Verse 72 has been translated several ways through the centuries. We look at these differing translations, and then focus on the power of fear to dampen our experience of Tao’s adjacent, fecund wisdom. We conclude that there is a “right fear” – such as fear of not preventing an injustice – that can influence us to act, and help us to overcome any inertia not to act.

Reminder! Along with Chandler Schroeder, I am beginning a new series of podcasts called “The Technicolor Dreamcoat of Religion“ to which you can subscribe now for updates and our first semester of classes on how religions get made. (https://www.youtube.com/@TechnicolorDreamcoatofReligion)

Strongly-worded verse this time! Lao Tzu teaches about the subtle conspiracies of ignorance to dumb us down, weigh us down, & bring us down. But who anymore thinks of ignorance is an illness? Verse 71 teaches how Ignorance is not bliss; it is brutal, and can make us into the walking dead.

How to work with or overcome ignorance? We offer several ways to deal with the silent killer disease of ignorance.
If you want my collection of family- or kid-friendly Tao te Ching verses mentioned in this episode, use this email: marc.mullinax@gmail.com.

Reminder! Along with Chandler Schroeder, I am beginning a new series of podcasts called “The Technicolor Dreamcoat of Religion“ to which you can subscribe now for updates and our first semester of classes on how religions get made.

This verse 63 will pair up with 64’s themes. (i) Act with simplicity; avoid meddling, so you can align yourself with the natural flow of life.

(ii) Pay attention to beginnings. The small will become large, so address your first steps or beginnings with care and foresight.

And (iii) live with true-true integrity, and focus on matching your actions with situations, and abandon the temporary ways of the ego.

The voices of David and Danai Chaisson feature big on today’s episode. Thank you!

What if there is an inner refuge or sanctuary, one ultimately untouchable by any force you may know?

There is! This refuge is where we have our true identities, our true calling as humans, and our true destiny. This Tao-logic and teaching about our inner light that never goes out ... it neutralizes the cheap, over-loud voices that would tell us anything – ANYthing otherwise. Who tells you who you are?

Getting tired of that voice … that tears you down and declares you hopeless? It is to you I dedicate this episode. -Marc Mullinax

Nature teaches true power, the power of being open, helpful, and that this power is deeper than our egotistical searches for other kinds of power.

As Nina Sabatino, my partner for this verse, said herein, the not-pursing of power can be the beginning of a revolution. The only power of Tao that is real and lasting is the NOT-pursuing power. Be like water, descending low, lower, and then ever lower, like oceans, to receive all, and in your quiet, you help quieten a noisy world.

This is Tao’s Way of diplomacy, a diplomacy of sharing. -Marc Mullinax

Wu-Wei makes another appearance in Verse 60. Herein we discover how Wu-Wei is not a total “non-doing,” but knowing when to retire from doing just enough.

Wu-Wei is not hands off. It’s knowing when to retire your hands-on.
We speak of application to educators, governors, parents, and in this verse, even cooks and chefs!

Chandler Schroeder returns for another round at the mic with his wise and kindling voice.

When did Noah build the Ark, goes the popular wisdom? Before the rain.

Preparation for the days of too much or too less seem to be a good practice. To live as we ought is joy. This Verse 59 talks about how to live so that we, and that which we love, endures. It’s simple: Find your joy, and spread it around.

Thanks to Lauren Lausen for your voice, time, and what you do. May all of us find our days beginning in peace, so that we may deal out from our hands the radical hope our world needs. -Marc Mullinax

The Taoist Sage is calm, even in the toughest – or the best – situations life offers. That sage models resilient peace in every situation, not resorting to thought- and conversation-killing cliches or ego maneuvers. That’s why they can join ANYone, ANYwhere, and bring peace, needed help? Why? Their egos are parked!

Thank you Kimberly Mason for your calm presence and help on today’s podcast. I think you will love her wisdom and questions about our verse.

Marc.

The personal becomes public in this Verse 57. You who attempt to practice Wu-Wei in your life, or family … what if the government and rulers practiced Wu-Wei as well as you practice? What might happen and not happen in a Wu-Wei-informed government? Whoa!

Stuart Lamkin joins me to discuss this verse. His insights are wise and timely, and the reason why this episode is longer.

