Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: Lao Tzu

to Tom's work because idling. This philosophy that we should devote time to not being productive, is something I find super hard to do. When I sat down with Tom for an episode called for Whom the Alarm Clock Tolls, I was struck by the fact that his fear of overwork informs the entire way he sees the world. Take Tom's view on the novelist George Orwell. Many of us think of Orwell for his warnings about political repression, but

Tom focuses on a different tyranny, an animal farm. We had the example of the horse boxer, who, when faced with a problem, work harder, work harder, until he works himself into an early grade. He's taken off to the glue factory. Now that to me is that's a warning. Since talking to Tom last season, I've thought more and more about the importance of idling when life gets stressful. My temptation is always to be like Boxer and just

do more. I mean, these days everyone talks about being fully committed or redoubling your efforts or giving one hundred and ten percent. It can feel like heresy to say, you know what, I might be happier doing a bit less. But as I was gathering ideas for this series on the Ancients, I realized that Tom's plea for more idling fits well with the teachings of an important ancient Chinese philosopher, Loutsa. Lotza argued that we should look to nature for our

happiness inspiration. While we often talk about putting in one hundred and ten percent, Latsa thought that the sweet spot was much less. He thought we should live life at about so welcome to Happiness Lessons of the Ancients with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. When you think about the wisdom of the ancients, Lautza is exactly the sort of philosopher that comes to mind. His Daoist ideas are the very antithesis

of our hectic twenty four seven modern culture. Instead of the ping of calendar alerts and smartphone notifications and the hurry and rush and demands and deadlines, Daoism is about calm and quiet and steadiness, like the waters of a broad river running slowly through a wooded valley. Part of why I think of Taoism is such a calming influence is that I first learned about it on the inside time or meditation app when I was listening to Solala

Tower's course called Tao Principles for a Prosperous Life. Thou that can be spoken is not the true and eternal Dao. Names that can be named are not the true and eternal names. Just hearing Salala makes me relax and unclenched from the stresses of my life. Non being is the origin of heaven and earth. Being is the mother of

the ten thousand beings. Juan Wu. So I thought I'd reach out and ask him to be our final guest on this season of happiness Lessons of the Ancients, and to guide us all through Lutz's work and the story

of Taoism. It's at least five thousand years old, and it was developed slowly over time, and the most important and famous book from Taoisms that thou Ching, was written by a character named Laotze, and today it is the second most widely translated book in the world after the Bible, so basically it's been a best seller for twenty five hundred years. Lautsa talks a lot about the different between head knowledge or intellectual knowledge, and belly knowledge, gut knowledge,

and that he really emphasizes gut knowledge overhead knowledge. And so Daoism actually contributed an enormous amount to what we think of today is Chinese culture. Things like meditation, fung hui chi gong taiji, Daoist yoga called Daoian painting, calligraphy, music, all these kinds of things Chinese medicine have their roots

in Daoism. And for many many years, Daoism was more what we call a philosophy what today is called dao ja And then about six hundred years after Laotz's book, a Daoist religion was formed called dao Joe, and today in China there are many temples and priests and nuns and liturgy, but I think for most people in the West who are interested in Daoism are more interested in what we call the dao Ja or the philosophical Taoism, which incorporates these practices like chigong in meditation and really

basically advice on how to live a prosperous and happy life. And so one of the interesting things about the Doubt teaching is that Lautza, the author isn't really a particular person, right. Historians argue about this. Scholars argue about this all the time. Traditionally in China is believed that one guy, by the way, is not his actual name. Lautsa means the old master, and the character for master also means child, so sometimes you'll see his name translated as the old child or

the old boy. But the story is that he was a high official in the court and the Joe dynasty and saw that China was entering what historians called the Warring States period and society was basically falling apart. He decided to drop out, and he was on his way out to the wilderness of western China when the last gatekeeper before the Worlderness implored him to please write down some of his teachings and the story is that he

didn't want to do that. Once you take the story or the teaching and imprison it on the page, then it doesn't get to change. Solusa finally came around to writing this very short book, but the very first line of the book says, the Tao that can be written about or spoken about or put in a little box

is not the real Tao. So I think it's fascinating that the very first line of the book is telling us that what you're going to read in this book is not the real Tao, but hopefully my words will point towards something that you can use in your life. I think one of the cool things about the Tao is that it's about kind of how we behave in life. But in some ways the Tao is interesting because mostly a focus on how we shouldn't be behavioring or what we should not be doing. Right. Yeah, it's you know.

