Why Tao Te Ching matters (explained)

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 gatekeeper Yinxi recognizes him. He refuses to let him pass until the old man writes down everything he knows.

The Tao and its Characteristics

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
• 02:05 - What Tao, te, and ching actually mean
• 03:00 - The two-stage structure of the 81 chapters
• 03:55 - Chapter 1: Why the Tao cannot be named
• 05:10 - Chapter 8: Water and the nature of real power
• 06:15 - Chapter 11: the philosophy of emptiness
• 07:10 - Wu wei: doing without forcing [non-interference]
• 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

Kierkegaard: Stop living for others' approval

• The East Made Simple, 7/14/26; CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

How shall "I" become Nobody?

(Flowing Void) Why being nobody is the ultimate power of the Tao

Did Zen folk, being Taoists, get it?

• Avenged Sevenfold "Nobody" (official video)
• I went to a Buddhist retreat needing something to happen; nothing happened.
• My friend, a regular American woman into yoga, also went but not expecting anything, hoping for anything, "needing" anything; something happened.
• I asked, "How?! How is this happening? What did you do differently?"
• She claims she didn't "do" anything. She just sat. She just attended to the present moment with bare awareness, almost like that R.E.M. song, "Stand in the Place Where You Are." She didn't say that. She mentioned thinking about the song "Just Breathe" for inspiration sometimes.
• I asked, "You're thinking about music?"
• She answered, "No, but intrusive thoughts come and go. Sometimes by habit I engage them before mindfully-remembering and then letting them go, letting them cross like clouds in a vast open sky." And she mentioned visualizing the in-and-out breath as steam in a steam room or a small whirligig (windspinner) at her nose turning as the breath moved.
• I asked, "You spend your time visualizing?"
• She answered, "No, but sometimes to focus, I imagine some indicator of the breath just to help get focused."
  
• I asked, "How do you stay energized and focused for so many hours of the retreat schedule day?"
  
• She surprised by answering that she used a little peppermint under her nose.
• I asked, "You spend your time huffing essential oils?"
• She answered, "No but it's a nice pick me up in the morning, and it's good to feel a chill on the spot above the lip where I place my calm attention."
  
