Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42 - Part 2 (Tao of Creation)

Oh [Music] tinleigh dishing sue to share a journey of a thousand miles begins beneath the feet we now gather in the Dell to travel the journey together you welcome to Townsville directly where we delve deeply into the daodejing by lulz previously we went through and looked at the structure of chapter 42 so as usual This was the first thing that we did and the sectional analysis looked like this as usual it is mostly based on recurrence of Chinese characters that you can see on the left-hand side and what I also pointed out was that in

some cases characters that repeated themselves did not did not occur in the same position in the first section we have one Miria things being repeated from the end of life or to the beginning of life five and that indicates that It's a continuation of the thought that started as far back as the very beginning the matt91 del produces one and in a similar way toward the bottom we see a whole bunch of repeating characters that appear at different positions so last time we got as far as line four so we talked about this very interesting

progression from the DAO to the 1 to the 2 to the 3 to the myriad things so before we got into that progression we talked about the number 42 because this is chapter 42 what is the significance of that well it's kind of interesting actually because the number 42 in pop culture is coincidentally the answer to the ultimate question it's the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything and what I talked about last time was that if you did do a search in Google even right now Google is going to answer your question by

telling you that the answer is 1 2 Well where did that come from well he came from Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy which is a comedic very funny science fiction series of books by author Douglas Adams he started out and to radio play on BBC it was turned into a television show also on BBC and then the images that you see in the slide are from the movie production and as I talked about before this is where aliens which in the movie went to picked it by a couple of Adorable little girls asked this very

powerful computer called deep thought and when they asked about the ultimate answer the computer came back what 42 and this of course took everyone by surprise now one thing that I do want to talk a little bit more about was why the author Douglas Adams chose 42 as the answer to the ultimate question so the the very first incarnation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy when it was still a radio show and we're talking And we're talking 30 years ago now this was something that I got into early on and so I also eagerly listened

to the interview that the author gave when the question came up so when the interviewer asked so why 42 he's answered it was interesting he said that 42 was the most boring number that he could come up with that it wasn't anything special that it wasn't a prime number you you had no cultural significance like the number 13 You know what bad luck or seven for good fortune it was just 40 - there's nothing special you could say about it so he used that for a couple of reasons reason number one was that he wanted

to he wanted to convey humor he wanted to say that yeah that's right you've always suspected that life doesn't make any sense that life is absurd so look at this the ultimate question and the ultimate answer are actually reflecting that lack of of sense that the world Makes this boring answer turns out to be the answer to the ultimate question how absurd is that the other reason for him to use it number 42 was because it was a way for him to get to what he really wanted to say he didn't want to talk about

just the co2 Minister he wanted to talk about vo2 my question one more precisely he wanted to talk about the quest for the ultimate question what exactly is the ultimate question to life the universe and Everything so has a way to get there he had this computer this fictional computer deep thought explained to be aliens that deep thought itself was not qualified to compute the ultimate question - the ultimate answer but he could design defog to design the computer that would provide the answer this computer was so advanced that organic life itself shall be part

of its operational matrix and deep thought gave this computer a name Earth so after Seven million years of construction earth was created as an advanced computer that is running a program although with all the living things on it to explore and identify reveal to my question so this is what douglas adams wanted to say look at this amazing beautiful world of ours we're all part of it you and I a part of this ultimate quest the quest to find you with him a question see this is actually a Statement from Douglas Adams about the life

that you and I live in this world aren't we all in the same quest together in that sense it is really very down like understanding what he was trying to get at gives us all the more reasons to cherish the earth this incredible computer that were deeply embedded as part of it and that deep embedding is a major subject that we're gonna be going into in detail today but first we looked into the progression from the 1 to the 2 To the 3 to the myriad of things which is in the first few lines and

we were able to illustrate by comparing and contrasting with different schools of thought so for instance we looked at the slide last time so then we have right in the middle we have a scientific thought to the left we have the the Western thought and when I say what's your thought I realized that this is a very big brush and I was just identifying the Judeo-christian tradition even though there there's so much diversity in what's your thought saying with Eastern thought a lot of diversity there and I'm just using the DAO as a way to

represent that so the eastern thought has the Dow being the source of everything in worse than thought we have God being the ultimate eternal causeless cause so there's your comparison contrast right there What about scientific thought it is unknown a mystery or nothing or the multiverse so the question is far from settled that's sort of the nature of science as it is right now to the best of our knowledge today the best most advanced scientific thinking is closer to the original conception of the DAO from the ancient Chinese ages thousands of years ago then what

