry: Was it that the Ken Kesey, like the Merry Pranksters, or whatever, they had the bus, it was further, I think was the name of the bus or the license plate or something. Keep going. Keep keeping on. So if you were to, you know, at the onset of this series of podcasts, we’re going to put out, would there be a way that you could see that man again that comes up to your temple, where we’re sitting right now in Temple, North Hollywood and say, what’s this Tao all about? Could you do it in a sentence? Could you do it in three sentences and quickly sum up what it is for someone who just grabbed this podcast out of nowhere, said, thought to themselves, what’s this Tao all about? You know, are they going to talk in circles? Are they going to give me the answer here? You know?

[12:53] Dr. Carl Totton: Well, I don’t know about answers, but we certainly will give, I think the Tao certainly offers direction and guidance. Now let’s go to the book for a second. What is the very first thing out of Lao Tzu’s mouth in the Tao Te Ching? The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

[13:12] Tod Perry: What? Yeah. Right off the bat, he’s telling you that I can’t tell you what this is.

[13:19] Dr. Carl Totton: And so if Lao Tzu can’t tell us what this is, far be it from little, me. Right. You try to tell you what the Tao is all about. So we’re going to point in the direction of the Tao is what we say. We can definitely point in the direction of the Tao and then you, you will tell me what your Tao is all about. What your way is all about. You know, one thing that is absolutely true is that not one human being on this earth is exactly like any other human being on this earth. Correct. Not one day on this earth is exactly like any other day on this earth. But one second is exactly like any other second that ever existed out of trillions and trillions. Now what are we supposed to do with that? The fact that everything is in constant flux, everything is continuously changing. And in fact, the ancient Tao is said many times over that the only constant in life is change. But yet we as human beings, we hate it. We can’t stand change. We give a lip service to it. Oh, I like to change. I like to get better. I like to this. We’re lying. We hate change. We want to say exactly the same because there’s comfort and familiarity. Yes. You know, if you have a place to live and you go back home today and it’s still there and kind of looks the same way and hasn’t burned down or something, you probably feel pretty good about that, right?

[14:48] Tod Perry: I was getting frustrated with myself at a certain point where I thought, I’d like to be a more consistent human being, right? And then I thought, how ludicrous of an idea is that really to be, in a world of constant flux, with me, I just want that comfort of being a consistent person who maybe wakes up at the same time every day, that maybe is in, does all the things to put himself in the correct mood? But you’re really kind of chasing the dragon. And I think to myself, other people feel very consistent to me, right? Why am I feeling incances? And I realize it’s probably internally to them, they’re just as kind of wild and inconsistent as one would think. What’s this Tao about is recorded at the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California? Check out the Taoastistute.com. See there’s schedule of classes, including Taoist meditation, Kung Fu, and qigong. That’s Taoastistute.com. Before we’re going to get into a little bit later, we’re going to get into a chapter of the Taoaging. But before we get into that, just for people who just chimed in, for the first time checking out this show, I am talking to, what was the title we, that maybe I decided on, was it Sijo? Sijo. Sijo. I’m talking to Carl Totton. And you are a man of many different, I said, how should I refer to you on the show? And you said, I have many titles. If you could list them, just so the people know who the heck we’re talking to and whether they should actually listen to us. I was born in Los Angeles.

[16:51] Dr. Carl Totton: One of the few has it apparently seems. Yeah, oh yeah, nobody hears from here.

[16:55] Tod Perry: Everybody’s from someplace else. My parents moved here, I think, around 1940, something like that.

[17:01] Dr. Carl Totton: My mom 100 years old, actually, should be 101 this year.

[17:06] Tod Perry: Oh wow. So I must have good genes. Yeah, longevity’s in there somehow. Does she attribute it to anything? She wanted these people, there’s always a thing they go, how’d you live to be 100 of the guy, bacon everything? No, right? And then they, you know, the minute they quit eating bacon, that’s been a great break for cuz, you know?

[17:24] Dr. Carl Totton: I think she has a lot of people who love her and I think that has something to do with her longevity. Yeah. So I was born in LA, went to local schools here, eventually became interested in psychology. I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in kind of the helping professions, then got a doctorate in clinical psychology, and actually kind of a Christian university, Pepperdine.