• I started to see the pattern. Everything I asked and conceived was about getting and gaining.
• And everything she answered was about letting go, relaxing, and staying aware without "thinking" (i.e., ruminating, perseverating, proliferating, drifting away on a tide of discursive thinking).
• A Buddhist retreat, like a Christian church service, is not somewhere to go to gain. It is a place to go to lay down the burden and let go a little, release, share, give, abandon, listen, allow with radical acceptance of what is. Imagine only ever going to church (mass, temple, the sabbath ritual) with a laundry list of wishes for the God. How well was that ever going to work? But a person with a purer heart goes just to receive the Word or the Spirit or advice embedded in the sermon to give more donations to the church or whatever nonsense most sermons are on nowadays. Surely that purer person would get more out of the experience than the person with the list treating the God of that church like a restaurant, ATM, or the lap of Saint Santa Claus (Nicholas).
• So let us follow in the example of the woman who "succeeded" in getting what everybody else on that retreat was after. About three other women got it, too, including Buddhist meditation teachers Shaila Catherine (Wisdom Wide and Deep: Jhana and Insight) and Dr. Nikki (The Persian Buddhist: Dr. Nikki).
• Oddly, strangely (coincidentally?), these three women are all from California, but the long retreat was on the east coast at IMS with a rare enlightened master. I do not now recall if there was a male among the very small group of retreatants/meditators who "succeeded" in getting somewhere very deep with their meditation. But it was impossible to overlook the fact that even if there were, it was still 75% women who succeeded. So I asked her about this.
• She answered, "I did notice, and I asked the Teacher, and he explained, 'It's easier for women.'"
• I asked, "Why in the world would it be easier for women? Surely, they have it harder than men in this world, which after all we are told is 'a man's world.'"
• She agreed, and she mentioned that she asked him the same question, and the great master, a successful scholar-practitioner not teaching only from theory but having a great deal of direct practical personal experience with the historical Buddha's Path, answered. He explained that it is how women are (by nature at this time) and how they are treated now (by injustice). Their way, as anyone can see in terms of American sex-role stereotyping and gender asymmetries (that they are treated less than, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, disregarded, and all that) actually gives them an advantage in meditation and spiritual progress.
• I said, "Why? Why would that be?"
• She answered, as it came right back around to slap me in the face and punch me in the gut, that it is because women, generally, are NOT striving, struggling, needing, demanding, insisting, interfering, pushing, muscling, and all the "wrong" (disadvantageous, self-defeating, dysfunctional) things we men generally do.
• I asked, "Well, isn't everyone there -- having paid and taken time off work and putting in all those hours of silence, getting up early, eating only in the morning, detoxing from technology, giving up their cell phones, social media, and email accounts -- doing EXACTLY that?!
• She answered, "Yes, except for the four of us, for some reason. It's not like we knew each other or knew what the others were doing. We were each just minding our business, not socializing, not looking around, not taking walks, not arguing, not demanding, not all of that stuff that everyone else [being American] were in the habit of doing."
• I said, "Oh, I see! It's exactly all that grasping, needing, struggling, striving, and kicking @$$ that is getting in everyone's (well nearly everyone's) way!
• She answered, "It would seem so."
• Then I realized I was pushing her for these answers, and she was kind enough, because we had known each other for so long and been such friends, and because I encouraged her and made sure she got to this retreat, that she tolerated this interrogation of sorts. I was startled by what she was saying, and she was saying precious little unless I pushed. I realized anyone with common sense and common decency would never push like this or ask pointed questions. But this is how I pressed that very teacher to answered and explain things, which he did as he kindly inquired about my practice and how I was doing and why I was so worried or interested in what anybody else was doing. (I didn't have enough sense to trust in him that when I was ready, I would learn all these things directly and not need to be so bullheaded in asking). But because I had not made progress, I'd been left to wonder what I was doing wrong, aside from everything. It was only my luck, my precious good karma, that I had the good fortune of knowing more than one person who had done it right (or was currently doing it "right" in the sense of the eight path factors of "right mindfulness, right effort, and so on) that I could see by comparison where I veered off. I already knew about my veering off. What I needed to know, for myself and Wisdom Quarterly readers was, What's the right road, the right path, the right practice? Now I was getting a dose of it. I had only been "a little" off but that little had grown to a complete derailing and going off the road, as a boat traveling a long distance -- with course correcting along the way -- would end up way off track like a wayward Columbus. I was stressed out in asking all these things.
• She answered without stress, gently smiling at my silliness, manliness, foolishness, and blindness.
• But there is an extraordinary thing I realized/remembered as I was talking to her about these things (Dhamma), these matters so rare in the universe that only someone with a real kalyana-mitta can ever hope to hear, and it came when I formulated a preface to a question like a lawyer would, establishing common ground, being on the same page. I wanted to ask her about her level of attainment and that of the others. But to do so, I needed to establish that she was ahead of all the others on the retreat, or was it the case that the elder and much more experienced meditator and teacher Shaila Catherine was ahead, and where was Nikki Mighafori in the ranking, and for that matter, at what level was the teacher?