May your days begin rooted in spontaneous Peace, so you may know and practice a politics of hope, of which our world is in great need.

This verse starts off with one of the two most famous proverbs in the Tao te Ching: Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know. Talking-up Tao ain’t walking the Tao Path. In the silence, the word-free spaces, are where we then develop the wisdom on how to live wisely, peaceably, and in service to others. Listening more than talking actually gives one cred among people, and the other than human world.

Thanks to my quote reader Johnny Richardson, to whom I ask the question this time!

A theologian I read, Paul Tillich wrote: We must abandon the external high and mighty images in which the theistic God has historically been perceived and replace them with internal depth images of a deity who is not apart from us, but who is the very core and ground of all that is. I invite us to see the entire universe as God’s body. That is, there is nowhere, and no time, where we are not encountering the holy, the divine, that Which IS. Be careful how we interpret the world, for it will become exactly like that.

Verse 55 speaks about the qualities of a person so rooted in Tao they are spontaneously joyful, artless and not contrived, because conforming with the Changeless Tao is the only enlightened way to live. Teased out in this verse is how we exchange this birthright in Tao with a mess of something we have no business messing in. We have seven voices today, and I hope this is a feast in your ears.

May your days begin rooted in spontaneous joy and Peace, so you may know and practice moment-by-moment hope, of which our world is in great need.

Marc Mullinax - mmullinax@mhu.edu

What’sthe difference between knowing something, and understanding it? Maybe to know something is a mark of achievement and pride we saturate with our words, while to *understand* something or someone is a wordless condition, a state where we are VERY close to our original birthright status in Tao.

I mention in the pod today a daily Buddhist wisdom email I urge you to subscribe to. Here is the link.

Reminder! Along with Chandler Schroeder, I am beginning a new series of podcasts called “The Technicolor Dreamcoat of Religion” to which you can subscribe now for updates and our first semester of classes on how religions get made. (https://www.youtube.com/@TechnicolorDreamcoatofReligion)

Verse 54 teaches that Tao and its practice are a single events, moment by moment, but we may see them as two phases: (i) Knowing our roots in Tao, and (ii) regarding all through this eternal rootage. This has wonderful implications for the Golden Rule, which I attempt to upgrade as “always do first, as you would be done by.”

May your days begin rooted in Peace, so you may know moment-by-moment how to regard hope in every situation.

Marc Mullinax – mmullinax@mhu.edu

This verse 53’s episode, on “Lowered Ceilings,” is a call for the inner self not to compromise on the single, or the very few important things in life … like following the level and straight path of the Great Tao, and not becoming side-tracked by the many sideways of fruitless action and thinking over and over again those thoughts that take us nowhere but round and round in circles.

Melvis Madrigal is my second voice on the podcast this week. Thank you, Melvis!

May your days begin in peace, and become laboratories for radical hope.

Marc Mullinax – mmullinax@mhu.edu

Verse 52 takes us on a wild but life-affirming ride that Tao is our Grand and Prolific Mother, who invites all her creations – all her children – to a family reunion that never stops. Chandler Schroeder is my accompanying voice this time.

In the episode, I make a new call for listeners to contact me for two reasons: (i) to be a reader and question-asker on a future podcast, and (ii) to join me in a new edition of this podcast after we finish all 81 verses, in a podcast we’ll entitle, “My Favorite Verse of Tao te Ching.”

The email to contact me for either is: mmullinax@mhu.edu.

May your days begin in peace, to become labs and wombs for radical hope.

Tao is the Original Blueprints of the Universe. Te is the architect that makes these Blueprints visible. Tao is the Dream. Te coaxes the Dream to become deeds. This spontaneous mutual relationship got us here; Verse 51 explores how.

Joe Bennett is our voice and questioner today. Pink Floyd provides some awesome lyrics.

 May your days begin in radical, lettin’-it-be peace, to become wombs and laboratories for the change-up our world so desperately requires.

