I don't have words to display my gratitude to this presentation. It has taken me 12 days to make notes, process the information, cross reference with my other studies, watch, rewind and repeat. Your work and conduct is second to none. Thank you.
Finally! It is so difficult to find detailed, comprehensive first-hand information about Daoism in the languages I speak. There are good, even university grade courses, but they almost exclusively talk about the Dao De Ging and Zhuang Tse, and focus only on the philosophical aspects, which paints a very incomplete picture. Thank you for this and all the other videos you produce!
people pay for a couple pieces of the puzzle and careless omission of the full story in a "class"? That's like paying for a whole car and only getting the wheels and frame. gross.
I read the I Ching when I was a young child and read the Tao in high school. I worked for a tibetan family that escaped china, then vietnam and eventually came to MN and opened a restaurant. That restaurant still exists in Mpls. It's name is Rainbow Chinese Restaurant. I love your channel. Thank you for producing and sharing and I hope many people will reference your work in scholarly papers.
@@DK-yz9xk the entire planet is under the spell of Capitalism. We're all slaves to each other. We have the entirety of all human knowledge at our fingertips, yet this is the best we can do.
Your explanation is wonderful!!! I do not know why you get so hate in the comments. "Decolonized" herr means clearly that you are trying to give the chinese understanding of it (instead of the New Age one).
I've been told by multiple independent friends that my views align with Taoism and I am finally feeling esoterically moved to look into it more as I feel my mind is open and willing and desiring enough to hear it with no judgment. I am very grateful for this video, thank you for making it.
My friend, you've discovered a treasure. As a Chinese person, I can confidently say that the 'Dao' (Tao) is the most essential part of our ancient civilization! The Dao is a complete and systematic form of science. Yes, you could see it as an ancient Chinese scientific system that operates independently from modern science, and it is entirely different. While the foundation of modern science is mathematics, the underlying logic of the Dao consists of symbols like the 'Heavenly Stems,' 'Earthly Branches,' 'Five Elements,' and 'Eight Trigrams.' These symbols form the basis for traditional Chinese medicine, health practices, and feng shui. The most fascinating part is that the Dao can give you the power to predict the future! Six years ago, I learned a method called 'Bazi' (the Eight Characters), which is just one of many applications of the Dao. By knowing someone's birth year, month, day, and hour, I can determine part of their past and future. The method involves using the symbols I mentioned to calculate this information. It might sound unbelievable, but it's real!
As I listen to your explanations, I feel the weight of many centuries' understanding in every new concept. It is a joy to stumble across a new academic subject and a new way of thinking. I know it will take many rewatches to fully follow everything you have discussed, but I have learned so much from even the few things i have understood. Excellent video and excellent dissemination of academic and philosophical knowledge! Thank you
Glad to see someone who actually knows what the original text says about Taoism rather than a westerner who has only ever read translations or is working from other translations to make their own “translation”! Taoism has always seemed to me like a very interesting religious/philosophical movement and viewpoint, less harsh than Buddhist non-attachment, which is very hard to put into practice.
I really appreciate your commentaries. A teacher once told me, "The true magic of Tao is found between Wuji and Taiji." From limitlessness to polarity. As you explain, connecting Heaven and Earth is the essence of the Tao; therefore, being the foundation of both Shamanism and martial arts neigong/qigong. The 1 is the limitlessness, which immediately becomes 2 as soon as a limited 1 forms boundaries/limits for itself (1 and not-1) within that limitlessness. This is the classic philosophical expression of Nothing being Something, or "2 Shen born together that become Yin and Yang." The subconscious mind arises ("Heaven," that which is heaved up) from the dead sleep of unconsciousness, and seeks self-identity to "solidify" itself as something powerful. This is the pure Yang, a Something that is Nothing, arising form the chaotic Mother of all Things, or Nothing that is Something. This is how Yang became associated as "solid," or better described as "consistent/unchanging." Yin, however, is described as being fluidly changing, or unformed, yet she manifests in all forms once yang reunites to give her ever-changing nature a direction by which to make ANY form. This is explained in the first 2 verses of Genesis; [1] "In the beginning cycle of expansion (B'reishit...Big Bang), the powers (Elohim..."Qi") shaped (bara...bar means "son of" which suggests birthing as giving shape to a form) the Heavens and the Earth." There are multiple Heavens, but only 1 earth, who is "void without form." [2] "Ruach hovered like a bird over the Deep." The ruach is the Holy Spirit, that power passed down in forms through the maternal genetics, which is why to be a natural born Jew your mother must be a Jew. Yet, it is this power of consciousness (the fire within the wind) that the earth, after the segregation, is apparently lacking which keeps her formless and chaotically confused...thus, unable to produce any form, since as she moves toward any form she is perpetually distracted toward another form. This is the psychological state known in Buddhist meditation as "Monkey Mind," and characterized as the Stone Monkey King in the Chinese epic, A Journey West. The ruach hovering is the state of Nirvana, "No Wagon," where the mind is "outside" its physical vessel, leaving an empty shell below. Such a state is often assumed to be positive, typical of gaining the Sky View of clear insight (Vipashyana/Vipassana) during meditative practice. It can, however, also be negative as during a traumatic event where the mind escapes the suffering experienced by the shell of the body. This apparent segregation is an illusion, though. Spiritual practice reminds us that reunion is the cornerstone of solving the chaotic suffering in polarity where the opposing ends of a single pole appear to be 2 separate things. Like a thread holds several pearls together in one single necklace, the word Tantra means "continuous weave," as if 1 thread weaves the entire fabric of Life into a beautiful tapestry. Religion literally means "re-link," as -ligion gives rise to the word ligament as well. Heaven, the primal "Father," appears so far away from the Earth where "we" live that the dead ancestors are used as messengers through which we living here may connect. This is how ancestor worship developed across the very ancient world. Shaman can be derived from Sanskrit Sham-an (connecting spirit) as a shaman reconnects the spirits of sick people with themselves, or connects to the spirit of a sacrificial animal in order to ride it like a horse to a particular place/hall in Heaven. This is why calling any sacrificial animal a "horse" became common across the ancient world. A water-horse, therefore, could well be the turtle sacrifice in the Fuxi story of the Bagua/Luoshu. A highly interesting correlation is the Etruscan hippocampus, or water horse that a priest must conquer to ride across the river between living and dying. Norse Sleipnir is the 8-legged horse that is the only one who can ride across the river to the dead and return. The mandala is like a magical shield and the Bagua is an early expression of that cosmological paradigm of 8x3=24 that is also found in the earliest Runic order in the Germanic expression of letters which they received from Etruscans. The most common order of runes, however, has 16, and not 24, which I believe expresses the Etruscan cosmology which was a 16 "sliced pie" shape and they were the divination masters of the early Iron Age. 16 is also important in Bagua practice, as your pictographs here show the 2 arrangements relating to form the 64 Hexagrams of the Yi Jing. Obviously, I'm fascinated with the common cosmological consistencies/homogeny within Bronze Age cultures through a shamanic priesthood, which was apparently dominated by women before men took over in temple based urbanization coming out in the Neolithic revolutions from nomadism toward settled agriculture. When I can afford to splurge on myself again I will surely be buying your books, because your videos are full of gems for my studies.
Wow, very informative comment. Your description of Ying and Yang reminds me of wave-particle duality, which is a proven physical property of our world. Ying being like a continuous wave function, while Yang being a discrete partical state.
It has been a while since the big bang was widely accepted as the best explanation by the scientific community, you should hold off on the equivalences between philosophies, meanings and such when all you have are disconnected words.
@@BygoneT yet, it’s still taught 🤔. I’m not wrong, and even if you’re completely correct…my point is still true. Scientists did, in fact, ALWAYS (until quite recently) claimed the Big Bang theory as theirs. The appropriation pattern is still historically true. So your criticism is pretty useless.
Benebell, I so appreciate you sharing your vast knowledge with us ~ this is the first time I've heard such a comprehensive lecture on the historical basis for the Tao cosmology and its relationship to subsequent schools of thought. I have your first book on I Ching but not the latest one ~ and love that you are doing these instruction videos to help us out! We are lucky to get benefit of your years of study and experience of all the topics you have such an obvious grasp of and competence in, so many thanks for generously making this content, your books, and your decks for us! It's very generous of you. Really really appreciate it!
I learned about Tao from a wise Sensei in martial arts as a child, part of training was philosophical, part meditation, stretches, exercise, and kata. Thank you for this detailed elaboration on some of these more esoteric concepts. As a child I knew magic was real, the process of learning has been more like an intense remembering of times when I was unburdened by the past, and thought not of the future.
That was also my path to knowledge. Martial Arts, and a wise teacher. It sparked the quest for the philosophical, religious, and practical, in one martial flame. That has become a conflagration.
@@shannondavis3686 I thought as I was posting "I bet others have shared this experienced this as well" it is good to know that there are "Johnny Appleseed's" of wisdom so to speak, sowing the seeds needed to yield the fruits long after their passing.
@@addp4 he asked to be referred to as Sensei, which is just one who came before you. To honor their skills. I was in a Korean Kang Soo Do. Which shares a lot with Japanese Karate
Thank you Benebell for providing these teachings in English 💜 I'm so grateful for your well researched resources allowing Asian Americans like myself to study more from reputable sources without the language limitations
What a wonderful video! I am an American trained in analytic philosophy, but when I read the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu many, many years ago, they blew my mind. I could perceive that there was a whole world of cultural context there that I could only dimly perceive. The more I learn about this context, the more my appreciation of those texts grows!
The line about "seeking the same thing through different lenses" struck me. As did the parts about how syncretic beliefs are part of Taoism, then seeing that brilliantly simple illustration of _Taoist Religion_ and _Taoist Philosophy_ reconciled as simply _Taoist beliefs_ has really got my wheels turning. I guess I literally needed someone to spell it out it for me, and in animated text no less, for me to finally get it. Regrettably, I've kinda been a jerk about some of this stuff towards some people at times. I'll be definitely be more mindful from now on. Tldr; This video was as enlightening as it was informative. A serious deep-dive. Just so much to like about the content. So glad I clicked.
Such amazing work constructing this. As a spiritualist and a buddhist, prayer isn't something I do often, but I pray now for you and your family, ma'am. I feel led here - many roads have felt like shadowed footprints lately, following along and just trying to find success. Thank you for the video :3
This is probably one of the most thorough taoist presentation in English? I am a follower of taoism, buddhism, and Confucianism from hong kong, and i have been practising i Ching for more than a decade. Perhaps she should include 黄帝四經 ( four books of yellow emperor) for reference too when she talks about 黄老?
