Show 12 – Chapter 81 and Qigong

In show 12, Dr. Carl and Tod discuss chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching. They also go in depth on the practice of qigong and discuss other texts in the Taoist cannon besides the Tao Te Ching.

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Episode Transcript

Thank you everybody for listening to What’s this Tao all about? And we’re now on show 12.

And if you look at our website, I think I wrote on there that What’s this Tao all about was going to be a 12-show kind of run, right? And having all the stuff we’ve gotten into, I feel like we haven’t even kind of come close to all of it. So I think we’re going to have to continue doing more.

And keeping this running. Because I, for one, have been having a blast doing this. And it’s been a wonderful learning experience.

It’s one thing, we record the show for other people to sit and listen to, but I think I learn more than anybody just doing it. So it’s wonderful. But on today’s show, we’re going to talk a little bit about texts besides the Tao Te Ching that are a part of the Taoist canon, I guess.

So I’m talking about Qi Gong. Qi Gong, I think is how you say it. We’ve been discussing that, but I don’t think we really hit it square on.

And then we’re going to talk about Chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching. Here on episode 12 of who knows how many. So Dr. Carl Totton, the question is, we’ve been talking a lot and reading chapters from the Tao Te Ching, but are there other things that are quote-unquote Taoist canon?

Or does everybody accept them as Taoist canon? Is it all quote-unquote gospel?

What texts are in the Taoist canon?

[Carl Totton]

Funny, you should mention the Taoist canon. There actually is a Taoist canon called the Tao Song. Taoist canons.

And there are, I think, over 1,200 volumes in that. And it’s never been completely translated out of the Chinese into English, for example.

[Tod Perry]

So we might be really missing something.

[Carl Totton]

But parts of it have been translated. I think the first scholar that translated it out of the Chinese into something else was a French scholar who wrote a book which is called Taoism and Chinese Religion by Henry Maspero, I think in the 1930s, 1933 or something, 35, something like that. Great book.

I have it next door in my library, actually. And so he translated a few of the works from this Tao Song, this Taoist canon, these thousands, hundreds of volumes of ancient Chinese literature that contains a lot of the original writings about the Tao. So there’s that.

And again, there’s been just a few books in English that talk about parts of that. And some of that is actually very interesting, particularly what it reveals about qigong and meditation and alchemy. Fascinating materials in there.

I think one of the chapters is called something like Nourishing the Spirit and how to do that. Fascinating, very interesting. So there’s all of that.

And then, of course, there’s the I Ching, the Book of Changes.

[Tod Perry]

Now, is that a specifically Taoist text or is that something that Taoists incorporated from elsewhere?

[Carl Totton]

Well, everybody has kind of had a hand in that, I suppose. Supposedly, the first kind of emperor of China, he supposedly saw a tortoise walking and saw these marks on the tortoise’s back. And I guess being an emperor, a son of heaven or whatever, he divined what that meant.

That, oh, that line is a yang line, and the half line, that’s a yin line. If you put the yin and the yang together, that means something. And so he became inspired to write commentaries on this phenomena that he had observed in nature.

And then, of course, over the centuries, many, many, many people have added to that. But it’s been certainly incorporated by the Taoists as one of their fundamental texts, along with the Tao Te Ching. And essentially, it’s been used in divination, for example, because it does contain a full hexagram or six lines, and they consist of yin lines and yang lines, the full line being a yang line.

Yang being, we may have discussed at some point, that yang means things that are more solid, more heavy, more bright, more evident, associated with male or masculinity, with activity, etc. And then it alternates with yin lines, you know, kind of half lines. Softer, more yielding, more feminine, more allowing, more receptive.

And Taoism definitely identifies with the yin, with the more mysterious, with the less obvious, with the potential, with the void, if you will. So there’s definitely an affinity with that within Taoism. And then people like Confucius wrote commentaries about the Yi Ching.