followed in this particular chapter chapter 42 was that the doubt Gave rise to existence or reality or the universe itself the word universe as I pointed out literally means one verbs or one song in scientific thought it is quantum fluctuation there gives rise to the Big Bang for some 14 billion years ago and in western thought in the Bible in the beginning was the word so that's the transition from the emptiness to somethingness and then finally we talked about how eventually oneness gave rise to to everything through complimentary Duality and all the all the enumeration

of the of the BA kua which we will talk about and complementary duality can mean heaven and earth light and darkness etc it finds correspondence in Western thought because in Genesis God created the heaven and the earth okay that's a complementary duality there God divided the light from the artemus so light and darkness will be another complementary duality so interesting correspondence what about Scientific thought well in the very middle of this slide you're see that I wrote the emergence of all the positive energy which manifests as matter an equal negative energy manifesting as gravity so

this comes from a hypothesis known as the zero energy universe and for those of you who are scientifically minded it is very easy to look it up in on the internet various articles about the zero energy hypothesis what it says is that the Total amount of energy in the universe is zero just like the Dow is zero there's an interesting correspondence there and then it also goes on to talk about how in the zero energy universe you can have the total image being being zero as long as you have a positive amount of energy that

is canceled out by the negative amount of energy so it could be if you think about 1 million I had a to negative 1 million what equal allowed to exactly zero that's the idea So tremendous amount of positive energy becoming matter from Einstein's famous equation then the negative energy manifesting as flabbily throughout the universe so there you can have a complimentary duality as well positive and negative and we also took a deeper look not just cosmology now but Genesis that is the beginning of life so the the state means that we find in chapter 42

from the zero to the one something out of Nothing in the Bible it is of course God creating Adam and that's the famous painting that I have over here classical paintings for the first three steps as you can see now creating Adam then from 1 to 2 which in the Bible would be God taking a grip from Adam and creating Eve and there is also legend about Lilith what that was the first wife of Adam but that's that's an added complication is sort of a detour so let's not get into that right now from 2

to 3 which in the Tao is the animation it's the movement it's the dynamism its transformation in the Bible that factor the factor of dynamism of change of transformation is represented by the Apple Apple represents knowledge knowledge changes and transforms it is inevitable and it can you cannot go back to the way you used to be nothing can ever be the same again then in mythology it says from the three to Mary of things and for the Bible that Would be the fall from the Garden of Eden where humanity beginning with Adam and Eve went

forth and humanity was fruitful humanity multiplied which leads to the world as we have it today the diversity of men time so it's kind of interesting that even when you take these great traditions you can find correspondence between them you can find correspondence between the minds in chapter 42 and events from Genesis from the Bible so Then this set us up to continue on to talk about the rest of the new section the first section so we went through lines one two four and now we're ready to talk about my five and line six and

then what I'll do is that I'll introduce everyone to this same concept the one to the two to the three to the myriad things but express differently in Chinese culture so now before we do that let's talk about yin and yang so in this line line five the translation is myriad Things backed by yin and embracing yang so I'd like to explain that real quickly just to get us started starting with backed by in what is that what does that mean so to be backed by yin means that living things are sourced in Yin or

that Yin female energy the female principle is the source of life so Yin serves as the source the backing or the foundation or the basis for life so in other words mother giving birth to Infants that is what we understand from the human perspective so when we extend out from human beings to all living things all living things I'll be nature well we can say yeah we can generalize and say that it's true the life and all living things has a foundation in the yin principle that it is sourced in the in principle it's backed

by in and that's the way that loves express them so what the other part what about embracing yang There we go in Mandarin Bao young what does that mean to embrace the yang is to be active embracing the yang principle is embracing the active dynamic action-oriented principle so this is about being active to do all the things in the normal course of living a normal life so embracing yang being active is what it means all living things exhibit this but let's take a look at the human Example first we know human baby learns to walk

ASAP and will not stop until Joaquin is mastered so we all see this it's all part of racing a baby that the baby learns to walk so once again we can extend this out to be more general to apply to all living things and we definitely see that yes it is true all living creatures are similar in that they become active as soon as they are strong enough to be active so the idea is to observe in the human world and Then expand the concept to include all living things so then let's take a look

at the entire line area things backed by in an embracing yang what we talked about Adam and Eve from the Bible we can look at them now we we know that it's not exactly biology isn't exactly as it was depicted in the Bible in the Genesis the Garden of Eden etc but we can use Adam and Eve as symbols that they can be symbolic of human procreation so reproduction Reproductive activities everyone who has ever lived comes from the interaction of male and female energies and this is just a way to say that yes mom and

dad had to work it together to create a baby of course that is something that we all understand now this can be generalized and expanded out to cover much more generally to say that we can extrapolate it so it's more general and then we can follow the ancient sages when they said that one of the myriad living things you Know not just humans but everything else in nature they all came from this interplay of yin and yang energies now for human beings that interplay would be like a dance between men and women males and females