• She answered no answer, just a perplexed look, a series of sounds and utterances that gave me to believe we were not sharing common ground and not on the same page.
• I pushed, "Look, regular people are 'uninstructed ordinary worldlings,' right?"
• She answered, "Okay?" as if confused by my very lowest common denominator question.
• And I kept pushing, and any Aryan (any "noble" disciple, any attained person of whatever ever rank, stage, or level) is greater than that, right?
• She answered more perplexed, "Okay??"
• I pushed to the point of breaking, "What? You won't give me that? There are ordinary people and there are attained people, and they're not the same because of a 'change-of-lineage' (gotrabhu), riiiiight? The Buddha said as much! It's foundational to the whole Teaching in this school of Buddhism. This is not hard. This is not a trick question..."
• She responded, "And why are you asking?"
• I, exasperated, kept pushing through, as if I were doing a set of heavy weights at the gym and just needed to get a certain number of reps in even if it hurt, "I'm trying to establish that there's a difference. There are ordinary people there and extraordinary. And among the latter group, there are gradients..."
• She looked puzzled, dismissive, not catching on, "Okay???"
• I barked, "Well, come on! There's that, right? And this is when she blew my mind. Did you, dear reader, know that enlightened people (in the specific Buddhist sense of the word bodhi and not what other traditions, religions, or systems think or mean when they use the exact same word) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as better than anyone? Sure, you did. Anyone can figure that out. They know there's no ego; they go lording it around over anyone's head. BUT, did you know, enlightened people (of whatever stage or level) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as worse than anyone? Sure, come on, that can be deduced by anyone who gives it a little thought. "Saints" (Aryans, the noble ones) are nice. Here's the mindblower: Reader, did you know that enlightened people DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as equal to anyone? 🤯 (See the Pali canon sutta "With Khema" AN 6.49: Khema Sutta—translated by Bhikkhu Sujato for suttacentral.net) And this is what was happening here. We were getting snagged and tangled up on the very first presupposition of stages and levels. It's not that she didn't know or had forgotten that there were levels, but what had happened is that she had DIRECTLY REALIZED that in reality she is no better, no worse, and not equal to others. These Aryans just don't think that way. It doesn't occur to them. They don't frame things that way anymore. And they may not even remember ever having done so, or so it would seem as I tried to remind her that this is how the whole world thought, including the Buddha, if we can deduce this from his teaching that there were levels of attainment and therefore it is possible to designate someone as higher, lower, or equal to someone else, anyone else.
• She just looked at, as if remembering, then came back to herself, "And????" leading me to make my point, whatever my point was originally going to be. I didn't remember, and there was no sense in asking if we could not agree on that much for starters. This was a nonstarter.
• "Wow," I thought, the things in the ancient sacred texts are really true: Aryans are this way or that, whether it makes sense to us or not, whether it fits our frames, whether we agree or would have it otherwise. Buddhism (the Buddha Dharma), what the Buddha taught, was not "hammered out by mere reasoning." The Buddha directly saw these things, knew these things, taught a path-and-practice for others to be able to DIRECTLY know and see these things. I bowed to her and left it at that for the moment. There are some things we are not meant to know before we are ready to know it. And all of this, it seems, was none of my business. It would become my business when I directly experienced these things and became one who knows-and-sees. This is a teaching for the wise, after all, not for those sunk in worldliness, distraction, delusion, resentment, aversion, fear, greediness, selfishness, self-centeredness, or all manner of wrong view arising from ignorance, delusion, and holding views.
• And now I realize that one way to talk about all this might be through the Taoist video at the top of this article. Maybe on this path we are becoming what we always were and have been -- nobody. Certainly, nobody special. Not better, not worse, not equal. The worldly mind will completely reject this out of hand. It's preposterous! This is a patriarchy founded on a hierarchy as taught by the oligarchy and a lineage of worldly rulers all the way up to the first heaven. And we must submit to them because that's the way God wants it. 🙄 That's ludicrous and preposterous, but it just might be closer to the truth than the way we've been carrying on here in the world IF "the God" we are talking about is the Monad (the One in Gnosticism, the Brahman not Brahma in Buddhism, possibly even the Tao in Taoism). That GOD doesn't want or not want, doesn't look on needing it to be one way or another. In that sense, there is just being. We can just be (though technically there is no "being," only becoming, this ceaseless impersonal process of radical impermanence as everything falls apart and rebuilds all the time, marked by three universal characteristics the Buddha taught again and again, implicitly and explicitly: All things are radically impermanent, utter unable to ever fulfill us, and impersonal whether we imagine there to be a stable "self" or not. That's reality. Here we are over here never really in touch with what's real due to all the distractions, talking, ruminating, thinking, and everything else coming at us all at once. If we slow down, let things be, allow, accept, welcome experience as it is without needing to change or "improve" it, we can quite possibly make quick progress to the end of all suffering and the arising of liberating-insight, the wisdom that has gone beyond, that which we set as our goal when setting off on a spiritual path. So "be nobody." After all, that's what really are already, and the sooner we get right with it, the happier we are likely to be so we can see things sa they really are and always have been.