And as many, many hundreds of other scholars have written commentaries trying to explain this. You know, just like there’s been all these translations of the Tao Te Ching, people trying to, oh, I think it means this, so I think he meant that. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of all of these.

And so the Tao Te Ching, the Yi Ching, and of course, again, I mentioned that vast Taoist canon. And then there’s something called Chuan Tzu. Chuan Tzu, a later Taoist adept, you know, who is kind of an interpreter of Lao Tzu, if you will.

[Tod Perry]

Is that one book on that?

[Carl Totton]

Yeah, there’s a series of verses, chapters, and the only chapters that scholars think was definitely written by this guy are the seven so-called inner chapters. In fact, here, I actually have the book right here. See, the inner chapters of Chuan Tzu.

And again, it’s a lot of very wise, humorous kind of commentaries on the nature of the Tao and Lao Tzu’s teachings, but from just a latter perspective that may be more accessible for some people. And the scholar, Chuan Tzu, this Taoist adept, he had the famous dream, the butterfly dream, where he had this dream that he was a butterfly. But he wondered, what’s really reality?

Am I a man dreaming he’s a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly dreaming I’m a man? What is the nature of reality?

And do we ever really know? And how can we tell? And right now we think we’re awake, but is this a dream?

Particularly since there is such a thing as lucid dreaming, where you’re absolutely asleep, allegedly, but you’re dreaming and you’re aware that you’re dreaming. And so, where do you exist? What plane are you?

And so studies of consciousness, I think Taoism has some interesting things to kind of muse about.

[Tod Perry]

So, I’ve found that I’ve just kind of read the Tao Te Ching because it is dense enough that it’s like, that’s enough to tackle. I mean, not the actual amount of words, but the messages and every time you look at something, you might get a different interpretation of it. So I’ve kind of stuck with that.

I’ve read a couple of things outside that, but I guess maybe it’s time to move on to the Chuang Se. Forgive my Chinese pronunciation here. So, kind of moving on from that, we’ve talked a lot about it’s not Qi Gong.

What is Qi Gong?

Qi Gong. We’ve talked a lot about Qi Gong, but I don’t think we’ve really hit it on the head at exactly what that practice is.

[Carl Totton]

Well, Qi Gong could be described really as the ancient Chinese version of yoga and meditation. And the word Qi, of course, means energy. We’ve talked about that a little bit.

And Gong means work. So Qi Gong is working with energy. And energy is everywhere.

It’s part of this field of what the Tao is. But yet, each one of us also has our own individual energies contained within our being, within our body, within our brain, within our spirit, within our soul. And so the ancient Chinese, the ancient Taoist, and others, discovered that by engaging in specific practices, we could learn how to harness, collect, balance, and strengthen Qi for many purposes.

Number one, of course, is for health. Because, you know, Chinese medicine recognizes something like 26 or 7 different forms of Qi, energy in the body. And, you know, it’s in the different organs, it’s in the bones, it’s in the structure, it’s in the cells, it’s everywhere.

But by doing specific breathing and physical practices, you can have a sense of the Qi responding to your intention. And so you can actually think a certain way and observe a certain way and breathe a certain way, and actually manifest and feel the Qi moving through your body. And all of your organs, you know, Chinese medicine recognizes 12 kind of fundamental organs of the body, and each one has its own field of Qi.

And when the Qi in a particular organ gets out of balance, you know, it’s too much, it’s too little. Of course, if it’s too little, you’re going to become weak, it’s going to not be flowing very well, you’re going to become insubstantial, and the type of conditions or illnesses that come from a lack of energy or a lack of substance will begin to manifest. On the other end, if you have too much energy collecting at a point, or it’s too intense, then you get things like infections, you get inflammation, you get pain.

And so, neither of those extremes is conducive to good health. And so this Taoist notion of balance and harmony, by engaging in Qi Gong, we come into energetic balance, which leads to greater balance in the rest of our life. And we have good health, and yet a lot of energy at the same time that becomes accessible and usable in other aspects of your life.

Now, what are some specific Qi Gong practices? Well, there are thousands of them.