the courtship the dating the relationships love marriage all of them that's all ritualized em becoming something that we're all very custom to in the human world so then what this says when we generalize it is that the interplay of Male and female energies you know yang energies must be because from the 1 to the 2 the 2 to the 3 and the 3 to the myriad things that whole process is the Tao of universal creation and it must be deeply embedded in all living things and that is why we have complementary qualities within us that

in every person there is you and there's a yang so I call it sort of like a your reversal DNA or a natural blueprint so hang on to this idea for a moment that yin and yang Isn't just an abstract symbol but living breathing principles within ume and by the way we all known with that there's asexual reproduction in nature as well there are living cells that divide and that's that's how theme the multiplication that's how the multiplying of virus bacteria etc what occurred naturally so there the duality will not necessarily be male and female

because it's a sexual reproduction it would then Take the form of life and death where life itself would take the position of the yang principle while death will be the in principle so it's even more elementary when you look at it that way but let's stick to the higher forms of life beyond virus and bacteria and germs and cells and whatnot and stick to the living things specifically let's stick to human beings for for the moment after all the reason why we're studying the DAO is because we want to better our Lives so we have

to at some point we always have to return to the human perspective and we need to be asking the question how can this help me live my life so line 6 says the myriad things achieve harmony by integrating their energy the energies of yin and yang so conclusion not only do we have the yin and yang within us but complementary qualities manifest in everything we do so it's in our actions it's in what we say to people what we talk about It's in the way that we interact we deal with one another deal with situations

and problems it applies in every situation so we have to we have to work within and yang is basically what we're saying here so the translation says achieve harmony by integrating basically yin and yang so let's talk about that first let's talk about the nature of unit yang we call to mind the yin and yang symbol see what it looks like in your mind the graceful curve Between the two halves the black and white parts the you within yang the young within in you'll all know what it looks like so one thing that it teaches

when we look at you within Yang and yang within Yin is that it is saying nothing is ever a hundred percent pure which applies to human beings means that you have both yin and yang within you can you can adjust them you can maximize or minimize increase or decrease one or the other Hopefully in an attempt to attain some kind of balance but you can never completely get rid of Yin or get rid of Yang a little bit of it while always remain no matter how you minimize so that's that's one thing that we notice

about the yin and yang and as we are talking about increasing and decreasing the proportion of one versus the other we know that too much of either Yin or yang will be a bad thing it will lead to negative consequences later one in this Chapter we have an example of too much yang energy is someone who's prone to being violent so what gets it that in the moment now we want to talk about the right mixture between yin and yang they are in the proper balance which may not be 50/50 the proper balance may be

40 60 you know 30 70 it depends on the situation there is no magic formula that applies for every situation it just depends on all the factors involved to get the right amount but the right Mixture of the two can be very positive when giving yang are in balance there's harmony and harmonious balance can show up in your life as better health greater power authentic and personal power greater success and so on now at the end of line six which is the end of the first section we're getting from the progression 1 to 2 2

to 3 3 to newer things to an emphasis that basically says well the 2 is already in you complement to dualities and you have to Integrate you know yeah you have to integrate the two so before we get into section 2 I want to at the end of section 1 I want to present to everyone another way to express that the first four lines you know 1 0 to 1 from the down to the one from the 1 to the 2 2 to the 3 3 to the myriad of things those four lines are expressed

differently and I want to make sure you see this other expression as well it's what I call the dowel creation there are four lines Presented in blue and the first line is as you see here woody son Haiti so hanging there for just a moment I'm going to explain exactly what it means first I want to isolate the first two characters booty and then talk about what they are so here's the literal meaning the first character means to not have to be without and then the second character at t means boundary or extends so whatever

is without boundary is without limit So woodsy really means the infinite the boundless the unlimited the limitless so there's a whole bunch of different expressions to talk about booty in Ooty if you want to represent it pictorially you will basically use a blank sheet of paper that's it it's the state of nothingness and yet a blank sheet of paper is a blank canvas it's an invitation to exercise your creativity you can write things on a blank sheet of paper you Can't draw you can paint so the bloody sheet of paper can become beauty can become

design you can become something wonderful and that is the essence of which II then that's the first two characters the middle character son means to produce to give birth to to beget to give rise to and then tidy this is the other important turn so let me isolate that tidy what does that mean well we figured out that tea the second character means boundary or Extent what about type that character means alternate so tightly together the first two characters mean the ultimate extent pushing the edge of the envelope right at the boundary this can be

