The Dao of Nature & The Nature of Dao Podcast

Yesterday one of my daughters and I went for a walk in Wolsfeld Woods, land managed by the state of Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources. It’s part of the Scientific and Natural Areas program. Located in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, it’s one of the best remaining examples of Big Woods forest community in the area, mainly mature maple and basswood forest. It’s a beautiful time of year to be out as the leaves are beginning to change. It’s peak color right now up on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and here in the Twin Cities, we’re still a week or two away.

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The forest sparkled with gold as the dappled sunlight filtered through the light green, yellow, and orange leaves and shone on the occasional treasure on the forest floor. It’s a good time for mushrooms after the drop in temperature and some recent rains, and the forest didn’t disappoint with a variety of fungus for us to marvel at. Golden scalycap mushrooms greeted us around several turns and my daughter, ever watchful, noticed some tiny purple mushrooms on the forest floor.

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These tiny little purple mushrooms are just the kind of thing we may fail to notice when we walk in the woods with an agenda to reach a certain destination on a schedule or spend the time lost in thought or absorbed in our phones instead of absorbed in our surroundings.

As Heidi Barr put it in a poem, (Times Are Urgent We Must Slow Down, haikus in service to downshifting)

Decrease speed enough

To be able to look down:

Notice fairytales.

Mindfulness Practice:

What becomes real when you’re here

embodied and true?

We can easily miss the miraculous if we aren’t present.

Mindfulness

Much has been made in recent years of the practice of mindfulness. Sometimes wrapped in Buddhist garb or stripped of all historical and cultural elements and packaged as a business-friendly productivity booster, it is a universal spiritual practice. All faith traditions encourage paying attention, taking care, and minding one’s thoughts, words, and actions. This is also true of Daoism. Whatever type of practice we are engaging in as we cultivate the Dao (xiudao 修道), we always endeavor to do so in a mindful manner.

Mindfulness has two dimensions. The first is the one most familiar today.

Presence

Mindfulness is often framed as “a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment.” Many readers will know it through the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), or through the writings of Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who may be more responsible than anyone else for introducing the miracle of mindfulness to the modern world. His gathas, or “mindfulness verses,” grew out of traditional Zen monastic training in the Middle Ages, a practice also shared by Daoist monastics. These short prayers or poems redirect our awareness from our busy, chattering internal dialogue back to the sacred nature of the here and now, the timeless dimension of the present moment. As one medieval Daoist text has it, “To think of the spiritual and be mindful of the Dao is a remedy.” (思神念道爲一藥)

In The Hundred Remedies of the Tao I wrote,

This remedy lies at the heart of them all. If we turn our minds to the spiritual and remain mindful throughout our day, the Dao will begin to infuse our lives. Our lives will become more joyful, we’ll find an increased sense of gratitude and contentment, and we’ll experience an ease and lightness in all we do.

Now this isn’t to say we won’t have challenging events in our lives. The change won’t necessarily come in the events of our lives, in the things that happen to us, but in how we experience and respond to them. Although we may find that once we begin responding differently to events, it may seem like there is less drama. As we discussed previously, we will still have problems, but we may no longer have a problem with our problems, so to speak.

We may find that instead of a kneejerk type of reaction to things, we are able to experience things with a new sense of spaciousness and tranquility which we may not have been aware of before. We may find that our emotions are less chaotic and reactionary and that we can look at things with more clarity and insight and respond to them more appropriately. In many cases this may mean not responding to them at all. We can simply brush them off and keep moving.

Sishen (思神) means to think of the sacred, the spiritual, or even gods or spirits. Nian (念) can mean to think of, keep in mind, or even to recite or chant, as in chanting the scriptures. In Buddhist usage it most commonly refers to mindfulness and is also used this way in Daoist sources.

Often just bringing ourselves back to the present can be a remedy to what ails us, whether we are ruminating about the past, stressing about the future, or torturing ourselves with endless “what ifs.” Whether we have lost touch with those around us and feel disconnected, or are dwelling on abstract “problems” that don’t actually exist in the here and now, when we remember to think of the spiritual and are mindful of the Dao in our daily lives, many of our perceived problems simply fade into insignificance. We return to our true selves, at least momentarily, and when we continue this practice of returning, moment by moment, day by day, we find ourselves on the path, walking in the footsteps of the sages. That being said, we also have actual problems which need our attention, as individuals, as communities, societies, and nations. But here again, when we are able to bring our full attention and awareness to addressing these problems, seeing them more clearly and responding from a place of compassion and not from egotism or negative emotional states, we can be more effective at returning to harmony.

