The Tao Te Ching explained: The 81 poems that hold everything together
(The East Made Simple) An old man (Lao Tzu, Laozi) climbs onto a water buffalo at the western gate of a crumbling Chinese kingdom. His country has torn itself apart for decades. Warlords, poisoned princes, scholars selling their integrity for proximity to power.
He has decided he has seen enough.
The gatekeeperYinxi recognizes him. He refuses to let him pass until the old man writes down everything he knows.
So the old man sits down. And in one sitting, he produces 81 short "poems" on bamboo strips in 5,000 characters, no introduction, no conclusion, no table of contents. He hands the bundle to the gatekeeper, climbs back on the buffalo, and disappears into the mountains forever.
That bundle is the Tao Te Ching — the second most translated book in history, behind only the Bible.
Most people treat it like a fortune cookie collection, soft sayings about water and going with the flow, printed on coffee mugs and yoga studio walls.
That interpretation does the book a serious injustice. Lao Tzu was not writing inspirational content for a peaceful audience. He was writing a survival guide for people whose world was burning down around them — and he buried it inside 81 poems that look simple on the surface but operate like a precision instrument underneath.
This video reads the Tao Te Ching the way it was meant to be read: as a two-stage operating system for being human. The first 37 chapters reset our relationship with reality. The next 44 reset our behavior inside it.
Timestamps
00:00 - The old man at the gate
01:10 - Why this book was written in a burning world
08:20 - Chapter 33: wisdom vs. intelligence, power vs. strength
09:00 - Chapter 17: the leader nobody remembers
09:45 - Chapter 64: the thousand-mile warning
10:50 - Why the book changes every time we change
12:00 - What the Tao Te Ching was really built to do
What's covered in this video
The legendary story of Lao Tzu, the gatekeeper Yinxi, and the writing of the Tao Te Ching — and why this book was born in one of the most violent eras in Chinese history.
What the three words of the title actually mean: Tao (The Way), Te (inner power aligned with the Tao), and Ching (sacred text) — and why most people who quote this book have never understood the title.
Why Lao Tzu opens Chapter 1 by warning that the most important thing in his book cannot be named — and what that does to the categorizing, label-making human mind.
The water metaphor in Chapter 8: Why real power does not look like power and how the softest substance on earth (water) shapes the hardest over time.
Chapter 11 and the philosophy of emptiness: Why the hole in the wheel, the space in the pot, and the empty room in the house are the things actually doing the work.
Wu wei – the most mistranslated concept in the book: Why it does not mean "doing nothing" but rather doing without forcing, acting with the grain of reality instead of against it.
Chapter 33 and the distinction between intelligence and wisdom, between strength and true power.
Chapter 17 and Lao Tzu's model of the greatest leader: the one whose people say, "We did this ourselves!"
Chapter 64 and the real meaning of "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" — and why it is as much a warning as an encouragement.
Why this book reads differently at age 20 than at 40, differently in success than in crisis — and why that is exactly what it was designed to do.
Mentioned in this video: Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Taoism, The Way, Te, Wu Wei, Spring and Autumn Period, Warring States Period, Ancient China, Chinese Philosophy, Eastern Philosophy, Yinxi, Chapter 8, Chapter 11, Chapter 17, Chapter 33, Chapter 64, Ground Effect, Mindfulness, Stoicism, Wisdom
How this was made: made with AI - sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated. Learn more
What really killed Hollywood's Bruce Lee? According to Dr. Joel D. Wallach (criticalhealthnews.com), it is unequivocal and perfectly clear that ignorance and a terrible diet killed the superstar and legendary mixed martial artist. What killed Bruce at the young age of 32? Wheatgerm (gluten) and malnourishment from gluten and other things that prematurely depleted him. Lee disciplined himself to death with a wrong idea of how to get or stay healthy. What did Bruce eat?
A very diverse diet would have been much better, avoiding extremes, fads, and health trends, but that would not have saved him (or us) from deficiencies in depleted farmland soil. That is why supplementation has become essential.
(We say this as extreme vegans interested in maintaining our great health. Dr. Wallach says real food supplements are now a must due to soil depletion, processing, and lots of bad information out there. You are responsible for your diet choices because you will be the one to bear the tragic health results of any mistake made in choosing what to put in this pure temple of a body: avoid ultra processed foods, avoid eating the dead, avoid stale/toxic substances that are not stored correctly. Eat to enjoy, eat for flavor, eat lots of fiber and foods in their natural state or processed in beneficial ways such as culturing, light fermentation, drying, preserving, seasoning... As with all things, we are ultimately responsible for ourselves and cannot give that job over to someone else as much as we would like to, for choosing to not choose for ourselves is also a choice, and believing Big Pharma, doctors, and surgeons can often be fatal. Look around. Look how healthy everyone in our society is).