Did I get Joe's Question right? Let us know: mmullinax@mhu.edu

This verse gets to the heart of what we are made of, and made for. Origins and Destiny. Often, however, we get trapped by the shiny blings of life and lower our ceilings, and have these vulnerable places I call targets for our temptations. But we are more than enslaved slabs of meat susceptible only to reactive thoughts, acquired tastes and cultivated addictions. Listen for more! Who knows? It’s perhaps my most important episode.
Kenny Meade is our voice and question-raiser. Find out more about him at https://www.kennethmeade.com/.

I make reference to a teaching from J.R.R. Tolkien that parallels today’s episode. You can find that teaching here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtHfY06sP1s

 May your days begin in original peace, and become laboratories for radical hope!

Today’s verse 49 teaches how to live with natural grace and peace in what seem like pivotal and violent times. We dissect in this episode how the servant leader, or Taoist, holds to their original vision of peace without compromise. It’s a difficult path, but to become adjusted to society’s neuroses and fragmentation into violent factions and self-righteous means to live in knee-jerk reactivity, not in mindful response or engagement with life.

Trent Moore is our valued voice and question-raiser.

May your days begin in peace, to become laboratories for radical hope in this pivotal year.

We are taught to add to self to be a self, but where is the wisdom that to increase is really decreasing, and to decrease is actually a positive? It’s here in Taoism, but also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Orthodox Christianity, to start a list.

I reference a pretty crazy podcast from OnBeing by Krista Tippett: https://onbeing.org/programs/colette-pichon-battle-on-knowing-what-were-called-to/

Thanks so much to Naomi Joy Gill for lending her energy, voice, and – for me – a devastating question (in the good sense!).

May your days begin in emptiness, to become wombs to birth radical hope!

Marc Mullinax

The Beatles put this verse into a song, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swT6YTPYwgM.

Verse 47 has a mystical teaching, one claiming that we can sense the entire universe from our tiny rooms or spaces in which we live. How does one even begin to explain this unitary, unified, worldview where all creation intermixes, interpenetrates, and intermingles in one unified vision or field? So, we talk about developing spiritual literacy.

Thanks to Chris Haynes for his voice and timely question, that links this verse with climate change.

May your days begin in peace and become wombs for radical hope! Marc

Knowing when enough is enough is a choice, of quality over quantity, a free determination and conclusion of the wise mind, a free choice made by free persons; “enough” is not an amount or quantity, it is a learned attitude that helps us merge more quickly and easily into the way of the universe.

Eric Cain (https://www.christschool.org/node/290008) is our reader and question-asker.

May your days begin in the awareness of what is Enough, to become wombs for radical sufficiency and gratitude.

Marc Mullinax

Much of Tao te Ching teaches us how to hear and experience Tao. To this end, we need to remove our mental interferences and filters that act to weaken or neutralize the experiencing of Tao.

This Verse 45 teaches such removal, by helping us to embrace the Paradoxical and the Ambiguous. We start with the Rolling Stones and end with guest Mattie Miller-Decker's beautifully phrased question on how Taoist paradox and Buddhist Original Mind are complements.

Mattie is at https://www.hidasta.com/.

May your days begin in peace, and become wombs for radical hope!

Marc Mullinax - mmullinax@mhu.edu

Today, Verse 69. The centerpiece of today’s verse is captured in a story I tell about being in the presence of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s a story that anyone who has an enemy may want to consider. Today’s awesome guest is Chad Smith, and his contact info is here: https://houseofmercyavl.com/connect

Reminder! Along with Chandler Schroeder, I am beginning a new series of podcasts called “The Technicolor Dreamcoat of Religion” to which you can subscribe now for updates and our first semester of classes on how religions get made. (https://www.youtube.com/@TechnicolorDreamcoatofReligion)

Taoism joins most faith traditions that cast doubt on the ability of "things" and other items we can hoard (but not use) ... to satisfy our deepest selves.

Rangsey Chang is our voice for quotations and two great questions on the hope and spirituality of the "things" in our lives.

I mentioned a book in the podcast: The Ego Tunnel: the Science of the Mind and the Myth of Self. He gave a TedTalk on his ideas: https://youtu.be/5ZsDDseI5QI.

May your days begin in peace, and become thirstless fields in which we sow the seeds of radical hope.