Remembrance

The second dimension is often forgotten in contemporary iterations of the idea: to remember. What are we to remember? Yes, to remain aware of the present moment, but also to remember the values which inform our practice. This is what actually makes spiritual practice what it is. Mindfulness meditation or any other practice needs to be grounded in the values and worldview of the tradition, or else it is simply a hodgepodge of spiritual hobbies, a collection of “hacks” which do not necessarily lead anywhere. This is the danger of spiritual materialism, of being a spiritual tourist, trying a little of this and a little of that and never really getting anywhere. When we remember the worldview and foundational principles of our chosen path, it grounds us, keeps us honest, and gives us at least a general lay of the land. In Buddhist practice these might be wisdom and compassion, or the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. In Daoist practice they might be the three treasures of Chapter 67 of the Daode jing, compassion, frugality, and humility, along with some of the basic ingredients of the Daoist worldview: yin and yang, the Five Phases, and jing, qi, and shen.

Remembrance also means calling to mind the instructions we have received from our teachers, the understanding we have gleaned from the scriptures, the insights gained in meditation, and any other pointers we have received along the way. The recitation of mantra in Buddhism and Hinduism, and the equivalent Daoist practice of shenzhou (incantation) recitation, can also be part of this recollection.

Mindful Verses: Uniting the Two

Mindful verses bring the two dimensions together. A verse recalls us to the present moment while also reminding us of what matters. Throughout Daoist history there have been many forms of them. Some are sacred in and of themselves, as with shenzhou, where, as with the mantras of Buddhism and Hinduism, the very sound is considered sacred. Others are lines of scripture, or prayers, affirmations, auspicious wishes, and precepts drawn from Daoist ethical texts. Though we often think of precepts as prohibitions, many are prescriptions and exhortations meant to guide us toward positive states of mind, much like the gathas of Thich Nhat Hanh or the Lojong “mind training” teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Mindfulness in the Four Activities

Mindfulness is not confined to the meditation cushion. In fact in a traditional view mindfulness isn’t meditation. Meditation is meditation and mindfulness is mindfulness. They are seperate concepts.Daoist teaching summarizes embodied experience in four activities: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. As the Quanzhen precept text Qinggui xuanmiao (Pure Regulations Mysterious and Wondrous) says, “You should sit like a bronze bell, lay like a bow, walk like a fresh breeze, stand like a verdant pine, speak softly like a sick person or a young girl, and behave like an elegant humble scholar.”

Ma Danyang, one of the early Quanzhen masters, gives us this pithy summary:

A Daoist, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down should not be absent from the Dao for a moment. If walking, make sure to place your feet on a level road. If standing, make sure to fix your concentration on the great void. If sitting, make sure to adjust your breathing to make it continuous. If lying down, make sure to sink your shen into the deep valley for a long time without interruption, all day long, appearing as though a fool.

Here both dimensions are at work: presence in the body’s posture and breath, remembrance in the teachings that shape how we carry ourselves. If we can mindfully master these four ways of being, we will be well on our way to embodying the Dao in our lives.

-Adapted from An Introduction to Daoism (Shambhala, 2026) and The Hundred Remedies of the Tao (Inner Traditions, 2023)

Book Release

Come help me celebrate the release of my latest book, An Introduction to Daoism. I’ll be joined by Heidi Barr at Magers & Quinn (Minneapolis, MN) on November 24 for a conversation about Daoism, nature, spirituality, and what it means to live the Way. Reserve your spot at the link below. Hope to see you there!

Preorder Bonus

I’m offering a preorder bonus with the publication of my new book.

* Preorder my new book, An Introduction to Daoism: A Practice Guide for Living the Way

* Fill out the form on my website (https://www.gregoryripley.com/book-preorder)

* Receive a 100+ page Introduction to Qigong as a special preorder bonus! This special offer is only available until publication day, November 24th.

