The principal focus of this podcast episode revolves around the timeless relevance of philosophy, particularly as it pertains to the teachings of Confucius and the broader implications of philosophical inquiry in contemporary life. We delve into the notion that philosophy serves as a warm, guiding light, akin to the sun, illuminating our paths through the complexities of existence. The discussion emphasizes the importance of sincerity and humility in our interactions, drawing from ancient wisdom to enrich our current experiences. Furthermore, we explore the distinction between fate and heaven's destiny, encouraging listeners to recognize their agency in choosing paths that foster personal growth and harmony. Ultimately, this episode invites a contemplative engagement with philosophical principles, urging listeners to consider how these ideas manifest in their daily lives and contribute to a more profound understanding of their own existence.

Takeaways:

• The discussion emphasizes that philosophy, much like the warmth of the sun, remains a relevant and beneficial aspect of our lives, illuminating our understanding of existence.
• Confucius, in his teachings, intended to transmit the wisdom of ancient sage kings, thereby ensuring that their harmonious culture persists in contemporary society.
• The distinction between fate and heaven's destiny serves as a profound reminder that we have the agency to choose our paths, rather than resigning ourselves to predetermined outcomes.
• The conversation highlights the essential qualities of sincerity and humility within Chinese philosophy, suggesting that these attributes foster a harmonious existence.
• Through the lens of fractal geometry, we recognize that patterns of existence repeat across different scales in nature, revealing the interconnectedness of all life forms.
• The podcast ultimately invites listeners to engage with philosophy as a living practice, encouraging them to incorporate its principles into their daily lives for personal and communal growth.

Links referenced in this episode:

• 
  
• theonaut.com
• thewaybetween.substack.com
• 
  
• youtube.com

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host with.

I'm Adam Deeds.

And we are talking about the living conversation.

And you know, you were talking about when you were in China about how there were sometimes people that would complain about studying Confucius saying, oh, he's this old guy.

Why should we study?

And you brought up this idea of the sun being warm.

And I think that's really the intention of what we're doing here is that philosophy is always warm.

Would you say that's true?

Yeah, absolutely.

Say more about that, please.

It's always relevant because it's always good.

Philosophy is always focused on life.

Life is always changing.

But good philosophers are always trying to help us learn how to live our life.

Well, that's the main.

That's the main thing.

And Confucius himself, even himself, he said that he didn't teach anything new, he only transmitted the wisdom sage kings, the ancient sage kings who governed the world with musicians and propriety, the simple method.

And he just wanted to bring the warmth of the ancient sage king's harmonious culture into his own modern times.

I think good philosophers take what is best from all the past and try to transmit it into our times.

That's in daily life.

And you know, this concept, maybe you could speak to this.

This is our heaven's destiny.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, and I really appreciated what Dr. Wu had to say about this, about the difference between fate and heaven's destiny.

And heaven's destiny was something that you turn toward rather than saying, oh, I'm giving up because my life is faded to be X or Y or Z and I don't have any control and no, no choice but heaven's destiny is to say, okay, what seems to be welcoming me?

What seems.

Where do I go to grow the most?

And sometimes that's hard to find because I know for myself I wanted to go back into what I thought I knew.

But that's where the shadow stuff was.

And to go to where I go grow the most, it's what's unfamiliar to me.

But it actually turns out to be the most freeing, actually.

So, for example, I wanted to be a partner who served, and that's where the shadows were.

But where I go to grow the most is to be a pioneer in into transcendent philosophy.

And I've been having a great time about that instead of trying to crawl back into being a partner.

And certainly, you know, I very much appreciate what we're doing here in terms of public philosophy.

And yet I think you would agree with Me, this is an invitation for everyone to begin to consider more even than thinking, but to just get a sense of what it is that you are choosing to bring that to mind.

You know, I also was looking at this.

We talked before we started the show about these.

Abraham, Abrahamic Abraham, who was the founder of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, had these tenants of welcome the stranger, care for the poor, the widow and the orphan.

Be just and fair in your dealing that life is special, to tell the truth, to love thy neighbor, to be humble and to be.