Marc Mullinax

We cannot make the entire world into a garden free of hard things. However, we can make our corner of the world a joyful place. There is then, an art to living softly, as soft beings, living patiently. The wisdom of Verse 43's “the soft overcomes the hard” invites us to pause, and reevaluate our cultural notions of strength and power.

May your days begin in peace, to become wombs for radical hope!

Marc Mullinax

Verse 42 is the one and only place where Yin and Yang (阴 and 阳) show up in the ENTIRE Tao te Ching. They show up to help us understand the larger creation process (or story, or mythic representation) of how the Universe got here and is sustained, even to this day.

My guest, Rebecca Askew, asks a question about Minimalism, and we discover just how widespread Minimalism is spread across the world's spiritual traditions.

May your days arise (YANG) in peace, and your nights fall (YIN) into radical hope.

Marc Mullinax

Verse 41: Lao Tzu’s Smile. Today’s verse 41 is to be taken as a whole; it is an attitude to embrace, to further deepen into Tao. Tao, as we have seen recently, is mysterious, seems to go in reverse, and remain hidden. Verse 41 reminds one how an attitude of expecting the unexpected is one way for Tao to find you. Receptive, open, becoming strange to one’s normal world, to re-engage with Tao’s norms.

There is a picture referenced: The Vinegar Tasters, which can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters.

May your days begin with peace, and our lives become poetic places for the strange and the true safely to land.

The key Chinese word I refer to often in this episode is "Fan" or 反. "Fan" is the word for "return" or "retire". "Fan" is everywhere in the world's spiritualities, and we explore, through "Fan," how things emerge and grow, and then return or retire to their being No-thing. Being and Non-Being.

While I do not have a reader, I have some singers! Hope you enjoy.

This is one of those several times Tao te Ching slows down, so mayhaps we can hear and get in touch with our original nature, a nature deeply rooted in Earth, soil, clay, mud. We are humus ... humus beings. We stay wise when we stay in touch with our humus/humble origins.

Stan Wilson (https://www.circleofmercy.org/content.cfm?id=149&pid=67) is our reader and questionS-Asker. Thank you.

May your days begin rooted in Earth’s peace,

and grow the fruits of radical hope. --Marc Mullinax

This LONG verse starts a conversation or teaching about Te (as in Tao TE Ching), a conversation that will run through the rest of the verses in Tao te Ching. Because Tao and Te are separate, but share one root, their message remains consistent: No compromise! The person grounded in the depths of Tao does not drink from second-best opinions. S/He stays centered at the root and lets the unrooted take care of itself. S/He avoids the outer to live in the inner root.

UNC/A philosophy student Ethan Colon delivers the quotes AND, a most decisive and challenging question.

Once our ego-stroked schemes calm and quieten, there is Something Else. That Something Else is Tao, Tao at the Root of all. Always been there, always "is" everywhere, always will be there.

When we rest in our roots, the world not only makes better sense, we are also physically, mentally, and psychically healthy.

Verse 37 is a quietly radical teaching verse, a reminder that beneath all noise, commotion, chaos, and other crap, there is another place ... the place we are rooted.

Our reader today is Michelle Miller, whom you can find out more about here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/259687/michelle-miller/.

May your days begin in peace, and become THE ROOTING OF your radical hope. -Marc - mmullinax (AT) mhu.edu

This verse teaches an expansive view of how to become an integrated, peaceful being. Instead of hardening one's categories with dualistic absolutes, it is more wholesome to integrate 'apparent opposites' into a unified view, that one is a mixture of what a dualist culture would label good/bad, ugly/beautiful, and so on. It's ONLY when we allow each energy of yin and each energy of yang to co-exist one with the other, we achieve union, unity, and wholeness. Otherwise, we are at war with ourselves.

Tebbe Davis (https://faso.com/artists/tebbedavis.html) lent his wonderful voice to this episode. Thank you.

May your days begin in peace, and become wombs for radical hope!

Marc Mullinax - mmullinax [at] mhu.edu

Nothing -- not time, not distance, not circumstance, not geography -- NOTHING weakens or diminishes Tao's power for peace. If we experience any weakening, diminishing, or forgetfulness of Tao, that's on us, and ways we have constructed our lives through thinking, culture, and habit.

This episode is dedicated to re-understanding and re-discovery (or remembering) Tao in the normal, the everyday, and in the moment.