Wu wei (Chinese 無為, simplified Chinese 无为, Pinyin wúwéi) is a concept [popular in Zen Buddhism] from ancient Chinese philosophy that literally means "not-acting" or "non-doing," variously interpreted and translated as actionlessness, inaction, or effortless action [1, 2].
In Taoism, it denotes the nature of Tao, meaning that while the Tao (the way, path, or flow of nature) is the source of all existence and manifestation of all phenomena, its intrinsic formless essence is that it acts or moves in a silent, invisible, ineffable, often-unnoticed manner that may even seem motionless and effortless [3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
Accordingly, Taoists aspire to live their lives in alignment with such a harmonious state of free flowing and unforced activity.
In a political context, it also refers to an ideal form or principle of spontaneous and non-aggressive governance [8]. More
Ziran (Romanized tzu-jan) is a key concept in Taoism and East Asian Buddhism. It literally means "of its own" or "by itself" and therefore "naturally; natural; spontaneously; freely; in the course of events; of course; doubtlessly" [1, 2].
ETYMOLOGY: This Chinese word is a two-character compound of zì (自, "self," "oneself," "from," "since") and rán (然, "right," "correct," "so," "yes"), which is used as a -ran suffix marking adjectives or adverbs (roughly corresponding to English -ly).
What is the most intelligent response? Flow
According to the Shuo Wen lexicon, the character 自 zi means "nose" [one's nose, oneself when not interfered with by outside influences.] In Chinese culture, the nose (or zi) is a common metaphor for a person's own point of view [3]. More
So much of what people call "Zen" (capitalized as opposed to zen or jhana/dhyana) sounds more like Taoism (with a stiff dose of Confucianism) than Buddhism, and here's why. It was all picked up in translation. So what was lost? Those may be beautiful spiritual/temporal traditions with which to blend, but what is obscured is the historical Buddha's message until it is almost completely lost and replaced by Hinduism (with its Tantra, yoga, and magic that gave rise to another branch Vajrayana/Shingon attached) to a new religion that came to be called Mahayana, far from the Buddha's Dhamma.
Everything Zen
We silly Westerners have no idea! We think we know
"Zen" is a silly word, carrying so much meaning in American English. Goodness knows what it means in Japan or China nowadays, a dying religious sect taking sides in the jiriki versus tariki battle?
We aim to find out on Thursdays in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Zen Sangha. There is a path. What is it? If one were to ask the average American Zen practitioner, then everything likely to be heard in response would be some derivation of Taoism, not Buddhism or any relation to relation to the Doctrine of the historical Buddha.
Lao Tzu (Laozi) was not a Buddhist. He was possibly a celestial (deva), descended to Earth to philosophize and guide the Chinese.
For all that, on "Buddhist Radio" (Alan Watts - KPFK 90.7 FM, 8:00 am, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026) Alan Watts explained Zen in 18-minutes.
His brief talk lays bare the root of every misconception. Moreover, Buddha's Wisdom (in the video displayed above) does much to add context and clarify. Zen can be grasped.
Watts says the problem with understanding Zen is that unless one were raised Japanese -- very punctilious, rigid, formal, ritualistic, deadly afraid of a faux pas, losing face, or doing things incorrectly -- one will not be able to appreciate what Zen (Taoism) offers as relief.
Zen promotes spontaneity, naturalness, flow, being at ease, comfort, and relaxing into a kind of "just being" present and mindful (of the moment) without so much thinking (premeditation).
The book Permaculture One presents unique strategies for creating a food-producing system specifically suited to our needs, whether we garden in our backyard or engage in full-scale farming. By carefully designing a system around functional relationships between plant and animal species we can create a stable "cultivated ecology" suited to local conditions. This book provides a catalog of 130 trees and plants useful to a permaculture system. More
Permaculture is an approach to [sustainable farming] land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking.
The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture [1, 2, 3].
Multiple thinkers in the early and mid-20th century explored no-dig gardening, no-till farming, and the concept of "permanent agriculture," which were early inspirations for the field of permaculture [4].
