Show 107 — Original Tao and Chuang Tzu on Winning

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

Episode Transcript

Key ideas discussed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does Taoism distinguish reality from projection?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does Chuang Tzu say about the need to win?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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