[Tod Perry]

Okay.

[Carl Totton]

And typically, it involves standing or sitting in one position, and then moving, coordinating different parts of your body in motion. My teacher from China, he said, you have to synchronize your eyes, your mind, your movement with your breath. And when you do, your Qi, your energy will automatically manifest and begin moving more under your control, under your direction.

[Tod Perry]

It’s like a physical meditation almost.

[Carl Totton]

It is. That’s why I compare it to yoga. Everyone, I think, has seen yoga where people move into different postures.

They sit on the ground, and they stretch, and they breathe, and they hold like a sun posture or something, and then they move to the next one. Well, Qi Gong is not usually so much like that, like sitting on the floor and getting into these stretching type of postures. It’s usually standing up, and then moving the hands, maybe in a circle or in a diagonal or in a spiral, while following that motion with your eyes and with your breath.

And so as the hand rises, we tend to inhale. As the hand falls, we tend to exhale. As the hand moves in towards the body, we’ll tend to inhale.

And it moves away from the body, we tend to exhale. It’s like Tai Chi. Tai Chi follows the same principle, because in Qi Gong, they say that the energy in the human body moves in a few ways.

Energy tends to rise and fall. It expands and contracts. It moves in and out, and it gathers and dissipates.

Those kind of eight things. And so Qi Gong follows that and gives you a practice to exercise this moving in and out, this rising and falling, this expanding and contracting, this gathering and dissipating. It follows those same actions, but gives you a tool to actually practice that.

So now, how does one learn Qi Gong? Well, you go to someone who knows it, and we’ll teach you. And of course there are books on it now, and there are DVDs.

I actually have a DVD out that teaches Qi Gong. I just finished contributing a chapter in a book where I actually teach some Qi Gong in the book. So it’s certainly out there now.

It’s definitely abundantly available to people. And one of my teachers, my teacher who came from China, he was pretty much the first person to actually teach Qi Gong to non-Chinese people. And where it had been kind of a Chinese secret for thousands of years.

[Tod Perry]

Ancient Chinese secret.

[Carl Totton]

Yeah, they exist. They exist. And then of course there are many different forms of Qi Gong.

Like I mentioned, there’s over a thousand at least. But even those thousands can be kind of condensed into a few categories. Some Qi is kind of the Qi moving through the physical body, through the muscles, and the joints, and the tendons.

Another type of Qi Gong is the Qi that’s moving and being collected and practiced in the organs of the body, in the meridians that Chinese medicine uses. In fact, by doing Qi Gong you might say you’re becoming your own kind of doctor of Chinese medicine. Rather than them putting a needle in you.

You’re practicing on yourself. Because they put the needle in to do what? To stimulate or balance the flow of Qi.

And we can do that through Qi Gong. That’s why if you do Qi Gong in your meditation every day, you might have much less need of the medical profession, whether it’s Western or Chinese.

[Tod Perry]

You become your own doctor.

[Carl Totton]

Another form of Qi Gong is that internal alchemy we’ve talked about. Where you’re mixing different elements of your essence, and your energy, and your spirit. And trying to really develop wisdom and higher states of psychic and spiritual enlightenment.

[Tod Perry]

How does one do that?

[Carl Totton]

Through very careful practice. Again, there are very specific types of Qi Gong that tap into this essence that’s said to be stored in your kidneys. And then that moves that and connect that with the energy that’s stored in the internal energy centers kind of in your lower abdomen.

And then link that to another energy field that’s in your heart. And so when you link this energy from the kidneys and into the lower abdomen and connect that to the heart and then lift all that up into the brain, to the pineal gland, if you will. The so-called third eye, which is kind of the third one that the Chinese talk about.

That leads to a heightened sense of awareness and perspective. And over time, it leads to greater sense of wisdom. And it moves one along the process of becoming enlightened.

[Tod Perry]

Ah, very nice. Now I’ve got to start looking into this. So I’ve got some real takeaways so far.