represent as a circle and here's something that I wanted one to know the Tai Chi that you have seen perhaps people do in a park you know of slow movements graceful movements good exercise can also distress Tai Chi is actually the older Romanization of Tai Chi it always was supposed to be pronounced Tai Chi D but nobody knew that CH AI Chi was supposed to be pronounced that way so everybody says Tai Chi but it's actually tied to you so it's well known in the West and it's actually named after this term is the full

name for the exercise slash martial art yes Tai Chi Chen and I know that many of you have tried it or still actively practicing it so what we want to Represent ojiisan tighty the state of the infinite giving rise to the ultimate we will use something like this where there is only blankness at the top half of this pictorial diagram going into a circle representing tidy and here's the translation for that mu T gives rise to Tai Chi and that's because Wu Chi entitiy have become jargon specialized terms that oftentimes people who study Tai Chi

will get into and understand become familiar with these two terms so UT gives rise to Titan now I mentioned that there are four lines in this alternative expression of the DAO of creation so what about the other three lines what I can provide two additional lines I can highlight I can explain two additional lies first of all tidy silly on me you can see the tide TV at the end of light one becomes the beginning of line soon and then there is a sink character you know giving rise to giving Birth to produces and then

we have a new term Liang Yi at the end of line two so the young Yi I have singled out for explanation these are the two aspects the so-called two aspects what the two aspects are you already know about its the healing yang symbol that we've been referring to so synonymous or the yin and yang therefore we can translate the second line as Taiji gives rise to the two aspects simple right so let's explore life 3 so again we have The two aspects at the end of line 2 going into the beginning of line 3

so then II so young okay whoa what is that a new turn let's take a look we can see first of all that we depict Titus and anyi we have circle as a symbol for Tai Chi Bo till it going into the yin and yang symbol which then we eat synonymous with the yin and yang and now let's take a look at SU Chou so what is it the four images so literally the first character Means for the second character means image or reflection it's the image of the great down or reflection of the great

down the four images can represent a lot of different things you can for instance represent the Four Seasons for countless direction north south east and west etc however even though it's something that we see in real life it it's actually not depicted graphically there's no specific depiction of that if you had to depicted Graphically I will suggest that the compass with the four cardinal directions will do nicely so we have now looked at the meandering characters in line three were ready for the translation the two aspects give rise to the four images so then we

just have one more line to talk about so let's do that here's the last line this young shown BA kua so once again the end of line three becomes the beginning of life form and then we have Sun force in character for Producing giving rise to and then we have BA kua so what is that so literally what a means the first counter is eight and the second character means trigrams now ba the second character in this case is translated as trigrams but the same character appears in reference to eating the Book of Changes and

there it's translated differently here it is trigrams because you're going to see that it's composed of three lines of broken lines and complete lines in the Eating context it is no longer eight it's 64 and it's translated as hexagram because in eating it is composed of six launched some all the way through some broken in the middle so then the four images give rise to Bhagwan here's what Papua looks like looks like the octagonal shape eight sides each one with a different combination of unbroken lines and the lines broken in the middle that's BA kua

so there are eight of them which is why it's the eight trigrams so With that we have all four longings which is a different way to express it all creation so think about the difference for just a moment the first line is a close correspondence to the dow produces the 1 mu t gives rise to tighten and then the second line Masha's line shoe in chapter 42 Taiji gives rise to the two aspects that's the one producing the two then we begin to vary in the dalla Jean is as the to produce three and that's

the factor of dynamism Or action or movement or change or transformation here though in this expression it's talking about two aspects giving rise to the four images from the two to the four rather than the third factor of dynamism which in this expression is baked in to the second line so remember the second line the two aspects that is already the yin and yang in the daodejing expression the second line is about the duality two things and then the third line of their factor is When they become the interacting yin and yang so that's the

difference and then the fourth line in this case involves the BA kua VA trigrams but in the dalla jean it's about how the interactions the third factor the dynamism giving rise to the myriad things so again a little bit different first two lines mostly the same the last two lines mostly different so when we put it together here's what we have and I haven't I've got this Alternative English expression of the same concept Mooji - Taichi the oneness of the Dow emerges from limitless infinity so I am swapping the order to form a sensible English

sentence limitless infinity will be Mooji the oneness of the doubt will be tight see so they're reversed in this English one election then tightiy gives rise to the two aspects again I flip them around the complementary duality emerges from the ultimate oneness so the Ultimate oneness is Taichi complementary duality will be beginning next simple and then the two aspects gives right give rise to the four images I again I flip them around the four images of the DAO emerge from the complementary cumulative and lastly before images give rise to BA kua I say the eight