For to forgive others that make errors.

And.

Oh, I just had a thought in it and it.

And it escaped.

I. Oh, okay.

It just came back.

One of the things that really, in our study with Dr. Wu, he said you could break down Chinese philosophy into two terms.

And you remember this?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Sincerity and humility.

Wow, that's easy.

Yeah.

But.

Okay, well, what is sincerity?

And.

Well, what is humility?

And I think didn't Dr. Wu do his dissertation on the study of sincerity, which.

And to translate that sincerity is yang and humility is yin, and we need both.

So didn't Dr. Wu study sincerity?

Yeah, I think his.

His Dr. Yi Wu is our mentor from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Yeah, he's a very prominent philosopher in.

In Chinese language and in Taiwan.

Yeah, in Taiwan.

His dissertation, I think, was Sincerity in the Doctrine of the Mean.

Oh.

He.

Actually, it's a long story.

But, yes, sincerity and humility are his interpretation of Yang energy and yin energy.

So we all know yin and Yang, but how to practice yin and Yang cannot be so abstract.

So we've heard of yin and Yang.

We've seen the Taoist symbol for yin and Yang.

What is Yin and Yang?

First of all, one of the biggest mistakes that the students have a hard time, that many people have a hard time getting past, is that it's not good and evil.

It's just hard.

Right.

Harmony.

Right.

And I think Star wars is another example that kind of twisted this.

The dark side is bad.

But yin and Yang, in Chinese philosophy, yin energy is just the north face of the mountain.

It's just.

It's just fertile, is where everything can grow.

So yin energy is very calm, very soft, dark, receptive.

So we.

And for how to practice, we use humility.

We use humility.

We're very humble.

On the flip side, Yang energy is very strong, very active.

It's the sun, it's growth, it's movement, it's excitement.

So Yang energy for us is that we take our deepest mind, our heart, and we pull it out.

And offer it into this world.

We speak, we act, we move.

This is how to use Yang energy for a human being is to use sincerity, be very sincere toward other people and act and move from that space.

You know, one of the things also for all of us, for those of you who are watching now, and for us who are making this show, it's entirely dependent upon yin and yang.

And I want to also then go back to.

There was a philosopher of European philosopher named Leibniz, and he had Jesuit missionary friends who were very interested in the I Jing, which goes into yin and yang.

And they sent him these texts of the I Ching.

And he looked at this and he said, oh, 1 and 0.

So the Yi Ching is the basis of binary mathematics, which is what our computers use to this day.

Yeah, we're immersed in sincerity and humility.

So anyway, so the principle of the this world.

So one reason why it works is because we follow the principle of this world.

This is like, you know, this Dao from Taoism.

Dao we can't talk about, but Dao can become.

Come into this world like energy.

Chi.

Chi.

We can talk a little more about Qi.

Okay.

And chi has two sides of the same coin.

Yang, Chi and Yinxi.

Okay.

So for people, we could have young, sincere energy or yin, humble energy.

So we practice this just to harmonize this world, to harmonize this life.

When we use these, we enter into harmony with the entire universe.

Right.

The prince of the entire universe.

Everything has a Yang side and a yin side.

Everything has energy.

Well, I. I have to also answer your offering of chi with the idea of li, which is you can't have energy without pattern.

You can't have pattern without energy.

They're two sides of the same thing.

Yes.

And the pattern.

Say more about pattern for our listeners.

Well, my study has been in I. I really love the beauty of chaos.

Theory of complexity.

Science of mantle brought sets and it's organic patterns, it's fractal geometry and fraction.

Fractal.

Fractal geometry means a fractional dimension.

So in very short, there are four dimensions.

A point, a line, a plane and a cube.

But what is a signature?

Is it just a line?

No, it's more than that.

Is it.

Does it cover a whole planar surface?

No, it's.

But it's in between.

And I don't have stuff prepared to show on our conversation today.

But the thing that was so interesting to me was that one of the things and.

And fractal geometry is in recent time was discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot.

Who actually, and I recommend to all of our listeners a Nova Nova special from WGBH in Boston.