No reader today; it's a vacation week for many.

: This verse 68 is a work-out from verse 67’s three treasures: unconditional mercy, simplicity of wants, and humility. A personoperating from this strong triad of foundational virtues is not lured by the hell of violence, and encourages others to see the heavenly, peaceful way.

Reminder! Along with Chander Schroeder, I ambeginning a new series of podcasts called “The Technicolor Dreamcoat of Religion” to which you can subscribe now for updates and our first semester of classes on how religions get made. (https://www.youtube.com/@TechnicolorDreamcoatofReligion)

Critical teaching here. Tao is already within, working, subtly and invisibly the air all around us, but which we forget we breathe and move in.

Joe Bennett supplies energy and his voice to this episode's effort.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: As described at the top of this Bonus Episode, the podcast will slow down for the rest of this (2023) year, releasing every SECOND Thursday.

In this Bonus Episode, I look at the poverty of thinking, and the enriching ways we can train the brain not to think, analyze, categorize, and take us places we don't need to go ... ever.

Simple, but profound verse. Don't let its simplicity lure you into a false sense of security. For it speaks about how to become wise.

1. Take on wisdom, and leave off ego-managed actions.

2. Understanding self as more important than understanding others (while both are good; one of these is better).

3. Being content with sufficiency - knowing when "enough" IS enough.

4. Regular meditation on death.

I was alone today on the episode. Back next week with a guest!

May your days begin in peace, to become laboratories of radical hope! mmullinax@mhu.edu

Today's verse 32 is great for review. It contains many through-lines of themes we have seen so far in our long march through these 81 verses in Tao Te Ching:

-Inscrutability

-Nothing is alien; all is one

-Forgetfulness

-Three practices of Silence, Darkness, and Emptiness

-The Feminine, and

-Water ...

... Several of which themes re-emerge today. So while there may not be that much "new," the way Lao Tzu frames and phrases this verse will provide necessary reminders about what Tao is, and what Tao is all about.

Darian Smathers joins us today as our quote-reader and question discusser.

May your days begin in peace, and become laboratories for the wisdom needed for these days. -mmullinax@mhu.edu

I am joined at the mic today by Dr. Charles Pannell, a professor in Chinese Medicine practice at the Daoist School of Chinese Medicine in Asheville, NC. (https://daoisttraditions.edu/). Dr. Pannell's bio is here: https://daoisttraditions.edu/our-college/our-faculty-2/.

We talk about the shared worldview of Tao, Taoism, and Classical Chinese Medicine. My great thanks to him!!

Verse 31 is a strong declaration against a Taoist "making peace" with war or aggression.

This is a tough verse, and is easily misunderstood, partly because we tend to normalize our violent ways both within ourselves and in our culture. To be a peace-wager in a society so normalized toward war may mean you are misunderstood, fired from a job, or denounced.

Gabrielle Guiliano - a Taoist practitioner, is our guest voice today. And during the Question time, I ask HER the questions!

Verses 30 this week, and 31 next week, are of a unit, and make the central argument for Taoist anti-war, anti-violence positions. While I am no gatekeeper of Taoist orthodoxy, it is clear that Tao's worldview never promotes or abides by violence or war-like ways, whether these ways are by the state, or in one's own life.

I'll continue this theme in next week's Verse 31 treatment.

Kimberly Gilliam is our voice today.

May you begin your days waging peace, days which become wombs for more peace-waging.

Marc Mullinax, mmullinax@mhu.edu

With Tao, there is an underlying rhythm, described as right action at the right time and the right place. Get off this rhythm and one starts having strange ideas that one (one's ego) can actually change reality, or improve this rhythm.

Nah.

So this verse investigates spiritual rhythm and spiritual arrhythmia. WE touch on past themes like Yin-Yang and Wu-Wei, but in ways that expand our understanding of these teachings.

Helping me out today is Dr. Serena McMillan, a Hebrew Bible scholar who offers us a relevant (and popular) Hebrew Bible verse, in her own translation!