Pyramids found on Mars (Billy Carson)

Ancient pyramids discovered on Mars?

This is clearly not a pyramid. - What is it then? - Erosion. - By? - The swamp gas methane.

Carl Sagan, will we ever get to Mars?

(Gaia) Was Mars once home to a thriving civilization that met an untimely end by an ancient nuclear war [or something that blew out and destroyed its atmosphere as has long been reported]? Since the early days of astronomy, telescopes have spotted strange anomalies on the Martian surface, thought to be remnants of a great civilization. Recently compiled data from NASA probes bolster such notions that the red planet once bore intelligent life.

Researcher Billy Carson explains what has been found based on official NASA images of the surface of Mars.

• [Is it a coincidence that Cairo means "Mars" in Egyptian? The name Cairo is derived from the Arabic al-Qāhirah (القاهرة), meaning "the Conqueror." This is due to the fact that the planet Mars, known in Arabic by names such as an-Najm al-Qāhir (النجم القاهر, "the Conquering Star"), was rising at the time of the city's founding [18]. Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maṣr (مَصر), the Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt; Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maṣr (IPA: [mɑsˤɾ]; مَصر), the Egyptian Arabic name for all of Egypt. More

The smoking gun: Who drilled this hole on Mars?

Andrew D. Basiago has been to Mars (Pegasus)

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We highly recommend Disclosure with Steven Greer for ET contact on Gaia (Dr. Greer, MD)

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When I get drone camera on Mars to see caves

Napoleon conquered Egypt then an ET did what?

• The volcano that spews the weirdest lava on Earth
• The most popular cryptid in every state in the USA
• Israel's genocide in Gaza: live updates as protest erupts in Tel Aviv over cease-fire hostage
• Live updates for Israel's genocide in Gaza and its war on Hamas and Hezbollah
• DNA reveals inbreeding, smallpox, and violent ends among cave-dwelling Christians in medieval Spain

• Gaia via MSN; Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Leap in solar energy technology achieved

Jeremiah Budin, MSN News Technology, 2/25/24; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

If this is really what the solar system contained, we'd have a photo of everything in one frame

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Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have succeeded in creating a system that can capture and store solar energy for up to 18 years and can produce electricity when connected to a thermoelectric generator. The implications of this breakthrough are major: with it, solar energy can be stored and sent anywhere in the world then converted into electricity on demand. More:

• Researchers achieve breakthrough in solar technology: a radically NEW way of generating electricity from solar energy and storing it for many years
• VIDEO: Time-lapse from space of huge tornado on surface of the sun captured
• Total solar eclipse coming in April 8, 2024
• James Webb Space Telescope finds neutron star mergers forge gold in the cosmos: 'It was thrilling'
• Scientists are designing a supercollider so powerful it could push the boundaries of modern physics

Earth, Wind, and Water: Flooding Our Forest

Mossy Earth, Aug. 30, 2023; Kelly Ani, Seven, Ananda (DBM) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

One year ago we flooded a forest, and the results are insane

(Mossy Earth) Last year we flooded a forest, and the results have been amazing. This year we really hoped it would flood again. This is what happened.

