Avsnitt
-
This verse gets to the heart of what we are made of, and made for. Origins and Destiny. Often, however, we get trapped by the shiny blings of life and lower our ceilings, and have these vulnerable places I call targets for our temptations. But we are more than enslaved slabs of meat susceptible only to reactive thoughts, acquired tastesand cultivated addictions. Listen for more! Who knows? It’s perhaps my most important episode.
Kenny Meade is our voice and question-raiser. Find out more about him at https://www.kennethmeade.com/.I make reference to a teaching from J.R.R. Tolkien that parallels today’s episode. You can find that teaching here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtHfY06sP1s
May your days begin in original peace, and become laboratories for radical hope!
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Today’s verse 49 teaches how to live with natural grace and peace in what seem like pivotal and violent times. We dissect in this episode how the servant leader, or Taoist, holds to their original vision of peace without compromise. It’s a difficult path, but to become adjusted to society’s neuroses and fragmentation into violent factions and self-righteous means to live in knee-jerk reactivity, not in mindful response or engagement with life.
Trent Moore is our valued voice and question-raiser.
May your days begin in peace, to become laboratories for radical hope in this pivotal year.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
We are taught to add to self to be a self, but where is the wisdom that to increase is really decreasing, and to decrease is actually a positive? It’s here in Taoism, but also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Orthodox Christianity, to start a list.
I reference a pretty crazy podcast from OnBeing by Krista Tippett: https://onbeing.org/programs/colette-pichon-battle-on-knowing-what-were-called-to/
Thanks so much to Naomi Joy Gill for lending her energy, voice, and – for me – a devastating question (in the good sense!).
May your days begin in emptiness, to become wombs to birth radical hope!
Marc Mullinax
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
The Beatles put this verse into a song, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swT6YTPYwgM.
Verse 47 has a mystical teaching, one claiming that we can sense the entire universe from our tiny rooms or spaces in which we live. How does one even begin to explain this unitary, unified, worldview where all creation intermixes,interpenetrates, and intermingles in one unified vision or field? So, we talk about developing spiritual literacy.
Thanks to Chris Haynes for his voice and timely question, that links this verse with climate change.
May your days begin in peace and become wombs for radical hope! Marc
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Knowing when enough is enough is a choice, of quality over quantity, a free determination and conclusion of the wise mind, a free choice made by free persons; “enough” is not an amount or quantity, it is a learned attitude that helps us merge more quickly and easily into the way of the universe.
Eric Cain (https://www.christschool.org/node/290008)is our reader and question-asker.
May your days begin in the awareness of what is Enough, to become wombs for radical sufficiency and gratitude.
Marc Mullinax
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Much of Tao te Ching teaches us how to hear and experience Tao. To this end, we need to remove our mental interferences and filters that act to weaken or neutralize the experiencing of Tao.
This Verse 45 teaches such removal, by helping us to embrace the Paradoxical and the Ambiguous. We start with the Rolling Stones and end with guest Mattie Miller-Decker's beautifully phrased question on how Taoist paradox and Buddhist Original Mind are complements.
Mattie is at https://www.hidasta.com/.
May your days begin in peace, and become wombs for radical hope!
Marc Mullinax - [email protected]
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Taoism joins most faith traditions that cast doubt on the ability of "things" and other items we can hoard (but not use) ... to satisfy our deepest selves.
Rangsey Chang is our voice for quotations and two great questions on the hope and spirituality of the "things" in our lives.
I mentioned a book in the podcast: The Ego Tunnel: the Science of the Mind and the Myth of Self. He gave a TedTalk on his ideas: https://youtu.be/5ZsDDseI5QI.
May your days begin in peace, and become thirstlessfields in which we sow the seeds of radical hope.
Marc Mullinax
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
We cannot make the entire world into a gardenfree of hard things. However, we can make our corner of the world a joyful place. There is then, an art to living softly, as soft beings, living patiently. The wisdom of Verse 43's “the soft overcomes the hard” invites us to pause, andreevaluate our cultural notions of strength and power.
May your days begin in peace, to become wombs for radical hope!
Marc Mullinax
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Verse 42 is the one and only place where Yin and Yang (阴 and 阳) show up in the ENTIRE Tao te Ching. They show up to help us understand the larger creation process (or story, or mythic representation) of how the Universe got here and is sustained, even to this day.
My guest, Rebecca Askew, asks a question about Minimalism, and we discover just how widespread Minimalism is spread across the world's spiritual traditions.
May your days arise (YANG) in peace, and your nights fall (YIN) into radical hope.
Marc Mullinax
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Verse 41: Lao Tzu’s Smile. Today’s verse 41 is to be taken as a whole; it is an attitude to embrace, to further deepen into Tao. Tao, as we have seen recently, is mysterious, seems to go in reverse, and remain hidden. Verse 41 reminds one how an attitude of expecting the unexpected is one way for Tao to find you. Receptive, open, becoming strange to one’s normal world, to re-engage with Tao’s norms.