You can find it on the Internet, but take a look and search the title.

It's called Hunting the Hidden Dimension and it goes into the establishment of fractal geometry.

But Mandelbrot, when we were just starting to use computers, there would be a terminal where the.

A keyboard, and then it would hook up with a phone line to a big mainframe far away.

And there was noise on the phone lines.

And what Mandelbrot found was that the more he looked at the noise on the phone lines, the more the patterns kept repeating in the same way.

So that's called scale invariance.

But what shocked me was when I started listening or studying the great learning.

That was also scale invariant.

So it has the same patterns at whatever scale you're at.

So if you would save the world, you want to make your town peaceful and make the town peaceful, to make the family peaceful, to make the family peaceful, to make you peaceful.

And how do you become peaceful?

And I translated it to attend and go into the flow state with the patterns of the natural world.

Because then you are at one with everything, as the Buddhists, you know, make me one with everything.

And then you're peaceful.

And that peace radiates out to the family, to the country, to the planet.

And there's a person, there were two people and one of them has passed that has this quality that you can, that's palpable.

And I would invite people to recall.

When you go into a room, you can feel someone's presence like this.

But I'm talking about the Dalai Lama and also Pope Francis.

You could feel their presence, their peaceful quality.

So we're coming to the end.

Do you have any comments on.

On what I just talked about?

Yeah.

After the break, let's look at the Chinese character for.

For pattern and talk about how organic panic shows up in the natural world in different examples.

That's one thing I'm curious about hearing more about after the break.

Okay.

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your host today on the Living Conversation.

This is about public philosophy and I'm my co host.

I'm Adam Dietz and you can contact me@dietzadommail.com d I e t z adammail.com or if you prefer, and you're active on Instagram, I'm at the way between on Instagram.

I'm also on Substack.

The way between on Substack.

That's where almost everything will be filtered through on Substack.

You can also search us up on YouTube but I think those are the best avenues, those first three.

So I really appreciate everyone chiming in.

Please give us any information that you have about how you've been able to protect yourself, cultivate yourself, grow, flourish in these times.

And I'm Anthony Wright and my website is Theon T H E O N A U t dot com and it's A as in Apple, S as in Sam, W as in William, numeral 2n as in Nora, Aris and Robert.

I'll say that again, ASW2nrtheonot.com or you can make a comment directly on my website.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

And we would like to welcome you back to this fourth section.

And this show is about public philosophy.

And I think one of the things you said earlier in the show, Adam, was and, or I don't remember who said it.

It's kind of like I experience and I think you do.

We experience philosophy like the sun.

And would you talk a little bit about this?

When you were in China, somebody said, oh, why should we study Confucius?

It was a story from our mentor.

He, he talked about how one of his friends, one of his friends, sons was complaining about or, or friend of the family or something like that.

Why should we talk about Confucius?

Why should we study Confucius?

It's the same with all good philosophy.

The reason why we study good philosophy is because it can enhance our life right now.

So Confucius, you can still feel the influence of Confucius in daily life today.

Just like even though he lived a long time ago, you can still feel his influence.

Just like even though the sun is very far away, you can still feel its warmth.

This is why, this is why we.

We.

I think you mentioned before Buddha said, try it.

Don't take my word for it, try it.

Yeah, Philosophy is for you, the listener, to experience.

So we want to know your experience.

Maybe you've had many experiences before where philosophy enriched your life.

We want to know.

Or maybe you're trying new ideas, new methods and they're, they're influencing your life very well.

This is wisdom, trial and error.

What works for you?

What worked for Confucius was to have harmony of human beings.

He analyzed and figured out this is what's great for society.

He learned that from the ancient sage kings, all the philosophers.

They examined issues of life and gave ideas of what was the best way to enhance our Life.

This is a good philosophy.

To me, it's really not a luxury.

It's more of the basic food of our.

Of our existence.

You know, it comes natural.

We want to.

We want to do better, we want to learn better, we want to grow, we want to have a better life is the most natural thing there is.

Right.

You know, and I think, just to mention, there was a.