Mollison and Holmgren's work from the 1970s and 1980s led to several books, starting with Permaculture One in 1978, and to the development of the "Permaculture Design Course," which has been one of the main methods of diffusion of permacultural [money-making] ideas [5].
Starting from a focus on land usage in Southern Australia, permaculture has since spread in scope to include other regions and other topics, such as appropriate technology and intentional community (commune) design [6]. More: Permaculture - Wikipedia
But what's reality, really, CERN?
(Julia McCoy) Scientists at CERN discovered a hidden layer beneath reality [samsaricsimulation?] -- and it won't disappear. AI can calculate a hidden substrate better than organic human scientists? Are we living in a simulation rather than a base reality?
What is the Heart Sutra really about other than realizing that all of these "heaps" or "aggregates" are devoid of self, empty (shunyata), without self, not the property of a self, not under the control of a self? But there seems to be a "self" (atta, atman, or soul). What is that? That is the functional integration of the Five Aggregates: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness.
Clubbing in the Wild (David Attenborough nature documentary parody)
Verbal communication is just 7% of the whole?
(Viva La Dirt League) Let's have a never-before-seen glimpse at the human mating ritual that is clubbing, not the baby seal kind but rather the even more gory dance that is pre-dating (predation) of the species in its efforts to perpetuate the species.
Get a 12% discount off all SteelSeries products by using code VLDL12. Not only does one get a special discount but VLDL makes 8% on all sales. So get a great deal and help support VLDL. Link: https://bit.ly/31ltYT2
Code: VLDL12. HUGE THANKS to attenbro420 for doing the voiceover on this one. Check out more of his stuff here: bit.ly/2Lm6fuU. SUPPORT ON VIVAPLUS: vivaplus.tv. MERCH: vldl.shop.
ALL SOCIALS: vldl.info. WATCH STREAM: bit.ly/VLDLtwitch. SERIES PLAYLISTS: bit.ly/VLDLplaylists.
(Refuge of the Male Mind) June 10, 2025: Let's explore one of Arthur Schopenhauer’s most controversial and philosophical views on women. Drawing from his major work The World as Will and Representation, we can analyze how he saw the female nature, the biological role of women, and how it all connects to the blind Will-to-life, the irresistible will to live and carry on, to consume and reproduce. "Eat, Mate, Kill, Repeat." Prepare to reflect on deep, provocative, and forbidden ideas that still spark intense debate today.
How was this made? Altered or synthetic content with sound and/or visuals significantly edited or digitally generated. Learn more
Buddhism is far more sophisticated than nearly anyone realizes. The Buddha taught in a variety of ways, which made him very popular to different types of people. We imagine he only gave discourses or sutras, but he did much more than that. He told fables (many of which were published in Aesop's Fables), recounted past lives with talking animals and stories (jatakas), histories, a disciplinary code with origin stories for each of the rules (with a spicy sinful story that gave rise to the need for a rule), recorded verses of enlightened nuns, and most sophisticated of all is an entire collection of works in Buddhist psychology and physics called the Abhidhamma Pitaka or "Collection on the Dhamma explained in ultimate terms" or The Higher Doctrine Collection. Are women a trap for men, or men a trap for women, or pleasant objects a trap for clingy humans?
There exists a sutra where the Buddha points out that nothing is more alluring for a male than the form of a female. This sounds bad, but the same is said of females. Nothing is more alluring than the form of a male. (What can be said of pandakas, the third gender or gender-nonconforming individuals, we are not told, into which category would fit all LGBTQIA+ persons, whether gay, bi, or pansexual). We can imagine that whatever one likes, whatever one is attracted to, that is the most alluring. And this is problematic for anyone who wishes to make progress toward enlightenment and liberation in this very life.
The Buddha's Higher Doctrine in Practice
The Abhidhamma in Practice by N.K.G. Mendis, Wheel 322, BPS.lk, 2006
When the mind is not experiencing objects through the five sense doors — eye, ear, nose, tongue, or body — it can still be active through the [sixth sense called the] "mind door," taking as its object either something previously experienced through the five sense doors, recently or long ago, or some idea or image peculiar to itself.
Past experiences are registered in the life-continuum (bhavanga) in a subliminal form, where from time to time they can surface through the mind-door to serve as objects for the mind-moment (citta).
On the one hand, karmically active moments can follow this mental activity, and here again the practice of mindfulness — that is, being [dispassionately] aware that there is thinking — will prevent the arising of unwholesome causative mind moments.