This episode covers a lot of ground. A Minneapolis traffic jam and a century-old lie about who's really in the way, and a Daoist tradition of universal compassion converge on a single question: what does it cost us, individually and collectively, when we redesign our systems around the comfort of power rather than the dignity of the people caught beneath it? This essay traces a line from a scripture about an archetypal savior who cannot stop listening to the world's cries, through a philosopher who dared to read the Daode jing as an act of universal salvation, through the Quanzhen ancestors who turned that theology into famine relief and mutual aid, to a single sentence that once stopped a Mongol emperor mid-slaughter—and asks what that same sentence, spoken now, would have to sound like.

Preorder Bonus

I’m offering a preorder bonus with the publication of my new book.

* Preorder my new book, An Introduction to Daoism: A Practice Guide for Living the Way

* Fill out the form on my website (https://www.gregoryripley.com/book-preorder)

* Receive a 100+ page Introduction to Qigong as a special preorder bonus! This special offer is only available until publication day, November 24th.

Self-cultivation in Daoism carries a built-in paradox: are we returning to something we already are, or refining ourselves into something we’re not yet? The Daode Jing suggests both, but leans towards return, yet the entire tradition of inner alchemy is premised on patient, daily refinement. This essay holds those two models together rather than resolving them, tracing the paradox through the Daoist language of xiantian and houtian (pre-heaven and post-heaven), the Three Poisons and their antidote in Laozi’s Three Treasures, and a surprising kinship with the Greek distinction between chronos and kairos. What emerges is less a contradiction than a shift in vantage point—the same journey seen from the timeless perspective of the Dao and from the sequential, effortful perspective of a life still being lived.

This post is an excerpt from my book, The Hundred Rememdies of the Tao (Inner Traditions, 2023)

This essay was prompted by a return trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior this summer, where standing at the shore of a lake that refuses to behave like a lake set me thinking about the two faces of a frame-dissolving encounter with mystery. The essay braids two classical Chinese chengyu — 望洋興嘆, gazing at the ocean and sighing, and 劉海戲蟾, Liu Hai plays with the toad — with two different settings: the North Shore and a kiva in Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier National Monument. The Zhuangzi’s Autumn Floods chapter holds both the ocean and the well in the same breath, and the essay follows that pairing outward to the shore where the frame dissolves in a sigh, and downward into the dark.

What does it mean for the Dao to be present in the world not as a dramatic force but as something barely perceptible, fine as silk thread, continuous as breath, hovering at the threshold between presence and absence? The Daode Jing offers a phrase for this: 綿綿若存, continuous as if ever-present. This essay follows that phrase through Daode Jing Chapter 6, the neidan tradition, and the short but concentrated Xinyin Miaojing—asking what it means to cultivate an attention fine enough to receive what has quietly always been here.

The Dao of Nature & The Nature of Dao is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Gregory Ripley (Li Guan 理觀) is an ordained Daoist priest in the Quanzhen Longmen tradition and a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide. He is the author of Tao of Sustainability (Three Pines Press, 2016) and The Hundred Remedies of the Tao (Inner Traditions, 2023) and his forthcoming book from Shambhala Publications, An Introduction to Daoism: A Practice Guide for Living the Way. (November 2026)

This essay was unplanned. The series began as two pieces, one on 玄 (xuan) as the mystery at the heart of Daoist thought, and one tracing the compound 幽玄 (youxuan) on its journey from Chinese philosophy and aesthetics to Japan, where it became the celebrated concept of yugen. That second essay ended with a line from Liu Yiming’s commentary on the Huangting Jing (Yellow Court Scripture) that I couldn’t quite leave behind, so here we are with part three. That said, I should probably just add the caveat here that many if not all of my future posts will probably form a meandering path, one footstep leading to the next, each essay leading to the next, a process that will continue indefinitely. So, is it really part three of three? Who knows?

Here’s a link for my forthcoming book from Shambhala Publications mentioned in the episode. It’s available everywhere for preorder now. An Introduction to Daoism: A Practice Guide for Living the Way

This episode began as a companion to “Xuan: Mystery at the Heart of the Dao.” Where that episode explored xuan as a quality of reality and a contemplative orientation, this one was intended to follow the compound word 幽玄, youxuan, from its earliest appearances in Chinese literature through its long journey to Japan, where it became yugen, one of the most celebrated aesthetic concepts in the world. The meme, it turns out, has deep roots. What happened along the way was something far deeper than I expected. Which is perhaps appropriate for an essay about a concept that names exactly that, the depth that keeps going when you enter it, the center you find by not looking for it.

