Wide-ranging talks on all things relating to spirituality, meditation, yoga, current affairs, politics and philosophy. contact me via info AT peteyates.uk.
This podcast deals with Chapter 54 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. In this chapter, Lao Tzu once again outlines his meditative method and indicates how it might produce benefits not only to the individual but to several interlocking systems, namely the family, the village, the nation and the world. The benefits arise out of a clarity of seeing which in turn generates a understanding of the processes of psyche and social existence. [Free. 20 minutes.]
In this podcast we playfully and seriously outline our eccentric take on 'Taoist Dialectics'. This entails brief encounters with Plato's The Sophist and Hegel's Logic as well as an engagement with a parable told by Taoist master, Chuang Tzu. We relate all this to personal resilience in these apocalyptic times. [Free. 32 minutes.]
This podcast deals with Chapter 40 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. We concentrate on the amazing relevance this chapter has to our current political, economic and spiritual emergencies. In a few short lines, Lao Tzu diagnoses the condition of the working people of his time as subjection to violent and militarily oriented 'robber barons' whilst they themselves are the creators of value and the necessary goods to sustain life. This is exactly our condition too. Lao Tzu offers a meditation to counter the fragmental [non-holistic, non-systemic thinking] which is the ideological counterpart to a kleptocratic economy. [Free. 29 minutes.]
This episode in our Lao Tzu series deals with Chapter 52 of the Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu discusses the benefit of contemplative alignment with the Tao and the modest comportment it induces. [Free. 15 minutes.]
This podcast deals with Chapter 53 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. We draw out resonances between this chapter and our current state of affairs and explain Lao Tzu's contemplative communism. [Free. 17 minutes.]
In this podcast we discuss Chapter 51 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. This chapter deals with Lao Tzu's vast vision of the cosmos and its origins. We suggest that this vision is acquired through a particular meditation which we recommend as both useful to us collectively in our current situation and as a beautiful and sublime good in its own right for individuals. [Free. 15 minutes.]
This episode of our Lao Tzu series deals with Chapter 50 of The Tao Te Ching. The chapter outlines Lao Tzu's strategy for living well, particularly when it comes to preserving life in the face of the world's dangers. [Free. 19 minutes.]
In this podcast we engage with Chapters 48 and 49 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. These chapters clarify the nature of wu wei or non-doing. [Free. 20 minutes.]
This podcast engages with Chapter 47 of The Tao Te Ching which deals with solitude and meditation. The style of meditation alluded to is a letting be rather than a cultivation and gives rise to an intuitive knowledge, a sense of the bigger picture. We suggest how acquaintance with this wonderful meditation can produce social goods and is sorely needed in these interesting times. [Free. 16 minutes.]
In this podcast, we give a reading of Chapter 33 of the Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu traces the consequences of wide-spread greed on social harmony and peace. [Free. 24 minutes.]