There is a picture referenced: The Vinegar Tasters, which can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters.
May your days begin with peace, and our lives become poetic places for the strange and the true safely to land.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
The key Chinese word I refer to often in this episode is "Fan" or 反. "Fan" is the word for "return" or "retire". "Fan" is everywhere in the world's spiritualities, and we explore, through "Fan," how things emerge and grow, and then return or retire to their being No-thing. Being and Non-Being.
While I do not have a reader, I have some singers! Hope you enjoy.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
This is one of those several times Tao te Ching slows down, so mayhaps we can hear and get in touch with our original nature, a nature deeply rooted in Earth, soil, clay, mud. We are humus ... humus beings. We stay wise when we stay in touch with our humus/humble origins.
Stan Wilson (https://www.circleofmercy.org/content.cfm?id=149&pid=67) is our reader and questionS-Asker. Thank you.
May your days begin rooted in Earth’s peace,
and grow the fruits of radical hope. --Marc Mullinax
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
This LONG verse starts a conversation or teaching about Te (as in Tao TE Ching), a conversation that will run through the rest of the verses in Tao te Ching. Because Tao and Te are separate, but share one root, their message remains consistent: No compromise! The person grounded in the depths of Tao does not drink from second-best opinions. S/He stays centered at the root and lets the unrooted take care of itself. S/He avoids the outer to live in the inner root.
UNC/A philosophy student Ethan Colon delivers the quotes AND, a most decisive and challenging question.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Once our ego-stroked schemes calm and quieten, there is Something Else. That Something Else is Tao, Tao at the Root of all. Always been there, always "is" everywhere, always will be there.
When we rest in our roots, the world not only makes better sense, we are also physically, mentally, and psychically healthy.
Verse 37 is a quietly radical teaching verse, a reminder that beneath all noise, commotion, chaos, and other crap, there is another place ... the place we are rooted.
Our reader today is Michelle Miller, whom you can find out more about here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/259687/michelle-miller/.
May your days begin in peace, and become THE ROOTING OF your radical hope. -Marc - mmullinax (AT) mhu.edu
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
This verse teaches an expansive view of how to become an integrated, peaceful being. Instead of hardening one's categories with dualistic absolutes, it is more wholesome to integrate 'apparent opposites' into a unified view, that one is a mixture of what a dualist culture would label good/bad, ugly/beautiful, and so on. It's ONLY when we allow each energy of yin and each energy of yang to co-exist one with the other, we achieve union, unity, and wholeness. Otherwise, we are at war with ourselves.
Tebbe Davis (https://faso.com/artists/tebbedavis.html) lent his wonderful voice to this episode. Thank you.
May your days begin in peace, and become wombs for radical hope!
Marc Mullinax - mmullinax [at] mhu.edu
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Nothing -- not time, not distance, not circumstance, not geography -- NOTHING weakens or diminishes Tao's power for peace. If we experience any weakening, diminishing, or forgetfulness of Tao, that's on us, and ways we have constructed our lives through thinking, culture, and habit.
This episode is dedicated to re-understanding and re-discovery (or remembering) Tao in the normal, the everyday, and in the moment.
No reader today; it's a vacation week for many.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Critical teaching here. Tao is already within, working, subtly and invisibly the air all around us, but which we forget we breathe and move in.
Joe Bennett supplies energy and his voice to this episode's effort.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: As described at the top of this Bonus Episode, the podcast will slow down for the rest of this (2023) year, releasing every SECOND Thursday.
In this Bonus Episode, I look at the poverty of thinking, and the enriching ways we can train the brain not to think, analyze, categorize, and take us places we don't need to go ... ever.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Simple, but profound verse. Don't let its simplicity lure you into a false sense of security. For it speaks about how to become wise.
1. Take on wisdom, and leave off ego-managed actions.
2. Understanding self as more important than understanding others (while both are good; one of these is better).
3. Being content with sufficiency - knowing when "enough" IS enough.
4. Regular meditation on death.
I was alone today on the episode. Back next week with a guest!
May your days begin in peace, to become laboratories of radical hope! [email protected]
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message -
Today's verse 32 is great for review. It contains many through-lines of themes we have seen so far in our long march through these 81 verses in Tao Te Ching:
-Inscrutability
-Nothing is alien; all is one
-Forgetfulness
-Three practices of Silence, Darkness, and Emptiness
-The Feminine, and
-Water ...
... Several of which themes re-emerge today. So while there may not be that much "new," the way Lao Tzu frames and phrases this verse will provide necessary reminders about what Tao is, and what Tao is all about.
Darian Smathers joins us today as our quote-reader and question discusser.
May your days begin in peace, and become laboratoriesfor the wisdom needed for these days. [email protected]
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/marc-mullinax/message - Visa fler