May your days begin in peace, and become laboratories for attainable, radical Balance. -Marc Mullinax -mmullinax@mhu.edu

Verse 28 does not mention Yin or Yang, but these two concepts have their fingerprints in every line. It's a verse that teaches to combine the unlikely pairs of seemingly opposites, not just in order to integrate one's psyche with Tao, but also to become a grounded, peaceful, and useful Tao practitioner.

This week's quote reader and question-asker is Dr. Laurel Reinhardt, "a therapist in recovery", whose work can be found at these two sites: www.innerlandscaping.com; and www.etsy.com/shop/innerlandscaping.

May your every day begin in peace, and become that womb or laboratory for the radical hope that those around us (may) need.

-Marc mmullinax@mhu.edu

Verse 27 is full of Wu-Wei insights. Rather than thumb-nailing them here, let's let the Verse speak in its myriad ways.

Audrey Davis, our artist, returns for another appearance with the quotes, and asks about how Taoism might enable us to face our own deaths (We recorded her words in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery).

Mary your days begin in peace, and become wombs for the radical hope growing in you.

Marc

Subscribe for the episodes when they come out at Please subscribe!!

Stay in touch by pressing “Subscribe” at “The Technicolor Dreamcoat of Religion” where you can subscribe now for updates and our first semester of classes on how religions get made. (https://www.youtube.com/@TechnicolorDreamcoatofReligion)

What do we allow to disturb our peace, equilibrium, and equanimity? Verse 26 reminds us that we do - already - before we get into touchy or tough situations - that we are already: grounded, peaceful, balanced.

So why and how do we get off-balance? How do we re-find our balance? This is the teaching of Verse 26. Along the way in this episode, we'll hear from a family deep in this verse's practice, and we'll hear two Buddhist stories on equanimity and peaceful acceptance.

The trailer to my book which my guests shot and produced is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfBhOvSaX6I

Their websites are here:

Mama God book for children: https://www.dearmamagod.com/

Holy Troublemakers book: https://www.holytroublemakers.com/

Watchfire Media site: https://www.watchfire.org/

May your days begin in peace, and become laboratories and practices for hope!

Marc Mullinax

Most scholars consider Verse 25 to contain the most important words in the entire Tao Te Ching, for these words give us our place - or as I say it, our "anthropology" in the universe.

And our place is nested in Tao. As this verse concludes: Know your interconnections: Human beings come from Earth, Earth’s patterns entwine with Heaven’s, Heaven roots in Tao, Tao’s blueprint is Nature itself.

Please don't rush over the implications of this conclusion! Here is our quiet confidence that we are already interconnected with Tao. This is our "Epic Résumé".

Huge thanks to David Wollert for his voice and question on sailing (!!).

May your days begin in peace, and be practices for radical hope. -Marc Mullinax (mmullinax@mhu.edu)

Verse 24 starts off with two ludicrous (and unnatural) images: walking on tip-toe and zombie-walking on straddled legs. These introduce four more unnatural, ego-led ways to be in life, like playing to a crowd, crowing one's opinions, elevation of self, and praising the self -- big head, pride, arrogance, boastfulness, egotism. Etc., etc., etc.

Lao-Tzu teaches here how all six are basically the same life-approaches; since each and all try to draw attention to one's self, they are as unnatural as they are toxic. Each has this unfortunate side effect: they render a person UNABLE to see and practice everyday Tao.

But there is good news! Practice trust in and truth with Tao. It is possible to release ego's hold, turn the UNABLED into ENABLED.

Jimmy Knight, a college career advisor, joins me on the episode with great questions and discussions on how this verse applies to students of any age.

May your days begin in peace, and practices for hope.

Marc Mullinax

What if truth and trust are practices? Practices that take us right into the heart of Tao, and at the same time, the innermost core of who we are. For are not the two the same?

This episode explores how Trust and Truth inter-relate, and how when we practice Trust, we practice the Chinese verb T'ung (同), used 6 times in this verse. Which means something!

T'ung means to align, identify with. Like a musician or an athlete, the practices of alignment and identification with Tao lead us into the wisdom that we, the Universe, and Tao, are each and all made of the same stuff, and by the same spontaneous practices.

Thanks to Susan Carleton for your good work with the quotes and her real-life question!

May your days begin in peace, become wombs for radical hope, and rest in the power and practices of trust.