[17:47] Tod Perry: Okay. Yes, well done.

[17:49] Dr. Carl Totton: Did my doctoral dissertation on meditation and altered states of consciousness, that was fun. So as they were to put together, my chief interest, well, you know, the dial, Taoism and meditation and Buddhist and Zen meditation, I was able to investigate that from a psychological perspective.

[18:05] Tod Perry: Wow. Like how can meditation help people and meditation even be harmful?

[18:10] Dr. Carl Totton: I wrote a whole district about that. Oh, I’d left, okay.

[18:13] Tod Perry: We could talk about that later. We’ll talk about that sometime, because my dissertation is interesting.

[18:18] Dr. Carl Totton: I can actually stand to read it. People actually buy my dissertation, they find it interesting to read. But in the meantime, since about 15 years old, I started studying martial arts because what kid, 15, doesn’t want to learn about self defense, right?

[18:34] Tod Perry: Or Bruce Lee, right? Bruce Lee, you’re going, hey, that’s cool.

[18:37] Dr. Carl Totton: I want to be able to do that. I want to be, you know, there’s this kind of thing that I think in every 15 year old, maybe other people are like, you want to be a superhero, right?

[18:44] Tod Perry: Exactly. And it’s almost like through spirituality, through martial arts, it’s the closest we can

[18:50] Dr. Carl Totton: come to that in a way. Yeah, exactly. It’s a close sense. You can’t find a, you know, Taoist church out there, but you can find these people who know martial arts and a martial art that maybe has been influenced by people who were Taoist priest and Taoist teachers. And so I found a martial arts teacher and it just so happened that a lot of his teachers were very learned. One of them was a Taoist priest from China. One of them was, had studied with the chief abbot from the Shaolin temple in China, which is a Zen Buddhist monastery. Another one of my teachers turns out to be a doctor of Chinese medicine, in fact, several of them are. And all of Chinese medical theory is permeated with ideas from the Tao. Completely. And so as time went on, I learned that, you know, there’s more here than just punching and kicking and even health and exercise and self-defense. There’s this philosophy here. There’s a root of it. So yeah. Yeah, that’s given me information about how to think about myself, how to think about my life, because it’s really easy, I think nowadays, to get confused by life. You know, we have all these religious and philosophical and spiritual systems out there, but yet, look at the world. It’s a complete disaster. It’s a mess. And I think nowadays, we have people turning away from a lot of those traditional sources of religion and philosophical and spiritual systems. And they’re looking for something else. And that something else, the first time I read the Tao Te Ching, I went, well, there is something here that I can feel.

[20:35] Tod Perry: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[20:36] Dr. Carl Totton: I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I can feel it. And then I’m reading that this is the most widely translated book in the world after the Holy Bible and I’m going, you know, there must be a few other people that feel the same way I do. And so as time went on, you know, I became a teacher, I became a black belt, there was a training program at my school that taught about Taoism and taught about philosophy and taught about meditation and qigong, you know, the kind of the Chinese word for yoga and meditation. And since my teacher’s also knew about herbs and Chinese medicine and acupuncture, I received a broad education and a lot of things.

[21:19] Tod Perry: And so wow, I was just saying I was like from psychology, the Dao Kung Fu, that’s, you know, mind, body, soul, the whole package, you know, I was very fortunate. I came to the Dao because I was about 20 years old and when, you know, I was raised very staunch Methodist Christian home. And so I always had part of me that was, you know, knowledgeable of spiritual things. It was just a part of my routine, a part of my life, a part of my, you know, a part of my conscious and when I was about 20, a friend of mine, who later robbed me. But yeah, he, he gave me the, The Tao of Pooh, the book and he said you really got to get into this. This is good stuff. And so I read it and it was like, the old saying, it scratched and itch, I didn’t know I had. Yes. And I read it and I thought wow, it was, it was like the teachings of the Dao were almost contrary to everything, you know, your learning in life, especially as a student, you know, everything, the thing I really hit me was that in life, we’re searching for the great reward, whether it’s in, you know, tradition, you know, kind of like Christian theology or Western theology that, you know, eventually you’re going to reach heaven. You do all these things and then you get it down the road, right? Right. You, you know, you go to the school, you do this thing and then you make your money and then that’s your delayed happiness, you delay gratification. And then that was like, no, no, no, it’s all here right now. Yes. You know, you got to tune into it, right? You just get it, adjust your frequency in life and it’s right here. And that was one of the most powerful things in the world. So I went on to read, you know, a whole bunch of books about it that there was a temple in a Monty that I used to attend and learn from a teacher there. And so it was something I was always into and I kind of faded away from it. It’s almost like you, you learn something and it just becomes part of your muscle memory and you don’t even know you’re practicing it or knowing it. And then recently I was online and I wanted to find a podcast about Taoism to reacquaint myself with the ideas and I couldn’t find anything. So I thought I do podcasts. I’ve done a bunch of successful comedy podcasts. I thought how about I do one myself? I go, but I don’t know enough about it. So maybe I can find somebody really smart that knows about this and I could learn from him and put it out and see what happens. So I found you. I like it.