🌾 To support our work, become a member: mossy.earth

MOSSY EARTH MEMBERSHIP

The rewilding membership that restores nature across a wide range of ecosystems. 🌲 Support a diversity of ecosystems 🐺 Rewild habitats to bring back biodiversity 🦫 Fund neglected species and ecosystems. Learn more and become a member: mossy.earth 💪

VIDEO PARTNERS

1. BROZ: broz.sk/en
2. Dima: @bebravetoact
3. Patrik: @patrikinnature

⏱️TIMESTAMPS⏱️

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:04 Early spring
• 5:03 April floods
• 9:30 May floods
• 12:56 Summer floods

📸 Old photo credit: V. Andráš and the man in the picture is Professor RNDr Vladimír Kováč, CSc. 🔎

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Over recent decades, large swathes of [Eastern European] Slovakia’s wetlands have been lost. They have been drained to make way for agriculture as a result of the construction of dams for hydroelectric power, as well as for timber production. Wetlands are an integral part of the Danube River floodplain landscape in Slovakia. And draining them to plant trees has detrimental impacts on the environment. Wetlands store large amounts of carbon and are home to a diversity of plant and animal species (flora and fauna) that are specially adapted to wet conditions. One of these species is the nationally endangered, endemic Pannonian root vole, which has declined drastically in Slovakia in response to disappearing wetlands. This project will revert the forest into a wetland by digging 650 meters of ditches. This will kickstart a “flood” of change and bring back a healthy functioning, sustainable, and wilder ecosystem. Read all about this work here: mossy.earth/projects/restoring...

Skip breakfast. Cleanse instead (video)

Pharmacist Ben Fuchs, Moment of Truth (criticalhealthnews.com); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

• See Dr. Joel Wallach (criticalhealthnews.com)

What about shakes like MUD WTR? Wait.

One of the most common of nutritional MYTHS is that breakfast is "the most important meal of the day" trope, which was popularized by the Seventh Day Adventist John Harvey Kellogg to promote sales of his cash cow cr*p "Corn Flakes Cereal."

Fifty years later Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations" (PR, commercial for-profit propaganda) and one of the pioneers of modern-day advertising, convinced Americans that eating a high calorie, high protein meal first thing in the morning was part of some kind of healthy lifestyle.

What about plant-based pea protein?

The fact is that it is not. Facts about breakfast are a bit different. First of all, our paleolithic ancestors, whose bodies and biochemical needs were much like ours, didn't start off the morning with a big meal.

More likely they went without or perhaps began the day with some seeds or maybe plant material of some kind. Second, eating draws blood and nutritional resources away from the brain and the muscles towards the digestive tract, leading to drowsiness and feeling a need for a nap. This is not a plus for productivity.

Perhaps most importantly, between our last meal of the previous day and our next on the following day, the body is gradually becoming ketogenic, which means weight loss, more energy, and improvements in inflammation markers (less inflammation).

If one must eat breakfast, avoid cereal (which is full of toxic acrylamides, sugar, preservatives, coloring and synthetic flavoring agents and, worst of all, plant lectins like gluten, gliadin, fagopyrins in the case of wheat, oat, buckwheat, rye, and barley), sweets, and processed foods.

Stick to protein and good fats: avocados, raw soaked nuts, and green leaves. Enjoyed with lots of salt and natural spices, all are great foods to start off the day, [the later the better. Drink 16 to 20 ounces of water first thing in the morning, as this will help complete the overnight cleansing process, a natural cycle that completes around 11:00 am.] More

Forbidden Egyptian advanced technology

Universe Inside You, April 30, 2023; Pat Macpherson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Forbidden Egyptian discovery of advanced technology

(Universe Inside You) Could the pit at Zawyet El Aryan have been connected to the Great Pyramid at Giza by underground electrical passages used to move water, as many have suggested?

The movement was not for the purposes of irrigation, but rather it was “electrified water” used to fuel an ancient civilization, as Brown and Hurtaks proposed.

Gold capstone, plaster insulation = electricity

Maybe this has something to do with the black residue found by Alessandro Barsanti in the pit’s oval tub. Could this be evidence of some sort of electrical burning or chemical process, the polished mirror-like tub the place where electricity was generated?

Perhaps this is why research on the site was abruptly shut down in 1964 and why it is now locked within a well-guarded military base. Perhaps beneath the pit at Zawyet El Aryan, hidden in an area Barsanti tried so hard to get to, is the proof of an electrified ancient Egypt. These are the types of secrets that would totally change our understanding of human history.