trigrams emerge from the four images so these are just different ways to say the same thing now I want to also put in the notes here that some people will even Add a fifth line like BA kua yeah one wound which can be translated as ba gua manifests as the myriad things so this would match the fourth line and all the change have definitely - and if I were to flip it around in the way that I have done here with the alternative English expression I would say the Morea things manifest from the eight trigrams

so now and one of course when we talk about the myriad things I want to just briefly mention that what will means 10,000 things literally they can refer to all living things or just everything so with the alternative explanation with the alternative expressions that you see here we can now conclude the presentation on the first section with the following so my one two three and four of these are the first four lines of the first section of 42 0 to 1 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to marry of things and I want to

reiterate some of the symbology that you saw and once you relate it to the World 0 to the 1 if you look at just the earth 0 to the 1 in the context of life on this planet would be you know organic molecules to organic self-replicating molecule is able to reproduce collaborate so this is called a biogenesis it's the process of going from non-life to life and this took place roughly 4 million years ago then I want to use the same graphical representation that you saw before from the nothingness of the blank page to This

something which is represented by Tai Chi and then for the second line from the one to the two while unity to duality differentiation of genders which occurred about 1.2 billion years ago on this planet so that would be represented this way now as I mentioned in 42 in the second line looks like it might be the unit yang symbol but not yet right right here in line two it's really just talking about the two Paths the differentiation that's it then we add the dynamism we add the the movements that change the motion so biological reproduction

driving evolutionary changes duality to dynamism now we have a yin-yang symbol as you can see so this is the the Delta gene way of expressing all of that and lastly number four dynamism to biosphere when I say biosphere I mean just you know on this planet everything on the surface of this planet even extending below the surface That sustains life that's the biosphere all the different forms of life we see out of the nature and a lot more that we don't see in symbology this would be the yin and yang symbol driving toward everything the

BA kua the myriad things [Music] so as per plan we're gonna start getting into the second section of this chapter starting with nine seven nine seven says what the people just like and here I want to make a comment about the Difference between most people and the people who cultivate the down so first you and I can look around we can observe the world we can easily see what people like and dislike and we see the same likes and dislikes in ourselves after all we are all mired in the material world most of us chase

after material things at one time or another not all of us definitely but one of us as to what people dislike well I think that the typical person as I have observed wants to be seen in a positive light that is to say most people are CLE pretty attached to the perception of others the good opinion of others most people want to be Wiley none as good as deserving of all the good things in life and most people by extension want to avoid the opposite that is they want to avoid being social outcasts being seen

as the bad guy being seen as Disgraceful so the points that laosan wanted to make is that these are all qualities that people dislike and yet these are the very qualities that the rulers apply to themselves in a in their self deprecating self deprecating self description this was true at the time of Lao Tzu and also at the time of for that for thousands of years before the time of thousand this was a common practice for the for the rulers so what are the terms exactly there will be the Next line alone bereft and unworthy

so let's just break them down one by one the first term boom this is still used in modern Mandarin as a as an expression of being lonely or being alone but rulers no longer refer to themselves with cool back then they did to come the fact that it's lonely at the top people can have friends but not the ruler for the ruler from the rulers perspective if you think about how people may want to be friends with you Because you have the power to rule everybody they may be more interested in the power than they

are in you so does the ruler truly have friends it's hard to say so it's lonely at the top second character go on this is still this character is still commonly used in modern Mandarin when you talk about a widow a widow is someone who's bereft of the spouse and here the meaning by itself is just to be bereft to be Without to be lacking specifically rulers used that Turnham to say that they are bereft or without or lacking in virtues so the idea is that out of humility the ruler assumes there must be some

sort of room for improvement as opposed to I am already perfect I don't need to do anything after all I am the king or the Emperor why should I change so in the days of louses the idea is that when you have the high position of ruling over people you must work extra Hard at discovering in yourself with the places where you can improve and then cuckoo the last expression here no longer used in modern Mandarin its unworthy because it expresses the concept that only through an accident of birth did the ruler and dub in

that position absolute power over the subjects of a kingdom not exactly something that was earned now exceptions to that would be a warlord who conquers and then ascends to Rule in that case it was something that was earned with a lot of blood and sweat and probably hardship but in the case of most of the the rulers they inherited the position and therefore it was just due to birth and nothing else therefore unworthy so these were the terms that were used back in the days allowances 2,500 years ago it was customary for rulers to refer

to themselves with these lowly terms and the idea was to express humility of course as a human custom This would this would get twisted this will be distorted over time this was often forgotten rulers ignoring all the DAO might use these terms to refer to themselves just because that's the way it's always been done but without real understanding or that is to say without real humility and after that after the time of ultimate the only turn to survive was related to the middle 1:1 and was uh there was another character attitude to it why Jen