On the other hand, if mindfulness is absent there can be unwholesome mental activity, such as longing [or lust] for things of the past, worry, remorse, regret, grudge, and doubt. Mind moments exhibit certain other interesting features that are dealt with in the Abhidhamma (the Doctrine or Dhamma in Ultimate Terms). Some of these are as follows.
Association with "roots"
Mind moments may be associated with mental factors called "roots" (hetu, mula), or they may be dissociated from these roots.
The former kind of mind moments are called sahetuka cittas, the latter ahetuka cittas; these are, respectively, rooted and rootless states of consciousness.
The roots are particular mental factors (cetasikas) that arise together with the mind moments, often giving it a determinate ethical quality.
Because the mind moment and its constituent factors, the mental concomitants (cetasikas), arise together and because both have the same object and base, it is difficult to appreciate the subtle differences in their characteristics unless one's mindfulness and insight are very sharp.
There are six roots. Three are karmically unwholesome (akusala); the other three may be either karmically wholesome (kusala) or indeterminate (abya-kata), depending on the type of consciousness they arise in.
The unwholesome roots are greed (lobha), hatred (dosa), and delusion (moha). The three roots that are wholesome in some mind moments and indeterminate in others are greedlessness (alobha), hatelessness (adosa), and undeludedness (amoha).
Though these last three roots are expressed negatively they have positive manifestations. Greedlessness manifests as generosity and renunciation (unselfishness and letting go), hatelessness as loving-kindness and compassion, and undeludedness as wisdom or understanding.
In the ordinary unenlightened worldling these six roots can occur in various combinations. When one enters the path leading to enlightenment, the unwholesome roots are eradicated in stages until final emancipation is achieved.
For the fully enlightened person (arahant), the liberated one, the mind moments that arise can no longer be associated with any unwholesome roots. The mind moments that the fully enlightened experiences are neither wholesome nor unwholesome, as one does not generate any further karma; one's mind moments are exclusively indeterminate.
These indeterminate mind moments can be functional (kiriya, kriya), as on occasions when one is mentally active, or resultants (vipaka) when one is experiencing the effects of past karma or abiding in the meditative attainment of fruition.
For spiritual progress, it is important to be aware of the roots associated with the mind moments that we are experiencing at any particular moment. This is possible only by the practice of mindfulness as expounded in the Discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
This awareness helps us to rid ourselves of the unwholesome roots and to cultivate the wholesome roots. This practice enables one to purify moral virtue (sila), to develop stillness (samadhi), and to achieve insight (vipassana).
Association with feeling
Mind moments differ according to the feeling associated with them. Every mind moment has a concomitant feeling, but the quality of this feeling differs from mind moment to mind moment. Some are accompanied by a pleasant feeling (sukha vedana), some by a painful feeling (dukkha vedana), some by an indifferent feeling (upekkha vedana).
It is important to recognize the feeling that accompanies each mind moment, for feelings serve as a condition for defilements to arise.
The mind's natural tendency is to develop attachment to a pleasant feeling and aversion to an unpleasant one. Any attachment will eventually cause disappointment (dukkha); for everything within and around us is impermanent, so when inevitable separation takes place, if there is attachment, the result will be sorrow, lamentation, and despair.
Aversion, apart from giving further nourishment to the unwholesome roots, is a totally futile response. We cannot change the essentially unsatisfactory nature of the Rebirth Cycle (samsara), but we can alter our reactions to our experiences in this cycle.
Therefore, the sanest attitude would be neither to get attached to anything pleasant nor react with aversion to anything displeasing.
This would be an attitude of equanimity or indifference, which can be of two kinds. One is a callous indifference that is a total disregard for one's own well-being or that of others. This type of indifference is born of the unwholesome roots and obviously should not be cultivated by a spiritual seeker.
The other type of indifference is a highly refined mental state that is better referred to as "equanimity" (unbiased looking on). This attitude, born of wisdom pertaining to the real nature of phenomena, is an attitude of mental calmness amidst all the vicissitudes of life. This is the kind of equanimous state that we must cultivate [for progress]. More
(Buddhist Audio books) Invisible Law Controls Our Life: Kamma (Karma) in Buddhist Abhidhamma
First of all, what is Abhidhamma? It is the systematic treatment of the Dharma, the Buddha's Teachings, in ultimate terms.