One of the main principles of Daoism is called uwei, which translated directing into English, means not doing, But what it means is not overdoing, not overextending, not trying to force things to happen, and really just being sensitive enough to the currents of life that you can position yourself so things can naturally be created and can naturally flow. And so this seems to be part of a broader concept because the idea of uway, as I understand it, is it's really kind of tied to going along with

nature to some important sense. Right, Yes, yes, Traditionally daoisto

felic nature is the best teacher. It was until much later centuries that more emphasis was put on texts, but originally it was about living in nature and observing nature and finding a way for us to flow in what we call the watercourse way, so that instead of trying to push against the currental of the time and force things to happen and be so upset and sad and depressed when things don't seem to be happening the way we wish they were, we can be okay with how

things really are working, and we can find our way to enter that current of dao so that what we create, what we experience in our life is something that is very healing and very natural. The term in Daoism for an enlightened person or a self realized person is general, which means authentic person. So people who are authentically themselves, who know who they are authentically and then can express themselves authentically. That's considered a very high level person. In Daoism.

We don't look to some sort of personalized deity to free ourselves. We need to find a way to free ourselves by ourselves. And one feature of that freedom seems to be like not going to the extreme, like not pushing yourself past your natural boundaries, or not pushing yourself to the point of burnout. But what's interesting is I feel like this is really countercultural right now, Like you know, it feels like everyone in modern culture is kind of

pushing themselves past the breaking point. But that was almost explicitly prohibited, right Yes. In Thaism, we have this tradition of eighty percent, never eat until you're more than eighty percent, don't push yourself or work especially physically or even on the computer, really beyond eighty percent of your capacity, because the more you stuff yourself with food that you can't digest, the more hours you spend on the computer or even in a physical labor job, the easier you burn out.

And that was him in Chinese culture in general really respects the long life and these practices that we do, these Chee goong and meditation practices are called long life practices, and that seems to fit with one of the passages you talked about a lot in your Insight time or course. I think the passage was something like, it's better to leave a vessel unfilled than to attempt to carry it when it's full. Kind of walk me through this analogy, because I think it seems to get at this idea

of not going overboard. Well, on one side, it's overfilling a vessel. Things end up just spilling everywhere. So trying to overfill your life by putting too many activities, extending yourself in too many different directions, then you end up actually losing energy. Where if you keep to a more sort of middle way, you can get things done but

you don't burn out. And people think, well, if I just keep going longer and longer and longer and get this project better and better and better, and then when they're finally done, often they just collapse, or they may even collapse before the project is even done. So we want to keep a balance. This is the whole Yeen young thing, you know, the balance of young energy, which is very expansive, fiery outward projecting energy and yeen energy,

which is very inward RESTful kind of energy. That we find a way to balance those two so we're not either going too far out or we're not pulling back too much. And this can vary from person to person, because some people are more fiery and can go out in the world and get a lot done, or other people are more reflective and may even compare themselves with the other person and say, look how much they're doing and I'm not getting anything done. There must be something

wrong with me. That was really respects that everyone has their own way of being and doing in the world. And also sometimes we need to move in a young direction to get projects done, and then other times we need to be more reflective. And this can happen over years, days, or even in one day. Yeah, I think another one of the passages that speaks to this, those who stand on tiptoe don't stand firm, and those who rush ahead