Jen just means Person so Lauren will be the bereft person so after the town dynasty rulers often used the Guarin the other two terms goo-goo-goo fate the nostril IV ages so this was survived in that form and then there was also another term for royalty for the ruler the Emperor to refer to himself and that was said this term does not have the self-deprecating emphasis on humility so that is a major difference but regardless of historical Practice I want to bring everyone back to the points that Nelson is trying to make he still has about

the point that we can look at a Taemin versus humility through the yin and yang paradigm so the highly placed um absolute power possessing monarch must be the lowest in terms of having the most humility so that's yin and yang right there this is about the points because in every discipline is that we can observe we can see how the real masters are the ones Who appear to be unassuming on the other hand the ones who put on airs that is the ones who are constantly reminding you of their titles physicians achievements those are not

the real masters so this applies to many different disciplines many different fields of human endeavor it applies to tell cultivation the real masters of now cultivation are unassuming those who have high-level spiritual attainment usually down-to-earth and easygoing the Ones in dull cultivation who flaunt their titles or positions or attainment they are not the real masters so why is it that the true masters are naturally humble it is because when they get higher and what we find in the spiritual attainment they expand their perception in the town the more they expand the more they can see

their own true insignificance the true insignificant of themselves in their attainments so the more they see That the more naturally a more they become so look for that when you deal with other people look for that when you are interacting with others who are also studying the down cultivating the down see if they are one or the other do they possess this kind of arrogance or do they possess humility so the yin-yang um perception can be very useful and to continue on with this theme of yin and yang I want to get to line eleven

appear to take loss the Benefit this is what happens when something looks like a setback but it's naturally beneficial because the yin and yang interplay applies equally to all other aspects of life what seems like the laws national to be a benefit and to make that more concrete I want to use some examples in Asian cultures in general it is very common to associate putting on weight with good fortune so a greeting that you may encounter traveling across Asia may be someone who Sees you whose Mitchell before who will say that hey you put on

some weight well they actually mean mean that it's a good thing you know what they're saying is that life must be treating your pretty well that's how you are able to put on additional weight there can be a cultural clash that when someone in the West is thinking you know what wait a minute no way my way I'm keeping slim I am keeping my figure I do not put on weight no I did not so then you can have A clash of each whereas when one side is actually well-meaning thinking about trying to use weight

gain that's a positive compliment whereas the person from the West is thinking of that as actually a negative remark but even in the Asian perspective losing weight doesn't necessarily be does it necessarily have to be a big thing losing weight for some can be a benefit to health and fitness more agile lighter this is easy for us To see in the West because we associate you know a lot of excess weight with unhealthy lifestyle it's a little bit different traditionally in Asia so another example though that we can probably agree on more is that losing

clutter a lot of stuff that you'd only use could be seen as a loss because some of the clutter you want to get rid of may be brand-new never opened completely unused and yet losing the clutter because you don't Need it it may be a great benefit to free up more space yet another example loss of employment may turn into a great opportunity to explore different career paths and this this is what we get the expression some people was sometimes say you know quote unquote getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me

and that's because they were able to turn that into a great opportunity to walk down a different path and ended up in a different place a better place and Probably be owes him an example that I talked about before was Steve Jobs actually he was ousted from Apple Computer back in nineteen eighty eighty five this was the company that he founded he was ousted from his own company so he was depressed shocked and depressed for a time but you went on to quickly show another company called next also the the year after that in 1986

he funded a group a company that would eventually become Pixar now 12 years after he was ousted from Apple he returned to Apple in 1997 this was because while he was at while he was at his new company next he developed an operating system called next step Apple wanted that technology and bought his company for 427 million dollars and he came as part of that part of the package and his operating system became the foundation of the Macintosh operating system that we're still using today Furthermore at Apple Computer it's a matter of history that he

went on to spearhead the iPod changing the music industry he spearheaded the development of the iPhone changing cell phones forever and then later on the iPad changing tablets forever so transformative and definitely turning a quote unquote getting fired into the greatest opportunity that he was able to utilize to the max therefore from that example we can see external appearance Yang may be the opposite of internal reality at the time people might say Steve Jobs you got fired well it what actually it was actually opening up a door for him to to reach much much later

attainments achievements now let's continue with this idea something that looks like loss may actually be a benefit the opposite is also true something that you receive as a benefit may actually be a loss what appears to be a benefit Kimmy a loss When when this comes up for for the Chinese people they always use the classic Kenya story about how the situation can transform itself from positive to negative and back again that story is called Simon Schama and we'll get into that in just a moment some of you have already seen it some of you