This video was absolutely AMAZING! I resonated so much with every word you were saying, and I was becoming increasingly happy to see how much my natural feelings about existence were being affirmed and reflected by these spiritual understandings for so very many years 😄. This is such a beautiful multitude of ways to understand reality and it makes me just so happy to know how many paths of exploration have been taken with this as the core root or core exploration 😄. The essence of it all. I love it! Thank you for your research and sharing such great information! 🥰
One of my father’s friends gave me a copy of IChing when I was seven. I read it cover to cover and some of it seemed familiar. Now at age 51, here I am again, recognizing that the Tao has been a primary guiding philosophy of my life🌈
This was magnificent for my purposes. I am writing an anthropology treatise, and this gave me all the direction in the world that I needed for what to read and reference. And I look forward to gobbling up your coverage of those six sages. Having only read the Daodejing that was a magical enough experience for me to begin with. Cascades of pieces falling into place in every religion I've studied. When you read that the Dao is older than god, it shakes you when you see how numerology is underneath all of the archetypes, they couldn't be more right about psychology. It's wild, and I'm salivating now over the prospect of the shamanic esoterics. Wondering how good Daoist psychotherapy is!
So grateful to find this - and your channel! It's easy finding scholars on western esotericism, but I had a hard time finding videos like this (detailed and honest ones, at least). I'll have to check out your books :)
6:04 is multiplicity an real (e.g everything has a distinct/discrete existence) or illusory (e.g. emergent from Tao and fundamentally the same) in Taoism, then? This brings Plato’s Theory of Forms to mind, but this is obviously a distinct tradition and this line makes me question my current understanding. I had previously thought that Taoism was nondual and, thus, every “thing” was a different expression of the Tao; another eddy current in a Cosmic River.
Your words are concisely comprehensive to the point of poetry. What a fantastic overview of our endeavor to understand the ineffable. Please keep inspiring and may fortune shine upon you. ☀️
As someone with a large background in mathematical sciences, the idea of a "dao" presented near the beginning is quite appealing - it suggests the common concept used of a process connecting an initial state and a final state, i.e. a sequence of steps or transformations by which one can be converted into the other. Hence "Daoism" would be the study of all such processes by which one thing can become another. It is also interesting under this to note how that this would _include_ then today's "western" science as a _type_ of Daoism: it is that which seeks to find the _most reliable_ process, the one which is _most assured_ to convert or transform A into B. This doesn't necessarily mean though, that it is the "most correct" path - just the most assured one, so the one you should use when that assurance is important. Something like shamanic process (wu dao, the Dao of the SHAMAN) is not necessarily as reliable to causation, but it has other things it provides - it is more "negotiative" in that it sees nature as an active agent (animism): note that a scientific process will, without suitable indirection, often provide a destructive or harmful means c.f. eco destruction nowadays. It will reliably effect the transformation, but it may bring on costs. And thus the way I see it is the ideal combination of them is that science determines the efficacy of different methods, while Shamanism provides what the constraints are under which that is to be done, by the creative interplay of the human spirit and nature's spirit to set them out. That is to say, a Shaman who is well in tune with "nature's spirits" would sense "these rocks do not want to be moved". Then, instead of challenging this by a "scientific" criterion (e.g. "how can rocks 'want' ..." instead of just considering this as a metaphysical dimension that is also awarded its own ontological merit), we first assess its worth on Shamanic criteria, and if it passes, we then input back _to_ science this as not a path but a _constraint,_ that those rocks must not move, and then use science to calculate another path that tries to avoid them while still being the most likely causally effective _given this new constraint._ Note that such a path may be longer, slower, etc. than the original, but then those become necessary burdens to be shouldered. Or to put still another way, we have "Hume's guillotine", which is the idea that you cannot reason from an "is" to an "ought". Thus we need two sciences, not one - one of "is"es, and one of "oughts", and Shamanism is the _observational_ method of "oughts" in the way that science is the _observational_ method of "ises". And then the two work together, one describing the is that most efficaciously serves the ought while the ought both constraints and enables the pursuit of ises. As an example, consider building a telescope atop Mauna Kea, which was a famous controversy some time back. We would have that science first says "to most effectively observe the stars, place a telescope atop this mountain because it has much less atmosphere above it to cloud your view". But then Shamanism steps in to tell us to hesitate and points out risked costs and issues, both material and non-material, for doing so. We would or _should_ then ask science again, given this newfound constraint that such and such damages should try to be avoided, can we a) still place a telescope atop Mauna Kea, and if so b) what else needs to change given the new constraint, like the path to achieving it, the time required, etc. c) and if not, i.e. no building the telescope by any means, then can we achieve the goal with the same resources invested differently? And then when a new conclusion comes out, we once _more_ apply Shamanism again to answer the "should" of this new best-effective path, then the new constraints are added or updated, and science is run again to obtain the new most likely method. And then we go back and forth like this until agreement i sreached. It may be that science then ends up telling us there is no way to achieve it under these constraints - in that case, the project is dropped, and we consider that Shamanism has led us to the moral conclusion it is not worth the cost to pursue. In this regard, with both working together, we succumb to neither pathology of an exclusive approach - whether that is expecting more out of a magic ritual than is reasonable (e.g. replacing using antibiotics with a ritual), _or_ simply crunching along with "science" to arbitrary ends and causing serious harm to living beings, human, nonhuman or both, as in the modern "secular" economy.
Really appreciate this! Had a big lifestyle change recently and looking at religion again with an open heart, and Taoism is really speaking to me. A lot of what I'm finding is naturally in english and from a western perspective. This was really informative for rounding out a lot of context I was missing in an accessible way, thank you very much!
Great video. Worth 1000 hours of studying books for "westener" interested in Tao. Thanks a lot from Poland. My conclusion: A minute of practice is better than reading for an hour. Tao is everywhere. 🙏☯️🌞
This might be a dumb reason to learn about this subject, but I recently really got into Xianxia/Wuxia novels and hearing the origin of a lot of these concepts is maing me appreciate those stories even more.
Just wanted to say I recently discovered your channel---just today---and your thoughtful and dedicated insights on these topics is so so refreshing!! I'm an Irish-Catholic born and raised, but I think the teachings of the Tao are absolutely beautiful, and I'm in awe of them every time I hear about them. Thank you for taking so much time to break these concepts down from a more localized perspective, as the field is replete with biased literature and studies. You're doing wonderful work Benebell Wen!
My brain melted to goo watching/listening to this. It just means I have so much more to learn. Thank you for taking to the time to explain this. I will look to learn more from you and your videos.
So info-packed it made my head hurt, but it was a delightful agony. Thank you, wise and charming lady from the East. Do you know the works of Eva Wong, Fabrizio Pregadio and Jerry Alan Johnson? I regard them as good, but are they really?
Hi thanks for your teachings❤❤❤ but I am confused! You said Dao is the interaction between yin and yang....how is it possible ?? In Dao De Jing we read that Dao created one(wu ji) and one created two(tai ji)....and tai ji is perfect balance of yin and yang....so ???
I am struck in your explanations by similarities to western occult practices/beliefs (although the western are much younger and less well-documented). The yin/yang, inner/outer dichotomy is reminiscent of the "as above, so below" core tenet of many esoteric/occult belief systems. It is fascinating to me that cultures as different in time and place as ancient china and medieval europe would arrive at similar beliefs about reality, life, and the nature of the world. thank you for this most illuminating lecture!
As a student of the Ageless Wisdom teachings, I have been lacking in my studies of Taoism for some time. I’m very excited to discover your channel and greatly appreciate your method of teaching. I also appreciate your pronunciation of Yang, as it is “the way” I have always been comfortable with and believed I was hearing it mispronounced in the west often 🙏❤️
6:00 That's basically platonism. Also, a lot here with a vibe of Heraclitus or neoplatonism (the one = dao). Never heard of the concept of trinity in taoism before. A lot to digest there, thank you for a detailed introduction!
Thank you for connecting me with my heritage, as always. Very informative and my draw to these practices the way it happened makes so much sense within this context.
Thank You for your tireless work and your mission to share this timeless wisdom of ancient Occult esoteric knowledge of China. Wisdom is wealth Wisdom is worth more than silver; it makes you much richer than gold. Wisdom is more valuable than precious jewels; nothing you want compares with her. In her right hand Wisdom holds a long life, and in her left hand are wealth and honor.
I hope one day, that you will discuss Lu Dong Bin's Southern School of Complete Reality and it's aspect of Wuji Xian T'ian (Before Heaven). I apologize for my lack of tonal marks.
Interesting from so many perspectives. For example, I never heard of Huang-Lao political philosophy. I always thought of Confucianism as dealing with social issues, and Taoism as metaphysics. For me, Taoist politics just meant the anarchic individualism of hermits and ordinary people, for whom "the emperor is far" and they're just getting on with their lives. But at 15:00 you present this chain of being, Heaven to Earth to States to People. It's very thought-provoking and maybe there's even an echo in Xi Jinping's modern slogan of harmony? Another moment for me was 10:00, since the translations were reminding me of the mythology of Er Gen's popular web-novel "I Shall Seal the Heavens". It's a cultivation novel and, besides being full of all kinds of "Tao", it specifically has five figures in it which are rendered in English as God, Ghost, Devil, Demon, and Immortal.
If you're not familiar with the Hermetic Principles then I have listed them below. It's origins date back to ancient Egypt and the god Thoth around the 2nd millennia BC, then later in Greece with Hermes Trismagistus. Today seen as the teachings of the occult and the freemasons, following satan but this is largely miss information by the Christian empire builders. There are also many similarities with Taoist and Hindu teachings. There is speculation, confirmed partly by DNA, that black north Africans were the original tribes of Egypt and the Kermit people, they had migrated across the Eurasian continent to share their knowledge far and wide. India is also considered the mother of religion, so not sure which represents the historical truth. We live in a fascinating world with many hidden gems, I'm grateful to Taoism and Tai Chi for showing me the way to truth. Principle of Mentalism - The all is mind - The universe is mental Principle of Correspondence - As above so below - As below so above Principle of Vibration - Nothing rests - Everything moves - Everything vibrates Principle of Polarity - Everything is dual - Everything has poles - Everything has its pair of opposites. - Opposites are identical in nature with differing degree. - Extremes meet - All truths are but half truths. - All parodixes may be reconciled Principle of Rhythm - Everything floats out and in - Everything has its tides, all things rise and fall - The pendulum swing manifests in everything - The measure of the swing to the left is the measure of the swing to the right. - Rhythm compensates Principle of Cause and Effect - Every cause has its effect - Every effect has its cause - Everything happens according to law - Chance is but a law not recognised - There are many planes of causation - Nothing escapes the law Principle of Gender - Gender is in everything - Everything has its masculine and its feminine principles - Gender manifests on all planes
to me it seems that if one point in time buddhism was known as "the tao" in that it was moving away from self-interested attachment and desire to the worldly, then to go back to that by re-adopting traditionalist rituals and self-interested philosophies seems kinda anti-tao to me.