• Why lie and call it an "unfinished pyramid"?

Narration: Petra Ortiz (petraortiz.com) T-shirts: teespring.com/stores/universe... 💜 Subscribe and like if you enjoyed the video. Thank you 💜 For Spanish-narrated videos, visit my Spanish channel: @UniverseInsideYouEspanol. ​To support this work and help get more videos completed, become a member of the channel by pressing the join button. Also support by joining patreon.com/universeinside...

How to train like Bruce Lee (video)

Bruce Lee, Fists of Fury, 1960

In light of the recent insult rapist Harvey Weinstein's favorite director Quentin Tarantino delivered to the memory of Bruce Lee, we thought we should show who the great martial artist really was.

What was he like in the dōjō?* Lee was a paragon of self-restraint, meditative calm, and disciplined determination. He was also an all-around nice guy in Hollywood.

That's not the way first-time father Tarantino misrepresents Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's like when Tarantino revised history to curry favor by pretending that Nazis lost WW II when they actually won.

Nazis are still in power, albeit under different names: Project Paperclip brought many SS and Nazi Party members to the U.S. to become unprosecuted citizens, scientists, and influential government operatives.

They set up our very own "Gestapo" (eventually known as the CIA), our nuclear program, our surveillance state, our secret police, our empire-building alphabet agencies, and more. German Nazi Wernher von Braun came to work for the military-industrial complex and on secret projects like the American Oppenheimer.

Bruce Lee, philosopher

Bruce Lee is presented as a bully who beats up Brad Pitts' character. This would never happen, nor is there any such report of it or anything like it happening. But Tarantino cares about plots, not realities. Fortunately, the current movie is his penultimate. With Harvey Weinstein headed for a Jeffrey Epstein fate, who would inspire and bankroll him now?

The dōjō is a space for immersive learning and meditation, traditionally in the martial arts and Buddhism. The Japanese term literally means "place (dō) of the Way (jō)." Bruce Lee was master of the mats, self-defense and Eastern philosophy, which included zazen or sitting meditation.

Secrets of Egypt: real name, people (video)

Out of Place Discoveries TV; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Secret Egypt we were never told about

African pharaohs in Africa? Impossible!

Was there a advanced prehistoric civilization in ancient Egypt? Who were the real people who built the great pyramids? Who carved the super-ancient Great Sphinx? Did the pyramids serve as energy devices rather than royal tombs?

An indigenous oral tradition still exists in Egypt. We have been able to uncover and study it with the help of a master of this tradition, Abd'El Hakim Awyan.
 

I used to be buried and long forgotten.

These teachings unfold to show a whole new understanding of ancient Egypt. Were the pyramids were built tens of thousands of years ago as part of a highly-advanced ancient society's power-generation system?

Did they serve various other functions such as being centers of healing and revitalization due to the ever-present acoustic harmonics and natural energies and emanating vibrations, fueled in part and surrounded by water?

Indeed, the whole system was largely dependent on water flow supplied from an ancient now extinct western river that then went through an underground tunnel system. Many surface structures (and other pyramids), supplied these ambient healing conditions -- some of them still evident and some now buried beneath the sand.

Snow Monkey caste system, Japan (video)

CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Nature (PBS), Documentary Galaxy

Hold on. Primate electronics are fun!

"Hell's Valley" (Jigokudani Monkey Park) may not be a familiar name, but one thing about it is very popular -- a place in Nagano where one can see "snow monkeys," Japanese macaques, taking an onsen, a hot mineral bath.

Hell's Valley is easy to pass while driving on the way up to Shiga Kogen. Jigokudani Yaen Koen Park opened in 1964, and since then many thousands of people from around the world have visited to observe the lifestyle of the Japanese macaques, Macaca fuscata, a species of monkey native to northern Japan's "Alps."