Second, what is karma in Buddhism? It is a deed, willed action, which the Buddha divided as either physical, verbal, or mental, singling out intention or motivation (cetana) as the key to determining what it is and what it will produce.
If I do something, why I do it matters. A Manhattanite is walking down the boulevard on a dark and rainy night. She looks down an alley as see me over someone, lifting a blade that glints in the light of a dingy streetlamp about to bring down a blade on the body.
There's always a solution, a fix it.
What's happening? Can we judge? What's the karma (deed, action, doing)? She screams, "bloody murder!" and I look up and show her my scalpel. She looks down and sees a woman on the ground unable to breathe. And I explain that I was about to stab her in the throat, draw blood, and let air into her windpipe because she has something jammed into her mouth and is about to go unconscious and die if I do not intervene. "Oh, are you a doctor?" she asks me. "No, of course not, but I do watch lots of reruns of MacGyver," I answer.
Now that we know all this, what's the karma? The horrible act of attempted murder or the exact opposite, the precious act of preserving life?
It's hard to say, so we should reserve judgment at least a little, until we can discern my MOTIVE, my INTENTION, my VOLITION, my cetanāor underlying impulse to act.
That mental motive is the real "karma," the real determinant of the deed, and it doesn't matter what others think, approve of, or condemn. She may hate me, she may get a beat cop to shoot me to prevent what she thinks is going on, a judge may imprison me based on her testimony, but all of that is HER karma, not mine. I will be "judged" impersonally by myself or the universe for what I was actually doing when that ACT matures and comes to fruition.
There are other divisions, such as the Ten COURSES (kamma-patha) of Unwholesome Action and, of course, Ten Courses of Wholesome Action. There are probably millions of deeds, but getting to the root (radix, radical) of the matter, we have only six roots:
What is there to notice here? Most karma is produced by the mouth or other means of VERBAL expression. The body may do things, but when does it do them that it is not being motivated (directed, willed) by the mind? Not acting out, not speaking out, it is still possible to produce karma (deeds with the power of producing a subsequent result) JUST BY THINKING. There really is mental karma. The RESULTS of karma are not karma, even though we in an offhand, shorthand way often refer to results as karma when we say, "It is my karma," referring to something that happened to us. That is never our karma, technically, but we all understand that what we think we're saying is, "This is a result of my deeds," and that may well be. Not everything that happens is due to karma. There are other causes. But most of the important things that happen to us that we notice and think are unfair, that's likely due to our bright and dark karma. This is a world of mixed results. To live in a world of predominantly bright results, there are karmas (acts) for that. Similarly, to live in a world of darkness and even worse suffering than we have here on the human plane (which is regarded as the lowest of the worlds one can be reborn in that is still considered "good"), there are deeds for that. Unless we get real with ourselves, privately, and recognize our motives, our intentions, what is impelling us to act, we cannot be surprised what we get as a result.
Remember, what we experience is not what we are doing now. We have a massive cache of past karma (from this and countless past lives even if we disbelieve those former lives and rebirths ever happened) that is trying to mature and come to fruition, to ripen and produce results.
The two names for karmic results are vipaka (resultants) and phala (fruits). The distinction seems to be, although we cannot prove it but remember Ven. Nyanatiloka (the Western translator of the Buddhist Dictionary) always making the distinction being mental-resultants and outward-circumstances. If we act, we immediately feel some way about it -- regret, remorse, anxiety about being found out or caught or punished, and so on, or rejoicing, approving, carefree or proud to be found out or recognized or rewarded, and so on, depending on the kind of action.
There is a terrible kind of karma, one that is possibly the worst of all karmas, and what is strange about it is that most of us most of the time would not even think there's anything wrong with in our Western society. What is it?
What is the worst thing in the karmic world, the producer of the most amount of bad (unskillfulness, demerit, evil, misery)?
Wrong view (micchā ditthi), sometimes manifesting as the perversions or distortions (vipallassa). This is the one to be most wary of, for we will be held responsible for what we think, what views we cling to and act on. If we believe something is good because that's what people around us told us or it's the way we were raised, that DOES NOT make it good or okay. It is what it is, in accordance with the six roots mentioned above, and will produce corresponding results that are either welcomed and wished for or unwelcome and unwished for. Proceed cautiously before acting. A little or a lot of introspection helps.
If there were just ONE primer to understand the complexity of karma in Buddhism, Wisdom Quarterly would say it is American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi's treatment of the subject here:
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