don't go far. Yeah. If the metaphors, you're standing on tiptoe so that you can seem taller and bigger and better than other people, but you can easily lose your balance that way, and someone who's rushing forward to try to get ahead of everyone. They also lose energy. The Daoists talk about leading from behind the teacher, the high level teacher, and dodging is described as the person who

teaches without words. And the one other phrase that I love is the sage returns people to their childlike hearts. And so talk a little bit about this childlike idea because I think that's so important, especially since Lutza in some ways mean like a master child in some sense, right yeah, old child. Loud means old and it means master or a child, So sometimes his name is translated

as the old boy or the old child. And of course he talks, just like in the Bible when they talk about becoming as a child to enter the kingdom, talks and drunk. So who's the next most important teacher after Lautza? About having those childlike qualities of joy, of flexibility, of excitement, excitement about learning new things, experiencing new things, He says, when the plant is young, it is very flexible and can bend. But as the plant gets old,

it gets dry and brittle and breaks easily. And as we age, it is very important to keep that childlike feeling, that flexibility of a new plant, so that as we get older in our bodies, in our hearts, and especially in our minds, we don't start shutting down and becoming brittle and dried up, so that we keep that excitement of adventure in her life throughout our life. And this is so perfect because it really connects with what the modern science is saying about how to stay happier right now.

In the happiness science work, there's a lot of emphasis on what's called time affluence, right, just this idea that we feel like bountiful in time, like really wealthy in time. And it seems like that's exactly what the Tao is really suggesting that by going with nature, by not trying to squeeze too much in, you get back some free time, and that that in and of itself might be the key to happiness. Yes, another big concept in a doubt uching is about an empty vessel. The cop or bowl

is useful because of its emptiness. If it was just a solid block of wood or clay, it wouldn't be useful, justlike the openings or windows and doorways are so useful and it's really in their emptiness that makes them useful and special. But it's so hard to stop sometimes that you think I'll just do a little more, and suddenly you collapse and have to take a whole week off, or if you had gone slower, you might have been

a little or through the whole week. And this childlike heart, I think is a real key to happiness in Dellism. You know that idea that the more we keep ourselves open to learning new things, to experiencing new things without judgment or criticism, but just seeing where is this going

to go? Where is this going to take me? You know, a lot of us have the experience in our life and you know this is almost a cliche, but people get sick, they get in a terrible car accident, they get cancer, they get very close to death's door, and when they come through that, they suddenly have a whole new lease on life and they suddenly are enjoying and feeling exuberant about things that they never perhaps even paid attention to before. And the idea is that we don't

have to go to death's door. We don't have to get cancer, or have a terrible accident or have some really traumatic thing happened to us. We can decide right now that we're going to follow that path, the path of lease, resistance of the flow, the watercourse way, and we're going to keep that innocent air about us, the innocent childlike nature, because we all have it, but it's

suppressed as we grow older and older. Right, that's actually a wonderful transition, because I think one of the things we want to discuss next is how we can get back that flow to life, how we can follow the water course way. And we'll do that when the happiness lad returns in a moment. Lots of metaphors get thrown around to tell us how to act when life inevitably gets tough. We might get told to be aggressive like

a wild animal and sink our teeth in. We might be told to take on the resilient qualities of steel and to become hard as nails. Daoism uses a very different metaphor, one that's a lot gentler. Daoism tells you to be more like water. The waterway path or the water course way is how to find yourself in the flow of what the flow naturally is, and that flow can change from time to time, from day to day, from moment to moment even and so how do we know what the flow is and where can we find

our place in that flow. And over the centuries, the Daoists have created these practices like chegong, different kinds of meditation, and we call them self cultivation practices because it's like we're planting a garden, and we're planting these seeds of what we want to accomplish, of who we want to be and how we want to express ourselves in the world, and then we tenderly tend these sprouts as they grow up into beautiful plants, perhaps even trees, and then we