I’ve got to read the Chong Tzu and do a little Qi Gong. And now let’s see here. Let’s get on to the final chapter of the Tao Te Ching, the final verse of the Tao Te Ching.

This in no way… I love it. It happens to be the last one in the book, but it in no way ends the book.

[Carl Totton]

You know what I’m saying?

[Tod Perry]

I think it’s not like that’s the end. It’s just like you could read the Tao Te Ching kind of out of order, and it wouldn’t really matter. Besides, you kind of got to get the first one first.

And then the rest of it’s all…

[Carl Totton]

You definitely need to start with chapter one. Where he tells you that you can’t understand the Tao by talking about it. Useful to remember.

And then, of course, for the last 2,500 years, all we’ve done is talk about it.

What is Chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching about?

[Tod Perry]

Alright, so verse 81 from the Tao Te Ching.

[Carl Totton]

Very short and very direct and to the point, I think.

[Tod Perry]

I’ve got my notes on this one.

[Carl Totton]

He says as follows. Truthful words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not truthful.

Good men do not argue. Those who argue are not good. Those who know are not learned.

The learned do not know. The sage never tries to store things up. The more he does for others, the more he has.

The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance. The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm. The Tao of the sage is work without effort.

How beautiful is that?

[Tod Perry]

That is beautiful. Truthful words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not truthful.

And how…

[Carl Totton]

It reminds me of the news. Yeah, yeah.

[Tod Perry]

It’s always the guy who’s going to BS you is the guy who speaks beautifully.

[Carl Totton]

You know what I’m saying?

[Tod Perry]

Like a lawyer. We have this interesting thing where for many years I’ve worked in advertising and radio advertising. And the interesting thing, interesting takeaway…

[Carl Totton]

Beautiful words.

[Tod Perry]

Yes. The thing I’ve learned is beautiful words don’t sell. If you use unbeautiful words, we have this thing, I’d say a great radio ad is like a three-legged dog.

It’s not cute. It moves kind of funny. And so when I write these ads it would be we always use guys that don’t have great radio voices.

Like a guy who works at the company who might speak funny or have an accent but it sounds very genuine. Things that are true, people can feel that immediately. Like you know on some level when something is false or something like…

When someone’s had plastic surgery, sometimes you don’t necessarily know what has been done to their face but you think that didn’t occur naturally. Right? We see things that are real and of nature so much that when something has been altered it sticks out no matter how much you’re trying to fix it or whatever.

And I think the same thing is with words. You know, things that are true are never really written beautifully. You know?

[Carl Totton]

I think a lot of this, it seems like Lao Tzu is talking about the nature of reality. Yeah. Truthful words are not beautiful because often what we see in our daily existence that’s true is not necessarily something that we would identify as beautiful.

[Tod Perry]

No.

[Carl Totton]

As having aesthetic attractiveness. But it’s true.

[Tod Perry]

Or an idea-wise attractiveness. There’s a lot of terrible truths out there that we have to navigate.

[Carl Totton]

Beautiful words are not truthful. Because often people are trying to color something in a particular way in order to sell you something. Right.

Or in order to get their political or other point across. In other words, in order to be right. So it’s in service of the ego rather than of truth.

And remember, even the Bible, there’s something in there about you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. See, there’s freedom that comes from truth.

[Tod Perry]

Because you have to release your ego to accept truth.

[Carl Totton]

And look at the very next thing, he says, good men do not argue. Those who argue are not good. And so people who are stuck being right, getting their truth across to you and trying to be like evangelist or something and trying to convert you, Taoists don’t trust those types of folks.

[Tod Perry]

It’s kind of like on Facebook you’ll see people that post about political things or post about their ideologies every day and they’re trying to convince you of something. And in many ways I think that if someone’s always trying to hit me over the head with their beliefs or whatever that maybe they’re kind of insecure. You know, there’s a great running thing on the show where I always quote things incorrectly and I’m going to do it again.

It was like, she doth protest too much.

