Episodes

Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
LAO TZU 46
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
In this podcast we consider Chapter 59 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. This deals with the theme of simplicity of being as being at the heart of both meditation and the leadership qualities of the sage. [Free. 16 minutes.]

Thursday Feb 24, 2022
INSECURITY IN OUR TURBULENT TIMES
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
This podcast is a wide-ranging consideration of individual, psychological insecurity and material, collective insecurity and the relationship between them. We make our observations in the context of current events, especially the war in Ukraine, global warming, and financial meltdown, whilst drawing on inspiration from process philosophers like the Buddha, Heraclitus, Whitehead, Watts, Nietzsche, Marx and Lao Tzu. We draw on a brief discussion of the sublime and the beautiful to help us identify the emancipatory comportment to our intrinsic vulnerability and mortality. [Free. 50 minutes.]

Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
LAO TZU 44
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
In this podcast we discuss Chapter 57 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. In this chapter, Lao Tzu extols the virtues of wu wei, non-doing, when it is employed by sage leaders. The question of the tendency for all governments to do things which are inimical to the flourishing of the people haunts this discourse and we tease out the resonances this has with a wide variety political philosophies. [Free. 23 minutes.]

Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
LAO TZU 43
Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
In this podcast, we discuss Chapter 56 of The Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu advises us of our orientation to life, advising quietly recognising our connectedness with others. [Free. 9 minutes.]

Tuesday Dec 07, 2021
LAO TZU 42
Tuesday Dec 07, 2021
Tuesday Dec 07, 2021
In this podcast, we consider Chapter 55 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching in which the cognitive innocence and perceptual freshness of the child is evaluated and lauded. [Free. 17 minutes.]

Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
LAO TZU 41
Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
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.]

Sunday Sep 05, 2021
TAOIST DIALECTICS
Sunday Sep 05, 2021
Sunday Sep 05, 2021
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.]

Thursday Aug 26, 2021
LAO TZU 40
Thursday Aug 26, 2021
Thursday Aug 26, 2021
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.]

Thursday Jul 01, 2021
LAO TZU 39
Thursday Jul 01, 2021
Thursday Jul 01, 2021
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.]

Sunday Jun 06, 2021
LAO TZU 38
Sunday Jun 06, 2021
Sunday Jun 06, 2021
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.]