In the video you said that objects have a true name and true form. Is this similar to Plato idea of forms? For instance a stone on earth corresponds to a more perfect version of itself in a higher spiritual realm?
Not quite the same. Forget more or less perfect; higher or lower, or even spiritual realms. With Taoism it's referring to what is true and real, versus what is merely humanity's limited minds creating our own reflection or conceptualization of that which is ultimately cosmically true and real. The Word that can be Worded is not the Eternal Word. That means before we can frame a thing in our minds, that thing itself is there, untouched, and unmarred, and by uttering it, we necessarily obscure some aspect of it. What we can describe or think or create, can never quite be the true whole of something that is or can be.
If we stop using certain words because they have been used in a particular way by other people we will have no words left to use, which, of course, is what is desired by anti-intellectualism at large
I love this. I always mention this concerning the James Legge and Richard Wilhelm translations of different texts. However, The Thomas Cleary translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower is excellent, in my opinion. He's obviously a real practitioner of Taoism and has experiential understanding.
This is comprehensive for a half hour video. Very impressive. On the other hand, I don't understand how it is "decolonized" or whether that term is meaningful here. Do you mean that "Western" enlightenment thinking refuted what might be called the "folkloric," "magical," aspects in favour of a rationalist approach? And wasn't that already happening in China? Finally, wouldn't a rationalist v. magical dualism be yet another version of the Tao, another mode of uniting binaries?
Thankyou. Yes, I get that but I think the word “”decolonizing” obscures that. It’s a useful word in many contexts. It’s also a buzzword. Colonialism in the context of China has a long history and the British version of it is just one of the more recent chapters. One might argue that in trying to summarize and synthesize so many different meanings of Daoism in this video she is taking a syncretic approach that ignores how the many different conquering peoples that make up what this vast agglomeration of what China is today have changed Daoism each in their own way, the author of this video is actually doing her own version of New Age-ism. And this is my problem with the use of the word , colonialism, in the title. In the current zeitgeist it means something very specific. Euro-American universalising of a specific practice or complex set of practices and philosophies / spiritual wisdoms.
@@alexlazaridisf.7276 名可名，非常名-- any name that can be named is never the Eternal name It's a deeply important truth but maybe more now than ever. "Decolonization" is definitely a buzzword--it's probably why the algorithm promoted this video. But we shouldn't let that override her message, of a look at the Chinese approach to Daoism explained in English.
Thank you for making such informative videos! I just received my copy of I Ching The Oracle and I am excited to go through your videos again with the book so I can follow along. Thanks again, I've been fascinated by your lessons.
Awesome! Can do one decommunisted one too? A more recent and more horrendous destruction of TMA, TCM Chi Gun and Taoist ideas than any prior colonialization. Thanks!
I am into Taoism, its practices and philosophy. I love the metaphysics but stay away from ancestor or any kind of worship of a human, spirit, or witch craft. I am interested in spiritual transformation but stay away from the magical arts. Maybe someday when I understand them more I may change my mind. I am actually curious but do now want to mess myself up any worse then I already am 😊
There is not much Sage/Saint in modern sociaty thats why worshiping fellow human beings Getting smaller, even if there is Sage/Saint, the information will be diluted by large amount of false mix of truth information on the internet. the most known human through this days who is still get worship by people is Jesus and Buddha and that is still only in the surface cause a lot of Christian is careerist and used their religion to support their career, and Buddha monk Getting smaller cause now have a lot of quick pleasure thing now a days. Actually they don't need to be worshipped, what we need is acceptance, what we need to actually do is become like them, following the principle of what they do to be in harmony, cause this is responsibility of intellegent creature to be leader of all things, lead animal, plant, fellow human, and enviroment to better future and harmony.
I'm sorry, but your language does not seem right to me. This seems more to be daoism through a Western occult lense. Daoist principles, in my opinion, do not fit into these very narrow viewpoints. You do seem to understand much, but your English translations are not great. Its important not to westernize or dilute teaching
@@DontpaymenomineI went to Wudangshan and had a nice chat with a store owner about Daoism. She said I would never be able to fully understand daoism unless I learnt Chinese… I said you will never be able to teach me daoism unless you learn better English. We laughed and drank some tea. No point in that story, just wanted to share.
Wow! You are so amazing, I had no idea how ignorant I was and still am regarding the Tao. This is so deep I feel like I could study this philosophy for a hundred years and still not grasp it. there is fear too, because I know that every belief system can be miss understood miss applied and wrongly grasped. It's a dangerous thing to be alive, many many pitfalls put in place by those who came before me to obscure the path. One thing I'm sure of is that I can be fooled. I have been fooled many times. I don't feel good about that, but nevertheless it's true. Magicians are not to be trifled with.
From a philosophical principle perspective, I guess everything is theoretically the Tao whether it wants to be or not. 😂 But orthodox lineaged Taoists will get really narrow with how they define the Tao, and even argue with each other about who is right and who is wrong. Funnier yet is which textual basis do you place greater importance on? The Tao Te Ching or the texts you've cherry-picked from the Taoist Canons? 🙃 Personally I live comfortably with that "interaction or engagement between yin and yang" line definition of the Tao and let everybody interpret it as they will. 💖🙏
Another incredible lesson! As far as the Syncretic sense of Dao, I feel so strongly that the "Al a carte" model is so relevant and such a great point in the video. As an American Daoist I feel it is important to understand the lineage of these concepts but the "seed" (philosophies of the Yellow River Peoples) has taken root in new soil (all over the planet, but most notably in N America) and can take on a new character based on natural sciences perspective as well as shedding impurities from the past. Let's face it the "Dao" refers to the Grand Ultimate Nature of the Universe as a whole, not regional to one part of earth. I would be curious to know what others think about that.
Greek logos means speech, speaking. I believe the "in the beginning was the word" is one of a myriad of mistranslations making the modern bible almost incomprehensible. Tao means path way speaking. So logos was correctly translated. The tao teh ching striikes me as a far more ancient shamanuc tradition finally written. The legend of the work being put to writing when Lao Tse was passing through a mountain guard station I suspect is a reference to the act of finalky transcribing the far more ancient teachings. But like all serious spiritual texts it serves as a pointer to help seekers avoid error and to cross the river. Ch'an was simply the merging of pragmatic Taoist methods and the more flowery Buddhist sutras trickling into China and other regions at the time from India. The proof is in the pudding however. As a manual it is meant to be used. The Secret of the Golden Flower is also an extremely useful manual. If you're looking for intellectual understanding of course you've made a navigation error. People love the byways, always a trap.
I read that in ancient days, Tao could be used to mean method. To, that says it best: Tao is a how, not a where.But I am at a very beginner level of study.
I did get into the I Ching for awhile but I never really understood it so I stopped 20 years ago and never picked up my book again. I have one of the old traditional I Chings but do not understand at all the terminology in it.
Noted : text number (2) probably what you really looking for, but understanding number (1) will help you understand it more easily. The I Ching is a system. The subsequent software, programs, and text content were continuously filled in by generations of sages, and only then did we have the vast culture we have today. The I Ching is wisdom, not knowledge, knowledge Will be eliminated, but wisdom will not, so The I Ching never get out of style. Let's Dig deep into the history first before asking why this books doesn't work? Why did King Wen of Zhou perform the sixty-four hexagrams and was hailed as a saint? Because during the Zhou Dynasty, there was a major update of the Book of Changes! Society is always changing, and the core idea of the I Ching is change, so of course we must keep pace with the times. During the Zhou Dynasty, society was much more complex than before. King Wen of Zhou found that the Shang Dynasty's Guizang Yi was no longer applicable, so he evolved it to a higher level. He evolved the eight trigrams into sixty-four hexagrams, and between the two hexagrams, a number of three hundred and sixty can be calculated! The social conditions of the Zhou Dynasty can be fully included. The result was good... The I Ching has never evolved since the Zhou Dynasty. At most, sages from various dynasties and generations have successively added countless 'annotations', and extended data packages have been added. Various patches have been applied, but at best the difference between I Ching 2.1 and I Ching 2.2 is better than that of the sages of the past generations who did not develop I Ching 3.0. This leads to the fact that the more modern times, the farther away people are from the Book of Changes. Let’s take divination as an example. Let me digress here. The I Ching can be used for divination, but it is not just for divination. It's a big system that can be used for everything. Those who say it is just feudal superstition are completely misled and take it for granted. It's like a computer can be used to play games, but does it exist just for playing games? Saying that the I Ching is just a divination book is even more ridiculous than saying that a computer can only play games! (1) Back to the topic, let’s take divination as an example. Why are there not many divination masters now? In other words, why do many people calculate poorly? Quite simply, times have changed. How complex is modern society? Industrialization, commercialization, various races, various countries, and various ideologies are much more complicated than during the Zhou Dynasty! However, the I Ching was still King Wen of Zhou's version, which was out of date, so the role of divination and calculation became even more useless. If divination is to be of great use in modern society, it is necessary to create [The 512 Hexagrams of the Book of Changes]! That is, Bagua multiplies Bagua multiplies Bagua...together with five hundred and twelve hexagrams. This system should be able to manage for tens of thousands of years. But it is so vast that it cannot be completed without a saint or sage. (2) Therefore, the divination function of the I Ching is indeed declining now. How can a system from three thousand years ago be considered a society in the 21st century? If someone tells you, 'I am a master of the Book of Changes, I know a set of ancient methods, which are Zhuge Liang's algorithms back then. I am astounding and can tell fortunes very accurately! ' OK, this must be a liar! First of all, the ancient method is outdated! Still using Zhuge Liang’s algorithm, was there live broadcasting in Zhuge Liang’s era? Is there a nuclear bomb? Have aerospace technology? Why do I always advocate that the older the people, the weaker, and the later, the better? This is what the I Ching taught me. The core of the I Ching is change. It is a 'super system of adaptive evolution'. Which I-Ching master would use Kong Ming's algorithm? This directly violates the basic laws of the I Ching! Under the banner of the I Ching, doing anti-Yijing things, what else is this but a liar? The entire Book of Changes tells others not to do inappropriate things! Otherwise, you will be crushed by the wheels of time! So I tell you very responsibly that if you want to give divination to others in modern times, you must create your own! (3)