[Carl Totton]

Shakespeare.

[Tod Perry]

Yeah, and this aligns perfectly with chapter one. If I only read chapter one I think I’d know so much you could take from it. In chapter one, it’s ever desireless one sees the beauty desiring one sees the manifestation.

And in the same thing that we desire beautiful truths or we desire to believe in the world as a certain way and that’s almost like that false beauty. But once we let go of the ego and see the world for what it is, again it’ll set you free on some level.

[Carl Totton]

And I like what he says about the sage which never tries to store things up. Because the more you just try to keep collecting things holding on, clinging to things the more kind of bogged down you’re going to become. And then of course you feel you need to do what?

If you have a lot of things you’re going to need to do what? Protect it, right? And control it.

And control access to it from other people. And so instead what does Lao Tzu counsel the sage? The more he does for others the more he has.

The more he gives to others the greater his abundance. He’s talking clearly about sharing rather than holding on and clinging to things. This is mine and you can’t have it.

No. You give it away and then you’re truly rich. Because now everybody has benefited from your largesse.

Even I think St. Francis of Assisi, right? That’s basically what he said. He essentially said the same thing.

That in giving to others you’re giving to yourself. And by sharing with others you become you have a sense of abundance. And so this is Taoist ethics right here.

This is the core of Taoist ethics. The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm. It’s focused but it doesn’t harm anything in existence.

It has a perspective but that perspective is only valid if it’s not harming others.

[Tod Perry]

Now when they say the Tao of heaven, is that just like saying like the heaven is kind of the nebulous place where the Tao resides or comes from or the void we’re talking about or are they talking about the Tao of heaven being the way of heaven? You know what I’m saying?

[Carl Totton]

When Chinese talk about heaven, they’re talking about higher spiritual values if you will. And so when you’re coming from a place of your highest nature then you cause no harm to others. Because if you’re harming others then you’re you’re breaking the Tao.

You’re breaking the Tao. And that’s kind of un-Taoist if you will. And so the Tao of the sage is work without effort.

Work without effort. And so how do we work without effort? By doing what comes naturally.

What comes naturally. So there’s these old sayings when the sage is tired he sleeps. When he’s hungry he eats.

And so by doing things effortlessly and naturally you actually accomplish more than the kind of negative results and the pushback you’re going to get if you’re trying to cling to being right and to push your way onto others that may have nothing to do with what’s natural for them. And if you’re trying to acquire your wealth and riches at the expense of everybody else. Now the richest person is the person who has a Taoist sage knows when they’ve had enough and then everything else they just share.

Now everybody has enough. See? And now the world works.

Right? Everybody has a sense of fulfillment and they understand that through cooperation you can attain more than through cutthroat competition. That’s the western way.

[Tod Perry]

Through proper social alchemy we can multiply through cooperation.

[Carl Totton]

Yes. This earth has enough for all of us if we only knew how to share and how to cultivate naturally without destroying our ecosystem because there’s payback for that too. There’s a big payback for that.

And you know this earth has gone through various extinction events over the years and I pray I hope that we are cultivating a new one by not being stewards and caretakers of this garden. This wonderful magnificent garden we call planet earth. Our mother.

And our job is to nurture the mother. Learn from the mother because Taoism is called a nature philosophy, a nature religion. It looks at the harmony within nature.

The tides and the seasons and the wind and the rain and how all these elements when they’re working together they nurture the whole so that everything, every being every plant, every insect every animal has exactly what it needs to thrive. And by thriving it fulfills its mission. We all fulfill our individual and collective mission by becoming creative.

We become the creator. We become one with the creation itself while allowing space for everyone else to manifest their mission. So then you have a world which lives in peace and harmony.

And that is the Taoist ideal where everything can rise to its own nature by living in peace and harmony with the rest of all of nature. That is the way of the Tao.

[Tod Perry]

Beautiful. And with that I’d like to thank C. Joe, Dr. Carl Totton May the Tao be with you. Thank you.