get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. And in self cultivation practice, it's not that someone is going to tell you what to do, so we have to find what works for us and not compare ourselves to others. And that seems to really get at this idea of the water course way right, because water is constantly moving, right like, it's never kind of stopped and it's achieved its goal. It's kind of constantly moving, and it's kind of constantly moving into places that some people might reject,

right exactly. And not only that, but sometimes say the water is coming downstream and we're sort of floating merrily along with the water of our life and suddenly we hit a beaver dam or a log or something something that stops the water. Now, just like we're that person or where that water. We can get very upset and we can try to bash your way through the obstruction, but that way we lose a lot of energy and we don't get anything done. We may even harm ourselves.

And the idea is when we feel we're in an obstruction, the best thing to do is be quiet and wait, because eventually that water is going to rise and go over the obstruction. And so the less energy we spend trying to bash your way through it, and the more we are quiet and just let the energy grow of itself. There's a termin Taoism called curan, which means something that

occurs spontaneously, sometimes translated as of itself. So and not only will I be happier doing that, but I will if not being more successful, at least being good with what is instead of what we wish was. And that seems like part of the thing that we're using this water course way a metaphor to explain, right, this is this idea that water just kind of deals with whatever circumstances it finds itself in. Right, Yes, if it's a you know, put it in a round container, it becomes round,

and a square container becomes square. It just does so naturally, and it doesn't lose anything of its real nature. You can freeze it, you can boil it, you know, you can put salt in it. The water always retains its own nature. Just like when we find ourselves in a square container or a situation that we're not that comfortable in,

we can find a way to flow with that. We can find a way to take whatever shape we need to in that moment and still remain authentically ourselves, just like water remains itself no matter what condition it's in. And of course we know that water very patiently and slowly over time can carve through mountains and create the Grand Canyon. So Lautsa says, there's nothing softer than water. But through perseverance, through patients, it can cut its way

through rocks. And it's a way that we can deal with the obstructions in our life by remaining authentically ourself, and over time, and sometimes it takes more time than we wish it would, we can actually not only get through or over or around that obstruction, but become even

stronger for it. And I love this part of the metaphor in particular because I think, you know, again with sort of modern eyes, sometimes when you think of some substance like water that's very yielding, that's very flexible, you can assume it's very weak, right like you can assume it's not very powerful. And we want to be powerful in our lives, you know, we want to carve good things for ourselves. But I think the Daoist way suggests that, you know, sometimes the way you carve those good things

is not through fighting against the tide. It's through kind of going with the flow and persistence. Sometimes you can reach a state of what the Buddhists call enlightenment or

what the Daoist called entering dao. It can happen just in a moment, in a flash, and people may think, wow, how did that happen so quickly, But it's because of all those years or perhaps even lifetimes of persistence that you have been building your energy, your understanding over the less time that finally you reach that precipice, like the

water going over a giant waterfall. It's just like, you know, the Beatles were so famous, right one day they were just the Beatles and famous and accomplished and rich, and didn't talk about all the years they played in these horrible dives in Hamburg in Germany, and all the little funky gigs they did for many, many years all over Liverpool, all over England. And so sometimes we see someone and become famous and we go, wow, where do they come from?

But it's really because we are consistent and patient. You

know what. My teacher watching Ni says that the high is built on the low, and that when we're in that spot in her life where nothing seems to be getting accomplished, where we feel like we're just not getting anywhere and we're not getting ahead, certainly, and we might get frustrated with that naturally, of course, but to understand that suddenly you see things, you understand things in a different way, and why not start right now where you are,

right now, right here, in this very moment, we have all the power we need to free ourselves from the chains of bondage that culture and various religions and society and teachers and political parties have put us in. And realize that we are already enlightened beings. We are Buddhists, We are the people who are authentically are cells, and why don't we start experimenting with how to embrace that and show that to the world. And so I wanted to touch on how following the Huwai has worked in

your own life. You know you're a practicing Daoist, right, I mean, how has this how's this philosophy changed how you live and how happy you are? Very good question. I use that principle in my life. You know, when I'm writing books, when I'm recording music, when I'm teaching. Right now, you know, the whole world has changed. And