In addition, the second big mistake in the above sentence is that 'fortune telling is extremely accurate'. This sentence itself is very un-change/un-yijing. The I Ching clearly expresses that one’s destiny cannot be calculated! Since ancient times, there has only been 'divination' but not 'fortune-telling'. These are two concepts. The destiny of the country can be calculated, and big concepts can be deduced, but it is impossible to calculate a person's life! The core of the I Ching is 'uncertainty'. When measured, it changes. Does it look familiar to you? Yes, in physics this is the uncertainty principle of quantum. Similarly, the world is a chaotic system, with countless causal variables perturbing, and it is impossible to calculate it accurately. Those who can accurately calculate this are called immortals/Sage/Saints in Taoism. The four great powers in the domain are: Tao cannot be known, heaven cannot be described, earth cannot be grasped, and people cannot be counted. Since the Book of Changes has made it clear to the world, it is impossible to predict. Why do you still need divination? Doesn't it make sense? No, it definitely makes sense. Divination in the Book of Changes uses images to guide people's choices. How people choose and how they act are their business. Divination only tells people what will happen if they choose A, what will happen if they choose B, and what will happen if they choose C. There are hundreds of millions of paths in life, and it is useless to predict that a certain path will have good results, but people just don't do it, or don't do it well. What's more, just because the divination indicates that something will be very bad, it doesn't mean that you will definitely die if you do it. You may also get good results. Because there is also the 'escaping one' (human that escaped from his inevitable fate in calculated possibility) and the 'unknowable number (possibility that you have not calculated happen)'. In the thinking of the Book of Changes, it is difficult to change the general trend, but it is difficult to change the small things. In the general situation, nature will definitely teach you how to be a human being, but in the small things, man can conquer nature. (4) This is like quantum mechanics, 'calculation' and 'modification' cannot be achieved at the same time. Any calculation of a lifetime must be inaccurate. Because the moment it was calculated, the universe changed. Let's put it simply, for example before you calculate there is 100 possibilities but after calculated that 100 possibilities, universe change and more possibilities that you don't know appear. Therefore, divination only guides life and helps people improve their morality and career. However, in terms of the general trend of the country, it is possible to divine and predict. The focus is on prediction, not divination... This is why in ancient times such as the Shang Dynasty, diviners were first-level civil servants who were in charge of the country. If the Shang Dynasty wanted to go to war, it must be divination first, and a group of ruling officials and other nobles would do the divination together. To put it bluntly, a group of people deducing this matter are equivalent to modern analysts and national think tank staff! (5) Do you really think the ancients only looked at probability? But it’s not that simple. Some parts are really mysterious and even more awesome than science. It took me so many years of research to get a glimpse of the mystery. In short, if any liar talks about secret methods passed down from ancient times or claims that he can tell fortunes, you can refute him. But don’t regard the Book of Changes as superstitious. People are superstitious, not books. The three principles of Yili are: change, simplicity, and difficulty. Which one is not the avenue of the universe? Times are always changing, but there is the only constant thing, and the truly unchanged thing is the simplest. Isn’t this also the ultimate truth pursued in science? Its characteristics are these three. As for whether human beings can pursue it, it is still early. First, we must cultivate our virtues. To put it bluntly, we must first ensure that we can survive. (6)
@@K.I.N.G.69 I guess you didn’t read what I actually wrote. I said i did not understand the I Ching so i quit using it. That was pretty much all. If I knew how to use it and understood it I would use it. I also never said fortune wasn’t accurate so that was the first mistake you made in your sentence was not reading what I actually said. So what is the first mistake in my sentence. And stop making mistakes 👎 You also made the mistake of stating i said it didn’t make sense, I never said that, I said I didn’t understand it. Now let me explain, I was new to Taoism and the I Ching and I didn’t have a qualified teacher or anyone I knew to explain it to me, so i did not understand it, and I still do not understand it. It’s like trying to learn a new subject you have no prior knowledge of.
@@noself7889you don't read my argument do you? i never said you are the one who said "divination is not accure" because i said it myself in my comment using perspective of liar who said want to trick me using divination.
@@noself7889i never intend to offend you, if you see my full comment cronologicly, i never used word with intention to attack or somekind of offending way, i just wanna share my viewpoint about I Ching, is good for you if you get new information from my comment, but is also okay if you don't appreciate it. But why suddenly you seems offended? I never offend you, and pls don't fabricate my word and makes it looks like that word intent to attack anyone. I know i used a lot of word so you don't want to read all of them, but my word never intented to do evil or even do malicious to you. This is so wrong using my word thats not even have full context about the real meaning like my original comment, to deny or atleast undermine my point of view, please correct your attitude and try to not be skeptic and view people as if they have evil intention.
It should be noted that the first Christians didn't called themselves Christians. They called themselves The Way. 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Acts 9.2
This was beautiful! I really appreciate the time, effort and love you placed in this. This religion has been in and out of my life as thought fate or the Dao itself had hinted it would be where I ended up in my spiritual quest from Christianity to Gnosticism, Stoicism, Nihilism, Buddhism, Taoism and Brahmanism. It's also the only spiritual bracelet that I have that has never broken lol the taoist bracelet and my Buddhist bracelets last the longest and my Christian bracelets last the least. Its actually reminiscing of my quest and perhaps another hint. I am learning Mandarin now so that I can read more text untranslated and I really appreciate people like you bringing this to me where I would never have been able to read it as a mere guy from America. Sucks I have no relation to the yellow emperor lol I am mixed with many things predominantly central American, Indian, and Caribbean Africans but no Asian in my recent heritage. Oh well, that just means I need to focus harder on the Dao lol
I want to thank you so very deeply Benebell. Your thoroughly authentic educational material on Chinese occultism is fantastic has helped me to settle somewhere I feel much more secure after a long time spiritually wandering. I have landed in Buddhism, but the things I've learned about Daoism thorugh your books and videos have also made a deep impact in my practice. Best wishes to you and thank you enormously once again. ☯🙏🏻☸
Im curious, so when u hwyt pipo learn about Asian culture do u suddenly feel less demonic or do u guys still feel innately hateful and wish harm towards other races? 🤔
This puts together how aspects, ideas, and traditions, together I noticed seemed to overlap. So Krawley just showed how witchcraft and Asian religions/😮traditions went togethwr already? Or just Toast beliefs? Just curious. ❤❤❤ Thank you so much!
Tao formalism and compartmentalization helps the neophyte to get a grasp of a reality that is actually integral, that is 'One-ness'. And as one becomes more attuned to Tao, there is no separation, no human-made distinctness, where All is One. Haha, what do i know, i am just making shit up, paraphrasing that one who said the same - though that was a good threading of seemingly different departments knowledge.
Wow so interesting that the Taoism is in and surrounds everything including Logos. You are so knowledgeable, thank you for sharing your insights master teacher.
I love your videos and books! Just a constructive feedback: I think it is important, especifically when talking about decolonization, that we adopt BCE/CE to replace BC/AD in a way to get some distance from colonizing christianity.
thank you so much for this video. It's really a comprehensive explanation on to what really is Taoism, and not only the "philosophy" that it so much talked about and praised in schools and online. This is divination, magic practices, connecting with spirits, occultism/alchemy. Where does this knowledge come from? The spirit world. It is very dangerous to dabble into these things... Our only God tells us this
Thanks for the video! I’ll have to watch it a couple of times. My first impression was that Taoism seems to be so fluid and all-encompassing. I wondered if that’s because everyone taps into the Tao and gives the same essence a form. Forms differ so it’s warning that we can’t cling too much to the correctness of a form (even though it’s the first way we start to grasp the essence), but need to pay more attention to the essence it expresses. In short, it describes an essence that can and can’t be captured. Am I making sense? 😅
I don't have words to display my gratitude to this presentation. It has taken me 12 days to make notes, process the information, cross reference with my other studies, watch, rewind and repeat. Your work and conduct is second to none. Thank you.
Finally! It is so difficult to find detailed, comprehensive first-hand information about Daoism in the languages I speak. There are good, even university grade courses, but they almost exclusively talk about the Dao De Ging and Zhuang Tse, and focus only on the philosophical aspects, which paints a very incomplete picture. Thank you for this and all the other videos you produce!
people pay for a couple pieces of the puzzle and careless omission of the full story in a "class"?
That's like paying for a whole car and only getting the wheels and frame. gross.
I read the I Ching when I was a young child and read the Tao in high school. I worked for a tibetan family that escaped china, then vietnam and eventually came to MN and opened a restaurant. That restaurant still exists in Mpls. It's name is Rainbow Chinese Restaurant. I love your channel. Thank you for producing and sharing and I hope many people will reference your work in scholarly papers.
Awesome. I used to live like 4 blocks from there by the Waldorf school. I know I went to Rainbow once or twice.
No disrespect that meant that you worked for a family or a class of Tibetans that used to own serfs, and enslaved their own people
@@DK-yz9xk the entire planet is under the spell of Capitalism. We're all slaves to each other. We have the entirety of all human knowledge at our fingertips, yet this is the best we can do.
@@DK-yz9xkbecause chinese never oppressed no one! Lol!
@@DK-yz9xk CCP sowing discord as usual.
I will have to listen to this video many times; there is so much information here. And it is all presented with clarity and focus. Much appreciated.
I couldn't agree more
Your explanation is wonderful!!! I do not know why you get so hate in the comments.
"Decolonized" herr means clearly that you are trying to give the chinese understanding of it (instead of the New Age one).
I've been told by multiple independent friends that my views align with Taoism and I am finally feeling esoterically moved to look into it more as I feel my mind is open and willing and desiring enough to hear it with no judgment. I am very grateful for this video, thank you for making it.
My friend, you've discovered a treasure. As a Chinese person, I can confidently say that the 'Dao' (Tao) is the most essential part of our ancient civilization! The Dao is a complete and systematic form of science. Yes, you could see it as an ancient Chinese scientific system that operates independently from modern science, and it is entirely different. While the foundation of modern science is mathematics, the underlying logic of the Dao consists of symbols like the 'Heavenly Stems,' 'Earthly Branches,' 'Five Elements,' and 'Eight Trigrams.' These symbols form the basis for traditional Chinese medicine, health practices, and feng shui.
The most fascinating part is that the Dao can give you the power to predict the future! Six years ago, I learned a method called 'Bazi' (the Eight Characters), which is just one of many applications of the Dao. By knowing someone's birth year, month, day, and hour, I can determine part of their past and future. The method involves using the symbols I mentioned to calculate this information. It might sound unbelievable, but it's real!