[23:52] Dr. Carl Totton: So no, not so, that’s the Korean alcohol.

[23:56] Tod Perry: Sijo. Sijo. Sijo. I found you in a luckily you’re here to sit with me. So. The first verse of the Tao De Jing. The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Tao is both named and nameless. As nameless, it is the origin of all things. As named, it is the mother of 10,000 things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring. One sees only the manifestations and the mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding. So the Tao De Jing for people who are new is what 88 is it?

[24:52] Dr. Carl Totton: 88 kind of poems or verses? 81. 81.

[24:57] Tod Perry: There we go. We’ve learned something new. 81 and it starts off with the first verse and we’re going to take this apart here for

[25:05] Dr. Carl Totton: people. The Tao that can be told or the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. It’s how it’s written, how it’s frequently translated. And there are many, many, many different translations of those words. But think about your life. Is everything about you reducible to what someone or even you could say?

[25:35] Tod Perry: I surprise myself all the time.

[25:37] Dr. Carl Totton: Every human being is like that. But yet when we dialogue and talk to each other, we’re using words, words which are utterly inadequate to convey who we are, what we’re really experiencing, even what you’re really thinking.

[25:51] Tod Perry: Yeah. There’s no way you could put into words everything that goes through your brain.

[25:56] Dr. Carl Totton: And it’s like your brain is limited by the vocabulary that you have for exactly. It only goes so far. Like there are thoughts you have which are kind of uncategorized, because you don’t have the words for them.

[26:08] Tod Perry: Yes. And you can describe something but you’re very limited.

[26:13] Dr. Carl Totton: You know, you know, think about the most dynamic human being you know, if they’re impossible to translate and even yourself, there’s some things that come out of my mouth sometimes well I don’t know who the hell said it right? So yes. So and also words work to kind of differentiate one thing from the other when really in many ways they are connected. And Lao Tzu who said also in that first chapter, he said the nameless that which can’t be spoken is in fact the beginning of heaven and earth, the nameless. And so Taoism I think is a way to open ourselves up to the possibilities that we are more than what we can just talk about. And so Taoists have always put a huge emphasis on being direct experiences of one’s own nature and the greater nature about us. And by paying attention to that, by being cognizant and just being aware of that, it adds flavor and richness and dynamic experience to something that otherwise can be very frustrating by just trying to reduce ourselves to the spoken word. We are more than what we speak. And the Tao is trying to plumb those depths and make it rich and exciting and allow us each to live fully from that nameless place. That’s what the Tao is all about.

[27:42] Tod Perry: Now let’s see here, do we have a copy where we can read the entire. I have several translations here but yes. It’s real nice. It has a nice picture photograph. Well it’s written in Chinese so it’s not going to be doing it again. Okay wait, now I hear this. The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. Exactly what we were speaking. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The name is the mother of the 10,000 things. Now when I read that, I think of the 10,000 things and it’s kind of like a metaphorical idea for the vastness and the richness of the universe of creation. And I think like the nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The name is the mother of the 10,000 things. So in my interpretation, the nameless is almost that field, that void. If you think about like the big bang, right? There is nothing and then the mother of 10,000 things, things, the multitude of things, of named things, of unnameable things, all spewed out. And that’s why I see that there’s such a. I feel the Tao is a metaphorical way of describing these big, huge things. And it feels like to me like it’s in alignment with science and everything that empirically people go out and try to learn about the world. The Tao is speaking about it just in a way that anybody can get. Hopefully. Yeah. The name is the mother of the 10,000 things. So I think about the big bang. I think about the variations of life, the spectrum that everything exists on. And the part that just gets me is ever desireless one can see the mystery. Ever desiring one can see the manifestations.