I used to travel around the country teaching chigong. I used to take tours of groups of people to China and go way up in the mountains and work with the Daoists and the holy people in the mountains, the hermits who live in caves and things like that. And now I'm doing it all through Zoom. So in a way, it calls upon my ability to be flexible and to

not get frustrated. I can't actually go to the mountains of China, but what I can do is remember what I learned in the mountains of China, what I experience varience there, and bring that into my life and not feel like I'm losing anything. I can apply this principle of not over extending, not standing on tiptoe, not forcing things to happen. You know, I went through my own cancer journey last year, and anyone who's been through that

nose it's a very life changing experience. But even in the midst of it, before surgery and that, I had a feeling in myself that who I really was was going to be okay. No matter what happened to my body, I was going to be okay. So I think that's a little bit of what we're talking about. And of

course in relationship that's a big issue too. Is that more important to you to be right or to have harmony in your relationship in your life, not trying to force your opinions your judgments on someone else, being open to listening to them. Using another very important Dallas principle of going slowly, especially if you're in a difficult conversation, speak slowly and listen slowly, so that you're not sitting there listening to the other person, but half of you

is just thinking about what you're going to say. As soon as they stop talking, they all work together. That's the thing. Uway, watercourseway flexibility going slowly. They all work together. It's like a band, right. We had John, Paul, Ringo and George and they all work together and they had a special kind of magical synergy that is still moving people fifty years later. So why don't we do that in our life? Why don't we become the directors of our own life movies and the writers of our own

scripts of our life? And sometimes in the movie, things aren't going well for the hero and you were wondering, how's he going to get out of it this time, although most of the time you know the hero is going to get out of it somehow, but you don't know how. So when something really tragic or difficult happens in your life, instead of going, oh my god, what's going to happen to me? Now, you can instead with that sort of childlike thing, I wonder how I'm going

to get out of it this time? And I wonder what this is going to lead to? Because so many really challenging things in our life lead to really wonderful things. So instead of just being depressed and scared and frustrated, more like, hmm, I'm really interested to see where this is going to lead me and what good is going to come out of this? I can't wait to see it.

And this fits with so many of the things that we've talked about on this podcast, sort of first reframing hard tasks as this kind of game, as this sort of challenge in this sort of childlike way. But it also fits with something that we see in the research, which is this phenomena of post traumatic growth, this idea that you know, hard times don't necessarily always cause post traumatic stress. Sometimes they can cause a lot of growth. Right.

They can make us recognize what's meaningful in life, they can make us stronger, we don't sweat the small stuff. And it seems like the Daoists we're kind of onto this notion that the tough times are really the good builder times. We should be excited when we experience them. Yes, exactly, when you're working out, when you're trying to build muscles, what you're essentially doing often is stressing those muscles and sometimes even tearing them a little bit so that when

they grow back together, they grow back together stronger. So, just like the experiences in our life are frustrating or challenging, we can understand that this is going to help me become stronger if we have an open attitude about it. If we just decide the world is against us, my body's against me, all my relationships are against me, then you don't have that post trauma growth. You have more

of the post drama stress. Another one of the Daoist principles that again doesn't seem to fit with modern culture is this idea that we should be going slowly rather than speeding up and racing to get everywhere. It's like slowness that's going to help us. It does seem, and it certainly is true that the world historically, culturally, even politically,

is moving faster and faster and faster. You know, when people used to just walk or they might have ridden a horse, the first thing they got on a train that was going thirty miles an hour, they were just hanging on to their seats like, oh my god, we're

going so fast. We were just going to explode. The idea is, when you're presented with this warlist going faster and faster and faster, the way to counter it, to be more healthy, to be happier, really is to find a way to slow yourself down at least part of the time. In Chinese the phrases manzo manzomi's go slowly. And years ago I had a group in China and we were going to a temple called Chinschunshan, and I like that temple a lot because you can't just drive there.