As I listen to your explanations, I feel the weight of many centuries' understanding in every new concept. It is a joy to stumble across a new academic subject and a new way of thinking.
I know it will take many rewatches to fully follow everything you have discussed, but I have learned so much from even the few things i have understood.
Excellent video and excellent dissemination of academic and philosophical knowledge! Thank you
What a series of videos you've put out, Benebell! They are absolutely fantasticly informative, and at the same time they carry so much soul.
Glad to see someone who actually knows what the original text says about Taoism rather than a westerner who has only ever read translations or is working from other translations to make their own “translation”! Taoism has always seemed to me like a very interesting religious/philosophical movement and viewpoint, less harsh than Buddhist non-attachment, which is very hard to put into practice.
I really appreciate your commentaries. A teacher once told me, "The true magic of Tao is found between Wuji and Taiji." From limitlessness to polarity. As you explain, connecting Heaven and Earth is the essence of the Tao; therefore, being the foundation of both Shamanism and martial arts neigong/qigong. The 1 is the limitlessness, which immediately becomes 2 as soon as a limited 1 forms boundaries/limits for itself (1 and not-1) within that limitlessness. This is the classic philosophical expression of Nothing being Something, or "2 Shen born together that become Yin and Yang." The subconscious mind arises ("Heaven," that which is heaved up) from the dead sleep of unconsciousness, and seeks self-identity to "solidify" itself as something powerful. This is the pure Yang, a Something that is Nothing, arising form the chaotic Mother of all Things, or Nothing that is Something. This is how Yang became associated as "solid," or better described as "consistent/unchanging." Yin, however, is described as being fluidly changing, or unformed, yet she manifests in all forms once yang reunites to give her ever-changing nature a direction by which to make ANY form.
This is explained in the first 2 verses of Genesis; [1] "In the beginning cycle of expansion (B'reishit...Big Bang), the powers (Elohim..."Qi") shaped (bara...bar means "son of" which suggests birthing as giving shape to a form) the Heavens and the Earth." There are multiple Heavens, but only 1 earth, who is "void without form." [2] "Ruach hovered like a bird over the Deep." The ruach is the Holy Spirit, that power passed down in forms through the maternal genetics, which is why to be a natural born Jew your mother must be a Jew. Yet, it is this power of consciousness (the fire within the wind) that the earth, after the segregation, is apparently lacking which keeps her formless and chaotically confused...thus, unable to produce any form, since as she moves toward any form she is perpetually distracted toward another form. This is the psychological state known in Buddhist meditation as "Monkey Mind," and characterized as the Stone Monkey King in the Chinese epic, A Journey West. The ruach hovering is the state of Nirvana, "No Wagon," where the mind is "outside" its physical vessel, leaving an empty shell below. Such a state is often assumed to be positive, typical of gaining the Sky View of clear insight (Vipashyana/Vipassana) during meditative practice. It can, however, also be negative as during a traumatic event where the mind escapes the suffering experienced by the shell of the body.
This apparent segregation is an illusion, though. Spiritual practice reminds us that reunion is the cornerstone of solving the chaotic suffering in polarity where the opposing ends of a single pole appear to be 2 separate things. Like a thread holds several pearls together in one single necklace, the word Tantra means "continuous weave," as if 1 thread weaves the entire fabric of Life into a beautiful tapestry. Religion literally means "re-link," as -ligion gives rise to the word ligament as well. Heaven, the primal "Father," appears so far away from the Earth where "we" live that the dead ancestors are used as messengers through which we living here may connect. This is how ancestor worship developed across the very ancient world. Shaman can be derived from Sanskrit Sham-an (connecting spirit) as a shaman reconnects the spirits of sick people with themselves, or connects to the spirit of a sacrificial animal in order to ride it like a horse to a particular place/hall in Heaven. This is why calling any sacrificial animal a "horse" became common across the ancient world. A water-horse, therefore, could well be the turtle sacrifice in the Fuxi story of the Bagua/Luoshu. A highly interesting correlation is the Etruscan hippocampus, or water horse that a priest must conquer to ride across the river between living and dying. Norse Sleipnir is the 8-legged horse that is the only one who can ride across the river to the dead and return. The mandala is like a magical shield and the Bagua is an early expression of that cosmological paradigm of 8x3=24 that is also found in the earliest Runic order in the Germanic expression of letters which they received from Etruscans. The most common order of runes, however, has 16, and not 24, which I believe expresses the Etruscan cosmology which was a 16 "sliced pie" shape and they were the divination masters of the early Iron Age. 16 is also important in Bagua practice, as your pictographs here show the 2 arrangements relating to form the 64 Hexagrams of the Yi Jing.
Obviously, I'm fascinated with the common cosmological consistencies/homogeny within Bronze Age cultures through a shamanic priesthood, which was apparently dominated by women before men took over in temple based urbanization coming out in the Neolithic revolutions from nomadism toward settled agriculture. When I can afford to splurge on myself again I will surely be buying your books, because your videos are full of gems for my studies.
Wow, very informative comment. Your description of Ying and Yang reminds me of wave-particle duality, which is a proven physical property of our world. Ying being like a continuous wave function, while Yang being a discrete partical state.
It has been a while since the big bang was widely accepted as the best explanation by the scientific community, you should hold off on the equivalences between philosophies, meanings and such when all you have are disconnected words.
@@BygoneT yet, it’s still taught 🤔. I’m not wrong, and even if you’re completely correct…my point is still true. Scientists did, in fact, ALWAYS (until quite recently) claimed the Big Bang theory as theirs. The appropriation pattern is still historically true.
So your criticism is pretty useless.
And yet it is not this
@@Peppers_mintus and yet, it is at the same time…just not ONLY this.
Benebell, I so appreciate you sharing your vast knowledge with us ~ this is the first time I've heard such a comprehensive lecture on the historical basis for the Tao cosmology and its relationship to subsequent schools of thought. I have your first book on I Ching but not the latest one ~ and love that you are doing these instruction videos to help us out! We are lucky to get benefit of your years of study and experience of all the topics you have such an obvious grasp of and competence in, so many thanks for generously making this content, your books, and your decks for us! It's very generous of you. Really really appreciate it!
docwhammo She is literally Durga Ma.
docwhammo Wow, that's great to know! So much great history! Thanks for the comment!
Collab with esoterica would be legendary
I learned about Tao from a wise Sensei in martial arts as a child, part of training was philosophical, part meditation, stretches, exercise, and kata. Thank you for this detailed elaboration on some of these more esoteric concepts. As a child I knew magic was real, the process of learning has been more like an intense remembering of times when I was unburdened by the past, and thought not of the future.
That was also my path to knowledge. Martial Arts, and a wise teacher. It sparked the quest for the philosophical, religious, and practical, in one martial flame. That has become a conflagration.
@@shannondavis3686 I thought as I was posting "I bet others have shared this experienced this as well" it is good to know that there are "Johnny Appleseed's" of wisdom so to speak, sowing the seeds needed to yield the fruits long after their passing.
A sensei or a shifu? “Sensei” is the Japanese term and “shifu” (from 師傅/师傅) is the Chinese.
@@addp4 he asked to be referred to as Sensei, which is just one who came before you. To honor their skills. I was in a Korean Kang Soo Do. Which shares a lot with Japanese Karate
@@addp4 he taught us verse 31 of Tao te ching as one of the first lessons in class
Seriously the most underrated channel on youtube
Thank you Benebell for providing these teachings in English 💜 I'm so grateful for your well researched resources allowing Asian Americans like myself to study more from reputable sources without the language limitations
The True Name concept at 6:05 reminds me a lot of Plato's forms. Anyone know the subtle differences between the two?
its the same mistake, same miss step on a different hill
What a wonderful video! I am an American trained in analytic philosophy, but when I read the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu many, many years ago, they blew my mind. I could perceive that there was a whole world of cultural context there that I could only dimly perceive. The more I learn about this context, the more my appreciation of those texts grows!
The line about "seeking the same thing through different lenses" struck me. As did the parts about how syncretic beliefs are part of Taoism, then seeing that brilliantly simple illustration of _Taoist Religion_ and _Taoist Philosophy_ reconciled as simply _Taoist beliefs_ has really got my wheels turning. I guess I literally needed someone to spell it out it for me, and in animated text no less, for me to finally get it. Regrettably, I've kinda been a jerk about some of this stuff towards some people at times. I'll be definitely be more mindful from now on.
Tldr; This video was as enlightening as it was informative. A serious deep-dive. Just so much to like about the content. So glad I clicked.
Such amazing work constructing this. As a spiritualist and a buddhist, prayer isn't something I do often, but I pray now for you and your family, ma'am. I feel led here - many roads have felt like shadowed footprints lately, following along and just trying to find success. Thank you for the video :3
This is probably one of the most thorough taoist presentation in English? I am a follower of taoism, buddhism, and Confucianism from hong kong, and i have been practising i Ching for more than a decade. Perhaps she should include 黄帝四經 ( four books of yellow emperor) for reference too when she talks about 黄老?
Thanks!
Thank you so much for your generosity! 💝
This is the explanation I've been looking for over the last 25 years. Thank you so much!
This video was absolutely AMAZING! I resonated so much with every word you were saying, and I was becoming increasingly happy to see how much my natural feelings about existence were being affirmed and reflected by these spiritual understandings for so very many years 😄. This is such a beautiful multitude of ways to understand reality and it makes me just so happy to know how many paths of exploration have been taken with this as the core root or core exploration 😄. The essence of it all.
I love it! Thank you for your research and sharing such great information! 🥰
One of my father’s friends gave me a copy of IChing when I was seven. I read it cover to cover and some of it seemed familiar. Now at age 51, here I am again, recognizing that the Tao has been a primary guiding philosophy of my life🌈
a kindred spirit indeed
This was magnificent for my purposes. I am writing an anthropology treatise, and this gave me all the direction in the world that I needed for what to read and reference.
And I look forward to gobbling up your coverage of those six sages. Having only read the Daodejing that was a magical enough experience for me to begin with. Cascades of pieces falling into place in every religion I've studied. When you read that the Dao is older than god, it shakes you when you see how numerology is underneath all of the archetypes, they couldn't be more right about psychology.
It's wild, and I'm salivating now over the prospect of the shamanic esoterics. Wondering how good Daoist psychotherapy is!