[29:37] Dr. Carl Totton: And I’ll tell you how I feel about that and then you give me your opinion.

[29:40] Tod Perry: And I think that desireless one sees the mystery. Like if I come to you and I have my own preset ideas of who you are based on, you know, psychographic data, social status, ethnicity, if I come to you with all those things, I’m

[29:59] Dr. Carl Totton: creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in my own mind of.

[30:04] Tod Perry: And then I’m going to start looking for them for you to validate me in some way. I’m never going to ever get to the root of you, to the truth of you, or learn about you, because I’m only. I’m looking at you with desire and so I’m only seeing the manifestations. Now desireless, if I just sit back and I mirror who you are, whatever, I will gain 10,000 things. It’s about preconceived notions. What’s the term? Self-fulfilling prophecy. And Tao teaches you to step back from that.

[30:40] Dr. Carl Totton: Yes. Which seems impossible. I like that word you used a little while ago, “field.” Tao is very much like a field. You know, if you go out into the countryside and you look at a huge open field that apparently has nothing there, but yet, if we care for that field, or if nature cares for it and provides it with a certain amount of sunlight and oxygen and water, just some very basic elements. After a while, that field will be teeming with thousands of different life forms. There’ll be plants and there’ll be trees and there’ll be animals and there’ll be insects and there’ll be microbes. There’ll be things we can’t even imagine are there by the millions, by the millions, out of this quote empty field. Tao is very much like this so-called empty field, but yet holds the potential for everything. That’s the mystery. Out of nothing, out of mystery manifests the awe. And if we don’t think that, like you said, coming with preconceived notions that, “Oh, I’m going to find this or that,” see, because if we look for just this or that, that’s all we can find. But if we’re open to the fact that this can actually become anything, it’s unlimited, then we just have the power of discovery. Taoers are curious. We just want to learn. And the only way to really learn is to wipe the deck. Keep it clean and allow things to just manifest according to everything’s individual nature, because everything has its own individual Tao. It’s own individual way, but it’s frequently stymied by those expectations that you mentioned. And now, and I guess if you agree with this, we stymied our own development, our own Tao by having these preconceived notions and locking ourselves in the holes and killing

[32:47] Tod Perry: our own potential in a way. We escape from our own freedom, indeed, all the time. Because many people are trying their concept of who I am is based on who I think you want me to be, or whose society thinks I should be.

[33:02] Dr. Carl Totton: “Oh, you’re a male, oh, you’re this, you’re that, therefore you should,” there’s that “should” again, “you should be this way or that way.” But what if your own true nature is not that way? Either you’re going to have to deny your nature or deny other people’s expectations. Now, which one do you choose to do? The Tao, I think, has our back that book of the Tao. It’s like, we call the show that, and Tao has your back. It’s okay to be who you are. And to explore that, I tell people all the time that the Tao is a scientist. But what is a true scientist attempting to do to discover new things and through that process of discovery to find out more about life and about existence? And how does a scientist do that? A scientist conducts experiments. So we as human beings, every day, as these kind of scientists of the Tao, we should be doing experiments every day trying out what we deeply connect with inside and seeing what the results will be. Some things will turn out, some things won’t. But you know, as long as we think that we really are scientists, we either we discover something and benefit from that, or we learn that that was not the way. And then we try something else. And through empirical experiments, we come to find what works for us in each and every living moment knowing that every second is completely different.

[34:54] Tod Perry: And scientists also have a hypothesis, right? They have ideas. And so the purpose of the experiment is to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Right. Now, scientists with the hypothesis is going in with a preconceived notion, right? But based on what’s been done before, but their desires for the truth, not for a specific result, a true scientist, right? It should be. But it should want to prove this. I’ll go do this. But a true great scientist goes, what’s going to happen?