It is the most northern-living non-human primate, surviving winter temperatures of below -15 °C. They have brown-gray fur, red faces, hands, and bottoms, and short tails and often seem remarkably human. It arranges itself by heredity with each social position handed down (like India's old Vedic caste system) from the mother. But every rigid system has to eventually give way to an individual, in this case -- as in the case of the Buddha -- a little prince.


 

Human sex trafficking (SCPR.org)

(PBS/Independent Lens) "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women" Urmi Basu, the founder of New Light, explains to America Ferrera the caste system in India and how women end up in prostitution. This landmark transmedia project featuring a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast event, a Facebook-hosted social action game, mobile games, two interactive websites, educational video modules with companion text, and an impact assessment plan all inspired by Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the widely acclaimed book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The series follows Kristof, WuDunn, and six celebrity activists including Diane Lane, America Ferrera, Olivia Wilde, and Nicole Kidman as they travel to nine countries and meet inspiring, courageous individuals. Across the globe oppression is being confronted, and real meaningful solutions are being fashioned through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls. Embedded in the linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality -- which still needlessly claims one woman every 90 seconds -- is the single most vital opportunity of our time. And all over the world, women are seizing it.

• Half the Sky movement: HalfTheSkyMovement.org
• Women and Girls Lead: womenandgirlslead.org 
• Independent Lens: pbs.org/independentlens

O, the hells (naraka, niraya)!

In the wild they spend most of their time in forests and feed on seeds, buds, fruit, invertebrates, berries, leaves, and bark. The monkeys have a body length ranging from 80 to 95 cm. The males weigh around 10-14, kg while the females are usually half that at around 5.5 kg.

The park is located in the Yokoyu River Valley, which flows down from Shiga Kogen, the Japanese Highlands. At an elevation of 850 meters, the area is called "Hell's Valley" due to the steep cliffs and hot water steaming out from the Earth.

 

It is also a fairly harsh environment in winter with snow on the ground for a third of the year. But it is a natural paradise for 200 or so monkeys living there. Humans are lucky, too, because we can enter their world and watch them enjoying themselves.

Watching monkeys play, take a leisurely onsen or a swim is a lot of fun. The monkeys generally ignore their human counterparts and just get on with whatever it is they want to be doing.

Race and Caste - Ambedkar vs. Gandhi
(Arundhati Roy) "The Doctor and the Saint" on the Annihilation of India's Caste System. Maybe the "great soul" Mahatma Gandhi was not who we think he was. Rather than a poor saint who saved a country, he may have been a very rich and privileged, Western-educated political leader who presented himself as a "holy man" (sadhu). Columbia University Teachers' College, 2014. Should "untouchables" (dalits) quit Hinduism and adopt any other religion free of corrupting casteism? B.R. Ambedkar says yes!

• The Buddha on RACISM (casteism) in India
• Chimps do not have rhythm like humans 
• Community Cinema: "American Denial" explores the power of unconscious biases and how the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice still impact notions of race and class today.  
• California Native Plant Society

How to CLEAN up radioactivity naturally

Dev, Dhr. Seven, Kalyani, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Paul Stamets (fungi.com)

Wild mushroom, Amanita muscaria, toadstool among fall leaves (Lila Daley)

We may make new problems, but Nature already has the solutions (brownsgas.com)

 

Is there anything HEMP can't do?

Fukushima? There are natural ways of dealing with radioactive contamination. Here we present three.

 

One is known but has always been ignored as it does not serve the petrochemical industry, the oily arm of the military-industrial complex (MIC). It is the use of Brown's gas (Co2 + H2O), which untested is dismissed as unreal, a product of water electrolysis.

The hydrogen gas produced by the H20 split burns cleanly, welds, cuts, and when used on radioactive contamination decontaminates it. How is a mystery, one not explored by a culture totally dependent on oil, gasoline, and toxic fuels and chemicals.