You have to hike up many, many many stairs through the forest to get to the temple. And we had these porters who were carrying luggage and things, and sometimes even people. They have little chairs that put you in and they'll carry you up there. And I was kind of going along the path and just kind of trudging up without thinking about it too much, and I would have to keep stopping to catch my breath, and finally

one of the porters looked at me. He just said manzo manzo, and even though I had not heard that term before, it was easy to understand what he meant. By going more slowly, I wouldn't have to stop more often, and I would actually get further with less effort and perhaps even quicker. And in China, in the old days, when you were saying goodbye to someone, nowadays they say zeigen, which is basically like bye, but they would say manzo, which means go slowly away from me. You don't hear

that as often. But last time I wasn't China. I was in a train station and I went into a little store to get some water, and I was like charging out the door, and suddenly the woman in the store yelled out, Manzo, Manzo, and it like stopped me in my tracks, and I realized I really did have enough time to get to the train. I don't have

to rush so much. So if we can live our life that way, with this idea of go slowly, listen slowly when we're about to run out the door, most accidents happen when people are moving too quickly right and not in their center, not grounded and rooted. When we do our chiegoing practice, for instance, we always do a grounding rooting practice so that we feel we are connected to the living earth, that we are sending roots like a tree from the bottom of our feet way down

into the earth. So when we start moving and doing our form, we are still grounded and rooted. And the more you can do just that grounding rooting practice, very simple practice, you can move through the world in a much more graceful, more of a dancerly way, and you can live your life. Instead of being in a rut, you are in a groove, which is something quite different. So many of these Daoist principles are, as you mentioned, like thousands of years old, and it seems like more

than ever, we're not living by them. Do you think we'd all be a little bit happier if we could embrace a bit more of the wuway? Yes, of course. That's how do I try to live my life. And I just turned seventy years old and my partner, Shanti is sixty nine. You know, our thirty one year old roommate, She said, You know, you guys are seem younger than a lot of my friends because we still have that sense of joy. We dance with each other, and the

more you can dance with life. When you're in a rut, it's like you're in a canyon and you can't see either side because of the walls of the canyon. But when you're in a groove, it's like you're dancing through the mountains, through the deserts. And when you're dancing, most people feel happier. They feel a sense of joy when they're dancing, right, no matter if they feel you're not a good dancer. I'm a clunky dancer. You're embarrassed about it. You may only do it in the privacy of your

own home. But the more we can feel that sense of grace, that sense of joy, that sense of excitement in life, I think, the happier and healthier we will all be. And why not use these principles that have stood the test of time right for thousands of years. Why not incorporate them into our life. And we don't have to change our religion to be a Daoist, you know, we don't have to change whatever spiritual path on. We can just apply these principles to our life and see

how they work in ourselves. Don't just read the book, don't just listen to my words. Try to apply these ideas to your own life and see how that affects your life. That seems like a perfect thought on which to end this mini season of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients. Over the last few episodes, we've heard about a ton of new happiness practices once developed over thousands of years of human history. Learning about these insights doesn't mean you

have to totally upend your normal life. Instead, take a gentler, more Taoist approach. You can experiment, maybe prioritize a bit more forgiveness, but start small. Forgive yourself for something and just see how it feels. Or maybe try to observe a mini secular Shabbat rest and reflect for a few hours, but don't feel like you have to make it a whole day. Or devise a fun new social ritual, start a monthly coffee meet up with a friend, or schedule

a no phones family movie night. Or when some annoying obstacle crops up in your life, remember Salala's advice and ask what would a river do. We're already working hard on the next full season of the show, and we'll be back with you this summer, So until then, stay happy and thank you for listening to The Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show was mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was composed by

Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the entire Pushkin crew, including Neil La Belle, Carlie Migliori, Heather Fane, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and meat doctor Laurie Santos People