have already read it and if you have if you can drop me a note in the Q&A section that will be awesome it is chapter eight in the book the Dow of Daily life and the story is called misfortunes and blessings so for those of you who have not read this particular chapter from the book I would like to briefly go over that story with you for the benefit of those who haven't encountered it I really enjoyed working on the story because you know I have seen so many different depictions of it so many different

versions of it so I knew that there were many distorted versions floating around and felt that I Could do something good by bringing an accurate version and have that be part of the book so the full expression solution ma Eng faithful the characters that you see on top I am well explained one by one but first I would like to relate the story for you that's part of our discussion for this chapter once upon a time in ancient China specifically in the northern frontier of Ancient China there was a man who was known as a

skillful person in raising horses so this is the sign wound which literally is the old frontiersman so he lived in the frontiers his life revolved around raising training horses and one day he experienced what people thought was a misfortune for some for some reason he never quite figured out what it was his horse got loose and ran off beyond the water beyond the border the northern water of ancient China So beyond the border was the whole tribe which in ancient times were known as barbarians they thought of them as barbarians because these this the who

tribe was was hostile toward the ancient Chinese and because the horse ran off in that direction there was no way for them to go into the who territory to retrieve the horse so that's it the horse is as good as gone now for the people along the frontier horses were extremely valuable so this was a great loss a Great financial setback so they all commiserated with him that went to him they visited with San Juan and they expressed their sympathies oh I am so sorry that this happened to you this must be a huge loss

what are you gonna do now it was surprising to them because Sal has a elderly father and this is a household of three generations so this was the the grandfather and said one also has her son three generations and the grandfather's says to them Wow who says this cannot be some kind of blessing now everybody thought that this was crazy what you just lost a horse how can you think of it as a blessing but the grandfather was right because months later the horse came back bringing another horse a fine speed from the who breed

so the wealth of sanguine suddenly doubled he had his horse back and he also had an extra horse so everyone came by they all thought that this was just extreme good fortune so They all came to congratulate him they all came to say wow this is amazing look at this horse this is such great luck but again the grandfather his elderly father surprised everyone and said who says this cannot be some kind of misfortune and again everybody thought the old man was crazy you know how can I be you just got you just got a

whole new horse now his son said well son enjoyed writing and decided to take the new horse of the who breed out for a right To break it in unfortunately an accident occurred the horse threw him off and he fell badly he broke his leg and upon hearing this news neighbors once again gather again expressing their sympathies oh this is so horrible this is terrible are you ok how are you gonna be healing up now once again as you can guess the grandfather surprised all of them just like before he said well who says this

cannot be some kind of good fortune in again Everybody thought that he was crazy you know get your grandson his leg is broken there's no way that this can be good fortune no way at all but once again the grandfather was right because a year later the whole tribe decided to invade China so all the young men were conscripted into the army to defend against the invaders so fierce battles ensued and the whole tribe were seasoned and great warriors so it resulted in Heavy casualties out of all the people who had gone into the army

to fight the invaders nine out of ten of them died but the grandson did not go into battle because of his broken leg and because of this he was spared that faint of death nine out of ten his family survived the war intact so this story can potentially go on but in the original Chinese formulation it stops there it's basically saying blessings can be misfortunes misfortunes can be blessings But change from one to the other and it is the mysterious working of destiny that we cannot always understand so that is a story of Simon Schama

yen Jinnah faithful so let me just take him away through the different events and how they correspond with the with the lines that were studying now in the doll 13 so the event horse cow Moos ran off into the barbarian territory oh my goodness that is misfortune right well you'd appear to be lost but may absolutely be A benefit the last carriage of there is benefit the first character is lost so what's the next event well months later the horse returned with another horse of the who breed so that's adding to the asset adding to

the wealth of San Juan so that's a good thing right that's a blessing well the first character here is benefit and then the last character here is loss it appear to be a game then the next event son broke his leg taking the new horse out for a ride What a horrible event well it's a blessing it appeared to be a loss so again the first character here gives loss and the last character here is benefit and then the last event son avoid being drafted to fight the invading cool tribe and again appeared to be

again as I mentioned the story did not have to end at the fourth event it could have been formulated so that everyone thought that they will be fighting a losing battle against the Whole barbarians and therefore being drafted into the army was great misfortune but then even number five is that they won an unexpected victory most of the able-bodied young men survived you know and we're healthy uninjured and they will be they will be honored you know by by the Emperor and that turns into a benefit again so it's possible to fund will formulate this

repeatedly back and forth back and forth but I think by the fourth event The ancient Chinese storyteller made the point that you're gonna have switching back and forth in your life so you want to anticipate and you want to also exercise your ability to manage the Union yet in a skillful way and this is especially applicable when you encounter a situation that seems completely totally against you when you feel frustrated when you feel discouraged this phrase seongsu ma the ends are faithful can be Something that reminds you so I want to explain what the characters