Mycological Society of SF (thekitchn.com)

The other two are more amazing because they occur naturally -- mushrooms (fungi, particularly the psychoactive varieties) and hemp (industrial, non-psychoactive cannabis). Paul Stamets (fungi.com) has already demonstrated the ability of mushrooms to rehabilitate soil contaminated by oil spills. How miraculous are the nature devas to be able to deal with nuclear contamination?

• Fukushima exploded; state says never mind
• Fukushima: crowdsourcing Geiger readings
• VIDEO: Fukushima across the Pacific

How Mushrooms Can Save the World

Fungi Perfecti Catalog (fungi.com)

(DiscoverMagazine.com, 05-31-13) Crusading mycologist Paul Stamets says fungi can clean up everything... global problems like radioactive waste, global warming, oil spills, and cancer. ...expert collaborating with Stamets to decontaminate the zone around...

(RevolutionLoveEvolve) Underground Solutions: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

An inspiring and fascinating lecture about various ways mushrooms can help heal humanity and the Earth, Stamets expands on themes outlined in his TED Talk "Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World" (Bioneers 2011). He has been a mycologist, one who studies mushrooms, for over 30 years. He has discovered new species and pioneered countless techniques in the field of edible- and medicinal-mushroom cultivation. In 2010 he received the President's Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration. He has written six books on mushroom cultivation, use, and identification; his books Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms and The Mushroom Cultivator (coauthor) have been hailed as definitive texts. His newest book is Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World.

 

How mushrooms can clean up radioactive contamination 

(Permaculture.co.uk, 04-16-11) ...Burning the mushroom will result in radioactive ash.... it's a fascinating proposition and potentially very valuable for radiation decontamination.

Can hemp, marijuana, and mushrooms fix Fukushima?

(CannabisCulture.com, 10-16-13) CANNABIS CULTURE - Certain mushrooms, cannabinoids.... According to one website, "food radiation should not exceed 500 Becquerel/Kg."...Not only are decontamination efforts ineffective, but TEPCO...

 

What is hemp? (hemp.com)

Hemp is a weedy crop, not a drug to smoke.

Hemp is a variety of cannabis grown for fiber and seed. Hemp is incredibly valuable, often called a “cash crop.” Hemp is a very hearty plant and grows very quickly in very diverse soil conditions. Cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes in many civilizations has gone on for over 12,000 years. 

Mushrooms far from Fukushima show high levels of cesium

(ajw.asahi.com, 11-21-12) ...Another problem is that decontamination work in mountainous areas is extremely difficult.... "I also don't want to explain why we can't provide the mushrooms because that could lead to negative publicity that radiation is also a...

A Tale of Two Forests: Addressing Postnuclear Radiation...

(ehp.niehs.nih.gov) They also continue to eat mushrooms, berries, and other local forest foods despite... Radioactive cesium can in some cases be washed or wiped off smooth... The committee concluded there is little need to decontaminate entire forests.

Fukushima radiation threatens to wreak woodland havoc

(JapanTimes.co.jp, 02-17-13) ...However, radiation levels are lower there than they are in some parts of Tokyo; ...Additionally, mushrooms can absorb contaminants from the air or rain if they're... Could the mushrooms be used to decontaminate soils? 

Radiation continues 18 years after Chernobyl

(OrionMagazine.org) Eighteen years after the Chernobyl disaster, radiation continues its deadly work. ...Revisiting the accident "that could never happen here" ...“Yesterday, all afternoon, he picked the mushrooms from the woods..... declaring, “it proved unreal [sic] to fully decontaminate settlements... 

Japan's costly nuclear radiation cleanup may not work

(Nuclear-News.net, 08-16-13) ...The mushrooms that used to provide a livelihood for foragers are... First, there is a risk that radioactive isotopes can return to decontaminated...

The Truth About Hemp (thetruthabouthemp.org)

Hemp is a variation of Cannabis sativa. It is the most useful plant known to humankind. In fact, its name means useful (sativa) hemp (cannabis). Hemp is not "marijuana"; it is not an intoxicating plant like its cousin. Hemp is used to make over 25,000 consumer products from hemp apparel and accessories...