A clip that I have of Deepak Chopra, who is a holistic physician, and he talks about the ontological primitive.

Now, that's a big word, ontological ontos.

And there's two words in philosophy that I talk to my students about.

Ontology and epistemology.

And epistemology is the study of language.

Epistemology and ontology is the study of reality.

And Deepak Chopra spoke about the ontological primitive, which is the basis of reality.

And he said, in the west, the ontological primitive is matter stuff.

Okay?

And yet through that, the quantum physicists are getting more and more and more towards this idea of the cosmos being a quantum field.

And Deepak Chopra spoke about the ontological primitive in the east is that reality is consciousness.

So it's.

One of the places that I've been studying is this idea about the quantum field being the whole cosmos is conscious.

And it shows up as Anthony.

But Anthony isn't separate.

Adam isn't separate.

We're.

And let me offer you.

You had asked before about some ideas from complexity science, and there is this.

I'm going to draw on the whiteboard here a map of Britain.

It's.

It's.

It's not showing up very well.

Let me just.

Okay, that's better.

And the question is, it's.

This is the coastline paradox.

And the question is, how long is the coastline of Britain?

And for those of you listening online, you can follow us along.

And.

Okay, I'm going to measure the coastline of Britain with 100 kilometer rulers.

Okay?

So you see those dotted lines?

Well, why stop at 100 kilometer ruler?

Why not go with a 50 kilometer ruler?

Okay, well, we get more.

Why?

Because the 50 kilometer rulers go into the indentations.

Okay?

So the coastline paradox goes like this.

The shorter the unit of measurement that's used.

So why stop at 50 km?

Why stop at a meter?

Why not go to a micrometer?

So the shorter the unit that is measured, used to measure, the longer gets that which is measured until the unit.

When the unit of measurement reaches zero, that which is measured becomes infinite.

So I offer to you and to my students this idea, this analogy, when we stop making an arbitrary distinction and it's an arbitrary distinction.

This is actually what the Buddha woke up to.

When I stop making an arbitrary, arbitrary distinction between you and me, we become one being.

This idea of separateness is an illusion.

There's Adam Alan Watts talks about a story from 10 Buddhism called the Mosquito buying biting the iron bowl.

The mosquito has to bite and the iron bull can't be bitten.

And it's this idea when we desire something, we separate ourselves from it.

And that that separation is what causes suffering.

It's an illusion.

So that was a tremendous realization for me and it assisted me into going into a flow state because I. I'll tell you another very quick story.

I used to go sit zazen in the, in the Minnesota Zen center with Dan and Katagiri Roshi.

And we would sit, you know, on Wednesday nights and he would talk about the Blue Cliff record and so forth.

But you know, before the, the lecture we would sit dozen.

And I noticed his energy, his body affect.

And it was a of deep calmness.

And then he got done with the sitting.

And in, in Buddhist terms it's called Shikantaza, just sitting.

But then he stopped sitting and then he was giving lecture.

And a very curious thing that I noticed that his energy didn't change.

Then he got done with his lecture and he was up talking amongst the various people in the room.

And by God, his energy didn't change.

Then I had a breakthrough.

He was still meditating.

He was still in the flow state.

There was no separated Katagiri.

So and each of us I propose and I've written about this and it's on my website, goes into the zone every day doing something that we love.

We forget all about ourselves.

To me that we don't value it in the West.

But when we're in that flow state, that's when we are one with everything.

There's no separation.

And to me that's what would be called enlightenment.

Because what, what is it like to have that happen all the time?

Right?

Does this make sense, Adam?

Yeah, I think it makes sense to me.

When I hear that I think of a few things, but the one that comes to mind is Lao to the chapter one, right?

Talks about that there's being and non being.

So I feel like right now what you're talking about is, is the non being.

And those are two sides of the same coin.

Yes, being a non being.

So right now you're talking about non being.

So in non being, how to practice this?

We practice this by letting our mind settle.

When we let our mind settle, then we can Be in non being.

When we are in non being, we Lao Tzu chapter one says we can contemplate the origin of all things.

The mother of all things.

The origin of all things.

