A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond Finding your True Nature Through Living Daoism
In today's episode, Leo Lok and I are joined by Jack Schaefer, a practitioner of both Chinese medicine and Daoism as a living practice. In his role as one of the most active, passionate, and committed transmitters of Daoism in the West, he is the cofounder of Parting Clouds Daoist Education, along with his partner Josh Paynter. With Jack's help, we explore the connections and differences between the material compiled by Sun SImiao in the seventh century under the heading "nurturing our nature" yangxing 養性, and the living engagement with contemporary Daoist teachings in Jack's community of practitioners.
Here are just three of my personal take-aways from this conversation (and I sure hope my simplification here is not misleading!):
- The meanings of "xing 性" and "ming 命" were never static and changed depending on the time, place, author's background, and rhetorical context. While Westerners always look for single terms to translate deep Chinese concepts like these, we may be better off just leaving them in Chinese to avoid misunderstandings.
- Compassion and the effort to alleviate suffering and be of service are the key to ethical cultivation and thereby transforming our karma.
- Wuwei does not mean sitting by the river meditating or "anything goes," but rather, if I may try to summarize here, spontaneously aligning with the Dao, which is the outcome of a lifetime of conscious and intentional cultivation, both ethical and physical.
You will have to take a close listen to see if this shallow description correctly represents Jack's and Leo's deep pearls of wisdom.
Enjoy! And thanks for listening. And then please share this podcast and episode if you liked it, and join the conversation over on our Facebook page.
Additional Information
- jack schaefer's website
- Parting Clouds Daoist Education
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- Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)