[35:29] Dr. Carl Totton: And if it’s not what I wanted, I will abide by that truth.

[35:35] Tod Perry: That’s why true science is skeptical.

[35:37] Dr. Carl Totton: Yeah. They don’t really want to believe in anything from the get go because they’re open to being surprised. And the Taoist is open to being surprised every second. One of my Taoist teachers said that Taoist a real Taoist is curious. And out of curiosity, we do all of these interactions, experiments to try to learn things, to know things. And then when we do, then we can relate to them with compassion. And when you relate to things with compassion, you accept things as they are. They don’t have to fit into any preconceived notions. It just is what it is. And that openness, that compassion. I think it’s part of the day, the virtue, then motivates the down-aging, this book of

[36:31] Tod Perry: virtue. That is the virtue, being able to accept things as they are with compassion.

[36:37] Dr. Carl Totton: And we’re going to get into the day on another show.

[36:40] Tod Perry: You get into that. Let’s see, just to wrap up this. These two spring from the same source, but different name, disappears as darkness. And I’m not sure what that– with the Taoist getting at here. These two spring from the same source, but different name. Everything comes from somewhere. Same source. Everything comes from somewhere.

[37:06] Dr. Carl Totton: But there are things that we can name and label. Those are the 10,000 things, the things that manifest that we can talk about. And then there are other things that are in this kind of void space that allows for potential. There’s a notion in many systems, including Taoism, of something called alchemy. Alchemy means you take a piece of this and a piece of that and separate, they have their own identity. But you put those two things together while you have something brand new. And it’s like the sum of the parts where you have great musicians come together and

[37:43] Tod Perry: something else happens. Exactly. It’s that weird alchemy that unexplained– Exact. –field everybody gets on. That’s the magic.

[37:53] Dr. Carl Totton: And Taoist are into magic, in that sense. Darkness within darkness, the gate to all mystery.

[38:03] Tod Perry: So the mystery, what is the specific mystery they’re speaking of? The mystery is something that is unknown because it hasn’t happened before.

[38:14] Dr. Carl Totton: It is a mystery. And the Tao explicitly allows for the mysterious, the magical to happen all the time. Out of that interaction of things that perhaps were known, springing something that is completely new and different, something that was previously mysterious. But now that it has emerged out of the darkness, now we can appreciate it. And appreciation is a core concept. I believe that permeates this book of Tao, being able to relate to things with compassion, with openness, with humility, is I think something that people sense when they read the Tao, that there’s something humble about this. But at the same time, something magnificent about this. Famous Chinese philosopher Confucius himself. He met Lao Tzu. He was struck dumb. He couldn’t even speak. Later, he said, “Today I met a dragon, the mysterious Lao Tzu.” And that changed his entire thinking. And so the mystery allowing things to, at first, that we don’t quite understand, we don’t get, but allowing them to just develop in its own time, in its own way, that openness to allowing things just to become what they will be is I think a key at the heart of the Tao. And letting things become what they’ll be.

[39:45] Tod Perry: Letting, you know, they always share about going with the flow. It’s like water. And there’s a whole chapter on water in the Tao. Water, it fertilize, it feeds the fields, it allows all life on earth to exist. It doesn’t impose itself on anything. It seeks, in fact, the lowest level, right? It doesn’t try to just rise except esteem, which becomes air. But in its solid form, it actually seeks the lowest path. And it follows gravity. And we’re going to get to that on show, too. Yes, and show, too. So we’ll let that be a teaser for show, too, and we discuss the concept of Wu-wei. Yes, correct. So we’re going to be back next week with another show. My name is Tod Perry and Sijo Carl. Carl Totton. Carl Totton. And yes, so thank you so much for checking out the show and we’ll be back. What’s this Tao all about? Yes. To learn more about the show, check us out online at what’sthisdou.com. Follow the show on Twitter at WhatsThisTao. Follow Tod Perry on Twitter at Tod Perry. Now, don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters. Wow. [Laughter]

Tag: Taoism (Page 3 of 3)

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Episode 2 – Busy Brags vs. the Art of Non-Doing

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