So grateful to find this - and your channel! It's easy finding scholars on western esotericism, but I had a hard time finding videos like this (detailed and honest ones, at least). I'll have to check out your books :)
6:04 is multiplicity an real (e.g everything has a distinct/discrete existence) or illusory (e.g. emergent from Tao and fundamentally the same) in Taoism, then? This brings Plato’s Theory of Forms to mind, but this is obviously a distinct tradition and this line makes me question my current understanding. I had previously thought that Taoism was nondual and, thus, every “thing” was a different expression of the Tao; another eddy current in a Cosmic River.
Your words are concisely comprehensive to the point of poetry. What a fantastic overview of our endeavor to understand the ineffable. Please keep inspiring and may fortune shine upon you. ☀️
As someone with a large background in mathematical sciences, the idea of a "dao" presented near the beginning is quite appealing - it suggests the common concept used of a process connecting an initial state and a final state, i.e. a sequence of steps or transformations by which one can be converted into the other. Hence "Daoism" would be the study of all such processes by which one thing can become another. It is also interesting under this to note how that this would _include_ then today's "western" science as a _type_ of Daoism: it is that which seeks to find the _most reliable_ process, the one which is _most assured_ to convert or transform A into B. This doesn't necessarily mean though, that it is the "most correct" path - just the most assured one, so the one you should use when that assurance is important. Something like shamanic process (wu dao, the Dao of the SHAMAN) is not necessarily as reliable to causation, but it has other things it provides - it is more "negotiative" in that it sees nature as an active agent (animism): note that a scientific process will, without suitable indirection, often provide a destructive or harmful means c.f. eco destruction nowadays. It will reliably effect the transformation, but it may bring on costs.
And thus the way I see it is the ideal combination of them is that science determines the efficacy of different methods, while Shamanism provides what the constraints are under which that is to be done, by the creative interplay of the human spirit and nature's spirit to set them out. That is to say, a Shaman who is well in tune with "nature's spirits" would sense "these rocks do not want to be moved". Then, instead of challenging this by a "scientific" criterion (e.g. "how can rocks 'want' ..." instead of just considering this as a metaphysical dimension that is also awarded its own ontological merit), we first assess its worth on Shamanic criteria, and if it passes, we then input back _to_ science this as not a path but a _constraint,_ that those rocks must not move, and then use science to calculate another path that tries to avoid them while still being the most likely causally effective _given this new constraint._ Note that such a path may be longer, slower, etc. than the original, but then those become necessary burdens to be shouldered. Or to put still another way, we have "Hume's guillotine", which is the idea that you cannot reason from an "is" to an "ought". Thus we need two sciences, not one - one of "is"es, and one of "oughts", and Shamanism is the _observational_ method of "oughts" in the way that science is the _observational_ method of "ises". And then the two work together, one describing the is that most efficaciously serves the ought while the ought both constraints and enables the pursuit of ises.
As an example, consider building a telescope atop Mauna Kea, which was a famous controversy some time back. We would have that science first says "to most effectively observe the stars, place a telescope atop this mountain because it has much less atmosphere above it to cloud your view". But then Shamanism steps in to tell us to hesitate and points out risked costs and issues, both material and non-material, for doing so. We would or _should_ then ask science again, given this newfound constraint that such and such damages should try to be avoided, can we a) still place a telescope atop Mauna Kea, and if so b) what else needs to change given the new constraint, like the path to achieving it, the time required, etc. c) and if not, i.e. no building the telescope by any means, then can we achieve the goal with the same resources invested differently? And then when a new conclusion comes out, we once _more_ apply Shamanism again to answer the "should" of this new best-effective path, then the new constraints are added or updated, and science is run again to obtain the new most likely method. And then we go back and forth like this until agreement i sreached. It may be that science then ends up telling us there is no way to achieve it under these constraints - in that case, the project is dropped, and we consider that Shamanism has led us to the moral conclusion it is not worth the cost to pursue.
In this regard, with both working together, we succumb to neither pathology of an exclusive approach - whether that is expecting more out of a magic ritual than is reasonable (e.g. replacing using antibiotics with a ritual), _or_ simply crunching along with "science" to arbitrary ends and causing serious harm to living beings, human, nonhuman or both, as in the modern "secular" economy.
Balance arises from the interactions that form discernment so beautiful for itself.
Really appreciate this! Had a big lifestyle change recently and looking at religion again with an open heart, and Taoism is really speaking to me. A lot of what I'm finding is naturally in english and from a western perspective. This was really informative for rounding out a lot of context I was missing in an accessible way, thank you very much!
Great video. Worth 1000 hours of studying books for "westener" interested in Tao. Thanks a lot from Poland.
My conclusion: A minute of practice is better than reading for an hour. Tao is everywhere. 🙏☯️🌞
I don’t mind sharing Asian culture but hwyt pipo are mostly evil and only want to hate or cause harm to others
Greetings from your neighbor Slovakia. :D Yes, it is. I can say it from my own personal experiences.
@@zoltanfabiansk5795 hello! 🌞☯️🙏
Curiously, Polish & “Mandarin” Chinese use at least 1 consonant in common.Chinese xi, xy + Polish
z+!?which??diacritical mark.
@@samaval9920 it wiłl be "zi" like in polish "zima" - more soft
And "ź" like in polish "źródło" shorter and sharper a bit
Thoughts on Nei-Yeh?
This might be a dumb reason to learn about this subject, but I recently really got into Xianxia/Wuxia novels and hearing the origin of a lot of these concepts is maing me appreciate those stories even more.
Just wanted to say I recently discovered your channel---just today---and your thoughtful and dedicated insights on these topics is so so refreshing!! I'm an Irish-Catholic born and raised, but I think the teachings of the Tao are absolutely beautiful, and I'm in awe of them every time I hear about them. Thank you for taking so much time to break these concepts down from a more localized perspective, as the field is replete with biased literature and studies. You're doing wonderful work Benebell Wen!
Thank you so much!
thank you so much for this, you put in so much effort for it and is much appreciated. I love that you included all the sorcery type information too.
One thing that always gets me is that Western “Daoists” freak out if you mention gods, spirits, prayers, or other texts besides the Dao De Jing.
Not all of us
@@DevonHberman-im6bx glad to hear, and hope the number on grows!
My brain melted to goo watching/listening to this. It just means I have so much more to learn. Thank you for taking to the time to explain this. I will look to learn more from you and your videos.
So info-packed it made my head hurt, but it was a delightful agony. Thank you, wise and charming lady from the East.
Do you know the works of Eva Wong, Fabrizio Pregadio and Jerry Alan Johnson? I regard them as good, but are they really?
Through these last few years on a great divine timing you have been with me so powerfulkly. So thank you much Great Lady!
5:00 , can you kindly guide me the source about collective libertarian.
This was an incredible video, and I can only appreciate the time and dedication put into this.
Hi thanks for your teachings❤❤❤ but I am confused!
You said Dao is the interaction between yin and yang....how is it possible ??
In Dao De Jing we read that Dao created one(wu ji) and one created two(tai ji)....and tai ji is perfect balance of yin and yang....so ???
0.75x speed require. great work, just what i was looking for.
Same, I always have to slow down benebel's videos 😊❤
I see so much influence by the Tao constantly and it's constantly changing.
What do you see?
I am struck in your explanations by similarities to western occult practices/beliefs (although the western are much younger and less well-documented). The yin/yang, inner/outer dichotomy is reminiscent of the "as above, so below" core tenet of many esoteric/occult belief systems. It is fascinating to me that cultures as different in time and place as ancient china and medieval europe would arrive at similar beliefs about reality, life, and the nature of the world. thank you for this most illuminating lecture!
Looking forward to the Six Ancestral Sage Kings video! This video has been fantastic so far, thank you so much for making it!
I'm such a fan of your content! Such a gift to be able to hear this info in translation - thanks x 100 🎊
As a student of the Ageless Wisdom teachings, I have been lacking in my studies of Taoism for some time. I’m very excited to discover your channel and greatly appreciate your method of teaching. I also appreciate your pronunciation of Yang, as it is “the way” I have always been comfortable with and believed I was hearing it mispronounced in the west often 🙏❤️
Hi Benebell! Could you do a Video on Confucianism? Is it still popular today? Or it’s Taoism more popular?
10:13 I wonder since english is mainly latin, could you find the latin definitions for the missing words and then create a new english word?
English is not mostly latin at all. 😂
6:00 That's basically platonism. Also, a lot here with a vibe of Heraclitus or neoplatonism (the one = dao). Never heard of the concept of trinity in taoism before. A lot to digest there, thank you for a detailed introduction!
Glad to have found this channel, what a wealth of knowledge! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for connecting me with my heritage, as always. Very informative and my draw to these practices the way it happened makes so much sense within this context.
I'm so very glad to hear. Thank you!
Thank You for your tireless work and your mission to share this timeless wisdom of ancient Occult esoteric knowledge of China. Wisdom is wealth
Wisdom is worth more than silver; it makes you much richer than gold. Wisdom is more valuable than precious jewels; nothing you want compares with her. In her right hand Wisdom holds a long life, and in her left hand are wealth and honor.
Where does Sunda or Sundar fit into this? I hope I spelled it correctly
Please write a book on Taoism ,meditation ,meridians, etc...
I hope one day, that you will discuss Lu Dong Bin's Southern School of Complete Reality and it's aspect of Wuji Xian T'ian (Before Heaven). I apologize for my lack of tonal marks.
Interesting from so many perspectives. For example, I never heard of Huang-Lao political philosophy. I always thought of Confucianism as dealing with social issues, and Taoism as metaphysics. For me, Taoist politics just meant the anarchic individualism of hermits and ordinary people, for whom "the emperor is far" and they're just getting on with their lives. But at 15:00 you present this chain of being, Heaven to Earth to States to People. It's very thought-provoking and maybe there's even an echo in Xi Jinping's modern slogan of harmony?
Another moment for me was 10:00, since the translations were reminding me of the mythology of Er Gen's popular web-novel "I Shall Seal the Heavens". It's a cultivation novel and, besides being full of all kinds of "Tao", it specifically has five figures in it which are rendered in English as God, Ghost, Devil, Demon, and Immortal.
If you're not familiar with the Hermetic Principles then I have listed them below. It's origins date back to ancient Egypt and the god Thoth around the 2nd millennia BC, then later in Greece with Hermes Trismagistus. Today seen as the teachings of the occult and the freemasons, following satan but this is largely miss information by the Christian empire builders. There are also many similarities with Taoist and Hindu teachings. There is speculation, confirmed partly by DNA, that black north Africans were the original tribes of Egypt and the Kermit people, they had migrated across the Eurasian continent to share their knowledge far and wide. India is also considered the mother of religion, so not sure which represents the historical truth.