me so I have the pronunciation here set wohnzimmer and now I want to explain what the characters mean one by one the first character means frontier boundary border the second character is old man third character loose last character horse so the the last two characters in particular can only be translated like this loose force and the other two characters have a wider range of Possible choices that you can pick from if you were to transcribe from the literal rendition here frontier ohmae and loose horse okay long you get close to the original meaning but you

translate you probably want to shift it around a little bit the old frontiersman loses a horse now it sounds like a complete sentence in English so that's San Juan Chama and Samuel Simha the first half of this expression is meant to depict a substantial loss and that's Because horses were particularly valuable in the frontiers region represents wealth then let's take a look at the second half ingénue favor so here's Association it's more like an ESL here instead of yen its yen yen she is faithful now let's break down the characters one by one you can

see exactly how to translate first character means how second character means no third character is not the last Character can be blessing prosperity good fortune altogether so if you were to stream the literal transcription together oh no not blessing well we can do a better job by translating into well how do you know it's not a blessing now you have the complete expression salmon stream onions are faithful the old frontiersman loses a horse how do you know it's not a blessing so bottom line is that life is constantly Transitioning from one state to another good

to back bad to good not only that but when we talk about the yin and yang you should now see that the reality of a situation may not match its outward appearance all the neighbors were focusing on how it looks externally to judge whether it was misfortune or blessing the outward appearance is the Yin manifestation the external the reality of the situation is the inner essence that's the yin So Yin sometimes depicted as dark or evil it's actually something that can be positive it can be the truth the internal truth so with that we are

now ready to actually jump to the conclusion as usual time flies when we're having fun so although there's still quite a bit of chapter 42 to talk about we are now approaching the end of our time together today so the summary slide because it has been two weeks since we spoke previously I would like to remind Everyone again of the summary from before this summary if you recall was about balancing yin and yang that yin and yang can manifest in different ways in your life and everybody has it so if you take a look through

the list you want to integrate the two at the proper balance between them to have harmony in your life it starts with a balance between rest and work then you look at work in a different way work involves plenty and the carrying out of the plan Putting the plane to work and that's yin and yang as well as you interact with other people you can potentially be listening to others or you can be expressing yourself to them to listen to be receptive is the yin principle to express yourself is the yang principle quanis silence always

young noise activities socializing chatting talking yang social time your friends studying the Dao mental concentration Yin that's an internal process explained adults Well to people yang that's the external process and here what is saying is that you want to balance the two you don't want to just to study the death you also want to find some time some opportunities to exploit it down to other people in a similar way you don't just want to spend quiet time by yourself in solitude remember to allocate some time to socialize with friends we are all social creatures and

then lastly there's the Observation versus action observation is Yin taking action using yang so this is just a reminder from the family last time here is a reminder that reflects on what we talked about today what we talked about today two things number one yin and yang is embedded as sort of a universal DNA or natural blueprint in all living things that includes you that includes you and me and everybody we know so this is hence the expression you are a child of the universe that means Giving yang energies are within you they are also

in everything that you do your obligation used to integrate again again to increase harmony in your life when they are in the proper balance you have everything being harmonious you want to be able to integrate the two to manage gain and loss skillfully but that that would simply remind you of the story that we talked about today losing the horse is that a good thing is That a bad thing you want to be able to manage gain and loss and skillfully and then recognizing misfortunes and blessings for what they truly are this is a load

of a difference because in blessings you want to know you want to be you want to take care not to be overjoyed you misfortunes you want to recognize that there's gonna come another opportunity there's gonna be a comeback so you don't want to be crushed lastly and point number three you can Turn whatever life throws at you into something great so think about the example that I mentioned you know quantum quotes getting fired was the best thing that ever happens to me that is one way that's just one example to see how something that appears

to be bad can in fact be very good and how do you turn whatever life throws at you and do something great well first understand the reason behind this particular life event and how you Can serve you then let me remind everyone when you are 80 years old or older and you are about to you know that your days are numbered and you look back upon your life this will be a life events that you can review you know whatever it's set back you may be in calorie right now and at that time you want

to be able to say and learn to value but listen you can always learn more from defeats than victory and you know how to plan your comeback again Planning is in and put your plan into action then once again putting a plan into motion putting it into action is very yang you you gotta have both both yin and yang together will give you the power that you need and lastly cell Shima yen's are faithfully just a reminder for everyone about the story that we went through today our meeting to an end but the journey continues

on Let us travel safely until next time meet the Dow fill you with peace and happiness you you