Okay, this is non being.

Being is the path of all things.

So being is how Dao comes into this world in a certain path, in a certain direction.

So this is the.

You were talking about the non being that we are all united in non being.

We are also have.

I have my skin, I have myself, I have my face.

So I am one unique manifestation of Dao coming into being.

So this is like two sides of the same coin.

We all have our non being.

We all have our being.

We all have our heavenly nature.

We all have our life.

If we're Confucius, this is like we all have our heavenly nature.

As a human being is humanity.

So we all have humanity.

And then we all have our life, our relationships, how we act, how we enter into this world.

So this entire universe has put Adam in this space to fulfill my set of responsibilities and relationships.

All time and space is uniquely in this atom.

Just like all time and space is uniquely in Anthony.

Just like all time and space is uniquely in every listener.

The only you can massage out and harmonize the.

The events of your life.

Only you can act in your relationships with humanity, loyalty to yourself, empathy towards other people, the practice of humanity, sincerity, humility.

Only you.

That is your destiny of all time and space in that area that only we can fulfill.

Right.

And this is what is the difference between heaven's destiny and fate?

You don't feel swept around, you know, oh, I'm the separate person that the world is against me.

Oh my gosh.

Well, it's real curious.

I.

And.

And I'm experiencing being and non being at the same time.

Good.

So it's outside of time and space anyway.

Yeah, we can.

We can experience in our own mind all of time and space.

We can unite with Dao.

We have.

Everything has Dao in it.

We have Dao in it.

Dao is beyond words.

Tao now is beyond time and space.

We can experience this.

We can experience being and non being.

But that's what happens in the zone.

That's what happens in the flow state.

But I also have to say there is, you know, because I've been looking at this.

Within the flow state, you need ethics and you also need compassion and tranquility, which is this grounded idea, but also a flexibility to allow the awareness to go from the local place of Adam and Anthony to what is the case for being aware of Everyone who's listening or watching, because it's interesting that I can attend to you who are listening and watching as attending in the future.

And I can feel that.

And then, well, why, why would we stop there?

Why not attend to the community and to the country and to the planet and to the cosmos?

But that's this idea of having flexibility at different levels because the patterns repeat.

And again, I want to invite people to take, to check out that Hunting the Hidden Dimension show on nova.

It's about an hour, but you won't regret seeing it.

But it really does play into my study and it sounds like into your study also.

Adam of Chinese philosophy, before we're done here, do you have any final words for our listeners for this time?

Well, two things.

One, my final thought on this topic is that this word earlier principle is that we are all a pattern of how the dao has come into existence.

This character, Chinese character, is like the veins on jade or the branches of a tree.

All nature follows has this pattern.

So before, before Anthony was talking about fractal pattern.

So we can see this in nature.

This is like the dao has entered into the chat.

The dao has entered into the, into the world in this way, in this pattern.

This is the character Lee.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and so that, that's my one final thought about what we've been discussing today.

And I just want to continue to encourage everyone to make this the living conversation.

Right?

That means it's not a living conversation if it doesn't enter into life.

Our mentor talked about how philosophy needs to be in practice.

Philosophy needs to be entered into daily life.

So we should all hopefully be looking at our daily life.

How, how is wisdom entry into our life in our daily life?

So we would love to hear from you in any format you can find.

You can find me online in many, so many different social media areas, mostly under the way, between on TikTok, YouTube, shorts, Instagram, basically everything.

The main platform that I mostly use is substack.

So you find me there.

But the reason why I mentioned that is because we want this to be the living conversation.

So we want to know how these things are entering into all of our lives.

What things?

You know, the more experience we can look at and examine a philosophy, the more alive the conversation will be.

Does this make sense?

Does this make any sense to you guys who are listening?

Do you guys and ladies, please let us know.

And I'm on theonaut.com T-H-E-O-N-A-U-T.com and there is a comment section there.

So please, please let us know how it, how it goes.

Well, thank you so much for attending.

I'm Anthony Wright.

And I'm Adam Dietz.

And we have been having the living conversation.

We'll see you next time.

Sa.