We live in a fascinating world with many hidden gems, I'm grateful to Taoism and Tai Chi for showing me the way to truth.
Principle of Mentalism
- The all is mind
- The universe is mental
Principle of Correspondence
- As above so below
- As below so above
Principle of Vibration
- Nothing rests
- Everything moves
- Everything vibrates
Principle of Polarity
- Everything is dual
- Everything has poles
- Everything has its pair of opposites.
- Opposites are identical in nature with differing degree.
- Extremes meet
- All truths are but half truths.
- All parodixes may be reconciled
Principle of Rhythm
- Everything floats out and in
- Everything has its tides, all things rise and fall
- The pendulum swing manifests in everything
- The measure of the swing to the left is the measure of the swing to the right.
- Rhythm compensates
Principle of Cause and Effect
- Every cause has its effect
- Every effect has its cause
- Everything happens according to law
- Chance is but a law not recognised
- There are many planes of causation
- Nothing escapes the law
Principle of Gender
- Gender is in everything
- Everything has its masculine and its feminine principles
- Gender manifests on all planes
Thanks!
I'm sure she is, she speaks on ceremonial magick in other videos
Do you have any thoughts on Chuang-Tzu and the significance of the book attributed to him in the Taoist tradition?
to me it seems that if one point in time buddhism was known as "the tao" in that it was moving away from self-interested attachment and desire to the worldly, then to go back to that by re-adopting traditionalist rituals and self-interested philosophies seems kinda anti-tao to me.
In the video you said that objects have a true name and true form. Is this similar to Plato idea of forms? For instance a stone on earth corresponds to a more perfect version of itself in a higher spiritual realm?
Not quite the same. Forget more or less perfect; higher or lower, or even spiritual realms. With Taoism it's referring to what is true and real, versus what is merely humanity's limited minds creating our own reflection or conceptualization of that which is ultimately cosmically true and real. The Word that can be Worded is not the Eternal Word. That means before we can frame a thing in our minds, that thing itself is there, untouched, and unmarred, and by uttering it, we necessarily obscure some aspect of it. What we can describe or think or create, can never quite be the true whole of something that is or can be.
Do you have a source list? Beyond prior videos?
Excellent video though the title seems divisive considering how the word ‘decolonized’ has been used in recent years.
If we stop using certain words because they have been used in a particular way by other people we will have no words left to use, which, of course, is what is desired by anti-intellectualism at large
I agree ‘woke mind virus’ is a more accurate word
I love this. I always mention this concerning the James Legge and Richard Wilhelm translations of different texts. However, The Thomas Cleary translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower is excellent, in my opinion. He's obviously a real practitioner of Taoism and has experiential understanding.
have u ever made a video about or touched on fusang?
This is comprehensive for a half hour video. Very impressive. On the other hand, I don't understand how it is "decolonized" or whether that term is meaningful here. Do you mean that "Western" enlightenment thinking refuted what might be called the "folkloric," "magical," aspects in favour of a rationalist approach? And wasn't that already happening in China? Finally, wouldn't a rationalist v. magical dualism be yet another version of the Tao, another mode of uniting binaries?
She means she is trying to portray a "chinese" understanding of taoism, instead of a "New Age" understanding of it.
Thankyou. Yes, I get that but I think the word “”decolonizing” obscures that. It’s a useful word in many contexts. It’s also a buzzword. Colonialism in the context of China has a long history and the British version of it is just one of the more recent chapters. One might argue that in trying to summarize and synthesize so many different meanings of Daoism in this video she is taking a syncretic approach that ignores how the many different conquering peoples that make up what this vast agglomeration of what China is today have changed Daoism each in their own way, the author of this video is actually doing her own version of New Age-ism. And this is my problem with the use of the word , colonialism, in the title. In the current zeitgeist it means something very specific. Euro-American universalising of a specific practice or complex set of practices and philosophies / spiritual wisdoms.
@@alexlazaridisf.7276 名可名，非常名-- any name that can be named is never the Eternal name
It's a deeply important truth but maybe more now than ever. "Decolonization" is definitely a buzzword--it's probably why the algorithm promoted this video. But we shouldn't let that override her message, of a look at the Chinese approach to Daoism explained in English.
Good point
Cool, thank you. Where are you based?
And here I thought that the Tao that could be named was not the true Tao...
YOU SASS
Thank you for making such informative videos! I just received my copy of I Ching The Oracle and I am excited to go through your videos again with the book so I can follow along. Thanks again, I've been fascinated by your lessons.
Awesome! Can do one decommunisted one too? A more recent and more horrendous destruction of TMA, TCM Chi Gun and Taoist ideas than any prior colonialization. Thanks!
Translation of 'unknown' symbols @10:00 Earthly (Earth bound, long story) Immortal and generic Immortal.
I am into Taoism, its practices and philosophy. I love the metaphysics but stay away from ancestor or any kind of worship of a human, spirit, or witch craft. I am interested in spiritual transformation but stay away from the magical arts. Maybe someday when I understand them more I may change my mind. I am actually curious but do now want to mess myself up any worse then I already am 😊
There is not much Sage/Saint in modern sociaty thats why worshiping fellow human beings Getting smaller, even if there is Sage/Saint, the information will be diluted by large amount of false mix of truth information on the internet. the most known human through this days who is still get worship by people is Jesus and Buddha and that is still only in the surface cause a lot of Christian is careerist and used their religion to support their career, and Buddha monk Getting smaller cause now have a lot of quick pleasure thing now a days.
Actually they don't need to be worshipped, what we need is acceptance, what we need to actually do is become like them, following the principle of what they do to be in harmony, cause this is responsibility of intellegent creature to be leader of all things, lead animal, plant, fellow human, and enviroment to better future and harmony.
I'm sorry, but your language does not seem right to me. This seems more to be daoism through a Western occult lense. Daoist principles, in my opinion, do not fit into these very narrow viewpoints. You do seem to understand much, but your English translations are not great. Its important not to westernize or dilute teaching
So you could say it's a "colonized" "decolonized"daoism video?
@@DontpaymenomineI went to Wudangshan and had a nice chat with a store owner about Daoism. She said I would never be able to fully understand daoism unless I learnt Chinese… I said you will never be able to teach me daoism unless you learn better English. We laughed and drank some tea. No point in that story, just wanted to share.
Sounds like the conclusion of a would-be koan.
Well yeah in "Daoism" there is also occultism yes just like how you understand proper western occultism
Wow! You are so amazing, I had no idea how ignorant I was and still am regarding the Tao. This is so deep I feel like I could study this philosophy for a hundred years and still not grasp it. there is fear too, because I know that every belief system can be miss understood miss applied and wrongly grasped. It's a dangerous thing to be alive, many many pitfalls put in place by those who came before me to obscure the path. One thing I'm sure of is that I can be fooled. I have been fooled many times. I don't feel good about that, but nevertheless it's true. Magicians are not to be trifled with.
I'm so happy I discovered your channel! Holistic Tarot is my fav book on tarot :)
What’s not the Dao and why?
From a philosophical principle perspective, I guess everything is theoretically the Tao whether it wants to be or not. 😂
But orthodox lineaged Taoists will get really narrow with how they define the Tao, and even argue with each other about who is right and who is wrong. Funnier yet is which textual basis do you place greater importance on? The Tao Te Ching or the texts you've cherry-picked from the Taoist Canons? 🙃
Personally I live comfortably with that "interaction or engagement between yin and yang" line definition of the Tao and let everybody interpret it as they will. 💖🙏
@@BenebellWen and also not, I won't elaborate
Another incredible lesson!
As far as the Syncretic sense of Dao, I feel so strongly that the "Al a carte" model is so relevant and such a great point in the video. As an American Daoist I feel it is important to understand the lineage of these concepts but the "seed" (philosophies of the Yellow River Peoples) has taken root in new soil (all over the planet, but most notably in N America) and can take on a new character based on natural sciences perspective as well as shedding impurities from the past. Let's face it the "Dao" refers to the Grand Ultimate Nature of the Universe as a whole, not regional to one part of earth. I would be curious to know what others think about that.
Your videos are so informative and well organized. This is a great way to get an overview before researching deeper. Thank you.
Greek logos means speech, speaking. I believe the "in the beginning was the word" is one of a myriad of mistranslations making the modern bible almost incomprehensible. Tao means path way speaking. So logos was correctly translated.
The tao teh ching striikes me as a far more ancient shamanuc tradition finally written. The legend of the work being put to writing when Lao Tse was passing through a mountain guard station I suspect is a reference to the act of finalky transcribing the far more ancient teachings.
But like all serious spiritual texts it serves as a pointer to help seekers avoid error and to cross the river.
Ch'an was simply the merging of pragmatic Taoist methods and the more flowery Buddhist sutras trickling into China and other regions at the time from India.
The proof is in the pudding however. As a manual it is meant to be used.
The Secret of the Golden Flower is also an extremely useful manual.
If you're looking for intellectual understanding of course you've made a navigation error. People love the byways, always a trap.
You spoke about your mother, but how about you? Did you inherit that ability or do you have some own experiences? Thanks
Ohhh thank you for doing this !! appreciate it so much!
I read that in ancient days, Tao could be used to mean method. To, that says it best: Tao is a how, not a where.But I am at a very beginner level of study.
What about Fu Xi and the turtle shell???
I did get into the I Ching for awhile but I never really understood it so I stopped 20 years ago and never picked up my book again. I have one of the old traditional I Chings but do not understand at all the terminology in it.
Noted : text number (2) probably what you really looking for, but understanding number (1) will help you understand it more easily.
The I Ching is a system. The subsequent software, programs, and text content were continuously filled in by generations of sages, and only then did we have the vast culture we have today.
The I Ching is wisdom, not knowledge, knowledge Will be eliminated, but wisdom will not, so The I Ching never get out of style.
Let's Dig deep into the history first before asking why this books doesn't work?
Why did King Wen of Zhou perform the sixty-four hexagrams and was hailed as a saint?
Because during the Zhou Dynasty, there was a major update of the Book of Changes!
Society is always changing, and the core idea of the I Ching is change, so of course we must keep pace with the times.
During the Zhou Dynasty, society was much more complex than before. King Wen of Zhou found that the Shang Dynasty's Guizang Yi was no longer applicable, so he evolved it to a higher level.
He evolved the eight trigrams into sixty-four hexagrams, and between the two hexagrams, a number of three hundred and sixty can be calculated!
The social conditions of the Zhou Dynasty can be fully included.
The result was good... The I Ching has never evolved since the Zhou Dynasty.
At most, sages from various dynasties and generations have successively added countless 'annotations', and extended data packages have been added.
