Blog
Sitting in meditation as done in Zuo Wang (Sitting and Forgetting) there’s really little to depend upon. I think this is why most people acquire real doubts about practicing meditation. We can go to many types of workshops and seminars to learn various things that seem to have some aspect of a tangi...
In Taoism, life and death, or mortality and immortality, are one and the same. Mortality is immortality and immortality is mortality, just as life is death and death is life.
Taiji Symbol
In the Taiji (Yin-Yang) symbol it can be seen that death (the small dark circle) exists within life (the large...
For a long time now I’ve been wanting to tell this Taoist story about a young girl who wanted to learn Taoist magic and become an immortaless. It really has good advice about self-cultivation of Taoism and goes like this:
In the province of Sichuan there was a very rich man, who had a young daughte...
By Stuart Alve Olson
In Taoist Internal Alchemy texts, Xing (性) and Ming (命) are very important concepts. These two terms have varying definitions within Taoist texts, causing some confusion for those studying Internal Alchemy. In the simplest definition, Xing is a reference to our Nature, our mind...
By Stuart Alve Olson
In the Zhuang Zi, a parable tells about how after a visit to Tiaoling Park one day, Zhuang Zi felt as though he had lost himself completely. The events leading up to this started when he first encountered a very large bird, with a seven foot wingspan, and very large eyes.
The bi...
Translation © 2023 by Stuart Alve Olson
These translations of the Scripture on Tao and Virtue by Lao Zi (道 德 經 著 老 子) include the rare commentary by Taoist Immortal Bai Yuchan (白 玉 蟾, 1194–1229 CE), more popularly called the Jade Toad Immortal. Bai Yuchan was the fifth patriarch of the Southern Sch...
The older I get the more I find myself confronted with the incidences of death—family, friends, and acquaintances passing from this world appears unrelenting.
With Covid, collectively we’ve had a heightened awareness of death over the last year and some months, and many of us have lost loved ones t...
竹 林 七 賢
Zhu Lin Qi Xian
The Seven Sages (or Worthies) of the Bamboo Grove were a group of third century CE Taoist scholars, writers, and musicians who opposed Confucianism, adhering to the philosophies of Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi. Their history and story is really well told in this remarkable film prod...