This episode explores 玄 (xuan), a single Chinese character at the center of Daoist thought. Appearing in the opening lines of the Daodejing, xuan—most often translated as “dark,” “mysterious,” or “profound”—names not merely a feeling but a feature of reality: the quality of what exceeds ordinary knowing while remaining available to a different kind of awareness. Moving through the character’s etymology, its appearances across the Daodejing, and its resonances in other contemplative traditions, the essay traces how xuan functions as both threshold and method—the pivot on which the tradition turns, opening toward 妙 (miao), the wondrous. It closes in the forest, where the practice of forest therapy offers a contemporary form of the same ancient invitation: to release the “short and shallow ears and eyes” and enter, without grasping, the mystery that has always been there.

Where do thoughts come from? And how much should we trust them? Drawing on Daoist philosophy, the Dao De Jing's Valley Spirit (谷神), and the inner alchemy writings of Bai Yuchan, this post explores the dual nature of thought: its generative, creative power and its capacity to distort our perception of reality. Thoughts arise spontaneously, like life emerging from an empty valley, yet left unexamined they can quietly shape everything we do. Mindfulness of thought—a practice as central to Daoism as to any contemplative tradition—is what allows us to engage with thoughts discerningly rather than be ruled by them.

This post was spurred by a note from James Ford discussing a purported Rumi quote, “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

Many spiritual traditions speak of following a path. This is especially true of the teachings of Daoism as we follow “the Great Way.” Matching the Rumi saying, the Zhuangzi says, “A path is made by walking.” (道行之而成) This was also echoed by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado some two thousand years later, “Traveler, there is no path, the path is made by walking it.” As Daoists we follow the path trod by those who have come before us and we also walk arm in arm with our fellow “wayfarers”, our spiritual siblings following the same path. We could also read the Zhuangzi quote as, “The Dao is accomplished by practicing it.”

The path is a useful framework for self-cultivation, but it can also become an impediment if we take the path as being something too straight and narrow that we can easily stray from. The path is not a razor’s edge, a tightrope, or a high-wire act. The Dao is perfect just as it is, with nothing lacking and nothing in excess. We can no more stray from the path in its widest sense than we can fall off the Earth. This isn’t something to worry about, unless perhaps you are a Flat Earther! As Lu Xisheng said in his commentary on the Daode Jing, “The great way is like a broad avenue. A broad avenue is smooth and easy to travel on, and no one can fail to reach their destination. Because it is straight and broad, don’t worry about minor detours.”

Our path might seem straight at times, life may be going along smoothly and we may feel as though we are covering lots of ground in a short period of time. Or it may seem long and winding. It may form switchbacks like a mountain trail. For every mile walked we may gain little elevation. Life’s inevitable challenges may make us feel as though we’ve lost a step or fallen behind. Fortunately, life is not a race to the end. If it were, we’d all have already lost!

We may forget from time to time that we are walking on the path at all, feeling lost in the thickets of habitual patterns of behavior and delusive thoughts. But as soon as we return to ourselves, return to the reality of the present, we realize we were always on the path. We have never left it.

We might have gotten caught up in a “minor detour” on that broad avenue, we may have gotten lost in our smartphones or we may have started window shopping and forgotten where we are going. Despite all the twists and turns our path may have taken, we were always on that “broad avenue” of the Great Dao. We can forget the path, forget ourselves, and forget our lives, but as soon as we remember, we are right back on it. We never really left. We will continue to walk this path throughout our lives, right up until we take our last breath, because our life is our path and we’re all walking it together.

How often do we see the car if front of us on the highway as an obstacle that is in our way, instead of as a fellow traveler? To see passersby as enemies, adversaries, or obstacles in this life is to lose sight of that broad avenue, to lose sight of the Great Dao. Some of those around us may be fighting over territory and resources, or hoarding wealth, myopically thinking they can somehow disentangle themselves from this great tapestry of life we’re all woven into, but the rest of us realize we’re all in this together, and that, as Ram Das said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”