Various patches have been applied, but at best the difference between I Ching 2.1 and I Ching 2.2 is better than that of the sages of the past generations who did not develop I Ching 3.0.
This leads to the fact that the more modern times, the farther away people are from the Book of Changes.
Let’s take divination as an example. Let me digress here. The I Ching can be used for divination, but it is not just for divination.
It's a big system that can be used for everything. Those who say it is just feudal superstition are completely misled and take it for granted.
It's like a computer can be used to play games, but does it exist just for playing games?
Saying that the I Ching is just a divination book is even more ridiculous than saying that a computer can only play games! (1)
Back to the topic, let’s take divination as an example. Why are there not many divination masters now? In other words, why do many people calculate poorly?
Quite simply, times have changed.
How complex is modern society? Industrialization, commercialization, various races, various countries, and various ideologies are much more complicated than during the Zhou Dynasty!
However, the I Ching was still King Wen of Zhou's version, which was out of date, so the role of divination and calculation became even more useless.
If divination is to be of great use in modern society, it is necessary to create [The 512 Hexagrams of the Book of Changes]!
That is, Bagua multiplies Bagua multiplies Bagua...together with five hundred and twelve hexagrams.
This system should be able to manage for tens of thousands of years.
But it is so vast that it cannot be completed without a saint or sage. (2)
Therefore, the divination function of the I Ching is indeed declining now. How can a system from three thousand years ago be considered a society in the 21st century?
If someone tells you, 'I am a master of the Book of Changes, I know a set of ancient methods, which are Zhuge Liang's algorithms back then. I am astounding and can tell fortunes very accurately! '
OK, this must be a liar!
First of all, the ancient method is outdated! Still using Zhuge Liang’s algorithm, was there live broadcasting in Zhuge Liang’s era? Is there a nuclear bomb? Have aerospace technology?
Why do I always advocate that the older the people, the weaker, and the later, the better?
This is what the I Ching taught me. The core of the I Ching is change. It is a 'super system of adaptive evolution'.
Which I-Ching master would use Kong Ming's algorithm? This directly violates the basic laws of the I Ching!
Under the banner of the I Ching, doing anti-Yijing things, what else is this but a liar?
The entire Book of Changes tells others not to do inappropriate things! Otherwise, you will be crushed by the wheels of time!
So I tell you very responsibly that if you want to give divination to others in modern times, you must create your own! (3)
In addition, the second big mistake in the above sentence is that 'fortune telling is extremely accurate'.
This sentence itself is very un-change/un-yijing.
The I Ching clearly expresses that one’s destiny cannot be calculated! Since ancient times, there has only been 'divination' but not 'fortune-telling'.
These are two concepts. The destiny of the country can be calculated, and big concepts can be deduced, but it is impossible to calculate a person's life!
The core of the I Ching is 'uncertainty'. When measured, it changes.
Does it look familiar to you? Yes, in physics this is the uncertainty principle of quantum.
Similarly, the world is a chaotic system, with countless causal variables perturbing, and it is impossible to calculate it accurately.
Those who can accurately calculate this are called immortals/Sage/Saints in Taoism.
The four great powers in the domain are: Tao cannot be known, heaven cannot be described, earth cannot be grasped, and people cannot be counted.
Since the Book of Changes has made it clear to the world, it is impossible to predict. Why do you still need divination? Doesn't it make sense?
No, it definitely makes sense. Divination in the Book of Changes uses images to guide people's choices.
How people choose and how they act are their business.
Divination only tells people what will happen if they choose A, what will happen if they choose B, and what will happen if they choose C.
There are hundreds of millions of paths in life, and it is useless to predict that a certain path will have good results, but people just don't do it, or don't do it well.
What's more, just because the divination indicates that something will be very bad, it doesn't mean that you will definitely die if you do it. You may also get good results.
Because there is also the 'escaping one' (human that escaped from his inevitable fate in calculated possibility) and the 'unknowable number (possibility that you have not calculated happen)'.
In the thinking of the Book of Changes, it is difficult to change the general trend, but it is difficult to change the small things. In the general situation, nature will definitely teach you how to be a human being, but in the small things, man can conquer nature. (4)
This is like quantum mechanics, 'calculation' and 'modification' cannot be achieved at the same time.
Any calculation of a lifetime must be inaccurate. Because the moment it was calculated, the universe changed.
Let's put it simply, for example before you calculate there is 100 possibilities but after calculated that 100 possibilities, universe change and more possibilities that you don't know appear.
Therefore, divination only guides life and helps people improve their morality and career. However, in terms of the general trend of the country, it is possible to divine and predict. The focus is on prediction, not divination... This is why in ancient times such as the Shang Dynasty, diviners were first-level civil servants who were in charge of the country.
If the Shang Dynasty wanted to go to war, it must be divination first, and a group of ruling officials and other nobles would do the divination together.
To put it bluntly, a group of people deducing this matter are equivalent to modern analysts and national think tank staff! (5)
Do you really think the ancients only looked at probability?
But it’s not that simple. Some parts are really mysterious and even more awesome than science.
It took me so many years of research to get a glimpse of the mystery.
In short, if any liar talks about secret methods passed down from ancient times or claims that he can tell fortunes, you can refute him.
But don’t regard the Book of Changes as superstitious. People are superstitious, not books.
The three principles of Yili are: change, simplicity, and difficulty.
Which one is not the avenue of the universe? Times are always changing, but there is the only constant thing, and the truly unchanged thing is the simplest.
Isn’t this also the ultimate truth pursued in science? Its characteristics are these three.
As for whether human beings can pursue it, it is still early. First, we must cultivate our virtues. To put it bluntly, we must first ensure that we can survive. (6)
@@K.I.N.G.69 I guess you didn’t read what I actually wrote. I said i did not understand the I Ching so i quit using it. That was pretty much all. If I knew how to use it and understood it I would use it. I also never said fortune wasn’t accurate so that was the first mistake you made in your sentence was not reading what I actually said. So what is the first mistake in my sentence. And stop making mistakes 👎 You also made the mistake of stating i said it didn’t make sense, I never said that, I said I didn’t understand it. Now let me explain, I was new to Taoism and the I Ching and I didn’t have a qualified teacher or anyone I knew to explain it to me, so i did not understand it, and I still do not understand it. It’s like trying to learn a new subject you have no prior knowledge of.
@@noself7889you don't read my argument do you? i never said you are the one who said "divination is not accure" because i said it myself in my comment using perspective of liar who said want to trick me using divination.
@@noself7889i never intend to offend you, if you see my full comment cronologicly, i never used word with intention to attack or somekind of offending way, i just wanna share my viewpoint about I Ching, is good for you if you get new information from my comment, but is also okay if you don't appreciate it.
But why suddenly you seems offended? I never offend you, and pls don't fabricate my word and makes it looks like that word intent to attack anyone. I know i used a lot of word so you don't want to read all of them, but my word never intented to do evil or even do malicious to you.
This is so wrong using my word thats not even have full context about the real meaning like my original comment, to deny or atleast undermine my point of view, please correct your attitude and try to not be skeptic and view people as if they have evil intention.
It should be noted that the first Christians didn't called themselves Christians. They called themselves The Way.
2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Acts 9.2
This was beautiful! I really appreciate the time, effort and love you placed in this. This religion has been in and out of my life as thought fate or the Dao itself had hinted it would be where I ended up in my spiritual quest from Christianity to Gnosticism, Stoicism, Nihilism, Buddhism, Taoism and Brahmanism. It's also the only spiritual bracelet that I have that has never broken lol the taoist bracelet and my Buddhist bracelets last the longest and my Christian bracelets last the least. Its actually reminiscing of my quest and perhaps another hint.
I am learning Mandarin now so that I can read more text untranslated and I really appreciate people like you bringing this to me where I would never have been able to read it as a mere guy from America. Sucks I have no relation to the yellow emperor lol I am mixed with many things predominantly central American, Indian, and Caribbean Africans but no Asian in my recent heritage. Oh well, that just means I need to focus harder on the Dao lol
I want to thank you so very deeply Benebell. Your thoroughly authentic educational material on Chinese occultism is fantastic has helped me to settle somewhere I feel much more secure after a long time spiritually wandering. I have landed in Buddhism, but the things I've learned about Daoism thorugh your books and videos have also made a deep impact in my practice. Best wishes to you and thank you enormously once again. ☯🙏🏻☸
Im curious, so when u hwyt pipo learn about Asian culture do u suddenly feel less demonic or do u guys still feel innately hateful and wish harm towards other races? 🤔
This puts together how aspects, ideas, and traditions, together I noticed seemed to overlap. So Krawley just showed how witchcraft and Asian religions/😮traditions went togethwr already? Or just Toast beliefs? Just curious. ❤❤❤ Thank you so much!
Phenomenal break down , your video inspired me to dig deeper for this arcane wisdom
Tao formalism and compartmentalization helps the neophyte to get a grasp of a reality that is actually integral, that is 'One-ness'.
And as one becomes more attuned to Tao, there is no separation, no human-made distinctness, where All is One.
Haha, what do i know, i am just making shit up, paraphrasing that one who said the same - though that was a good threading of seemingly different departments knowledge.
Wow so interesting that the Taoism is in and surrounds everything including Logos. You are so knowledgeable, thank you for sharing your insights master teacher.
I love your videos and books! Just a constructive feedback: I think it is important, especifically when talking about decolonization, that we adopt BCE/CE to replace BC/AD in a way to get some distance from colonizing christianity.
Thanks for the direction toward Fu Peirong!
I always learn so much from Taoism. No man steps in the same river twice... It is a beautiful reminder that we are always the student ❤
thank you so much for this video. It's really a comprehensive explanation on to what really is Taoism, and not only the "philosophy" that it so much talked about and praised in schools and online. This is divination, magic practices, connecting with spirits, occultism/alchemy. Where does this knowledge come from? The spirit world. It is very dangerous to dabble into these things... Our only God tells us this
Excellent content, thank you so much for putting together such an informative and entertaining video.
6:46 The kanji for zhen ming and zhen xing are the same, really?
Typos when you are designing boxes in PowerPoint slides happen. It has always been correct in the video description box timestamps.
Thanks for the video! I’ll have to watch it a couple of times. My first impression was that Taoism seems to be so fluid and all-encompassing. I wondered if that’s because everyone taps into the Tao and gives the same essence a form. Forms differ so it’s warning that we can’t cling too much to the correctness of a form (even though it’s the first way we start to grasp the essence), but need to pay more attention to the essence it expresses. In short, it describes an essence that can and can’t be captured. Am I making sense? 😅