My Daoist teacher introduced me to the non-conceptual space that has always been here, regardless of my aims, skills, emotions, or ideas.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t give me any new aims or skills or ideas.<\/p>\n
He used the Dao De Jing as a vehicle for transmitting the teaching, but what he was transmitting was not really captured in the words of the text in the way a scholar might look for understanding.<\/p>\n
It was a wordless teaching, free of any dogma\u2013 although there was a requirement for daily practice to participate in his group, beyond this threshold of showing up, there was no \u201cshould\u201d and no \u201cmust\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaozi\u2019s teaching isn\u2019t about how we should be, it\u2019s how we actually are.\u201d\u00a0 His students always left his home silent and calm, with a full belly and no desires.\u00a0 No pressure and no spiritual aspirations.<\/p>\n
Such fertile ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My Daoist teacher introduced me to the non-conceptual space that has always been here, regardless of my aims, skills, emotions, or ideas.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t give me any new aims or skills or ideas. He used the Dao De Jing as a vehicle for transmitting the teaching, but what he was transmitting was not really captured … Continue reading “No Should, No Must”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}