LIVING PHILOSOPHY by yun shu

Timestamps00:00 landing in the body05:04 i used to work at a psychedelic biotech06:41 theme 1: above the line & below the line (in pink; image below)11:48 prompt 112:52 theme 2: the four states of consciousness (in black; image below)15:50 prompt 218:00 the limits of self-help22:16 prompt 324:34 thematic examples for each state of consciousness & closingReflective Writing Prompts* What story have you been holding onto that puts you in a state of powerlessness, i.e. below the line? What’s that like? If you’re ready to shift into being above the line, what would it be like to live with those stories instead?* Where are you still in this “by me” state, trying to force an outcome? Where in your life needs the energy of surrender: more softening and more trust?* Putting this model to work, name three actions you’re ready to take.Further reading* The book I refer to is called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp. I refer to the pages below at the close of the class. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yunshu.substack.com

This week, we moved from the spiritual to the material plane. I’m so grateful for the open minds who sit with these concepts each Sunday morning, and for the kind feedback. Listeners online, thank you for tuning in – and a new essay and announcement is coming out next week :)Timestamps00:00 landing in the body08:48 theme 1: a primer on karl marx and bell hooks on class17:07 prompt 118:06 theme 2: class signalling and upward mobility22:57 prompt 224:06 key concepts: commodity, class consciousness, false consciousness25:40 imagining another way27:55 closingReflective Writing Prompts*  Reflect on the class that you and your parents came from, and your relationship to it.* Reflect on your relationship with conspicuous consumption, i.e., purchasing things as a performance or signal, rather than for practicality. How does it make you feel? Further reading* Class Matters: From Where We Stand by bell hooks was responsible for the second of a two-punch political awakening I had while recovering from a major surgery two years ago – in quick succession after the memoir 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Chinese activist and artist Ai Wei Wei. Below is the quote I read in class:This uncertainty is shared by those who are not poor, but could be poor if jobs are lost. They too are afraid to say how much class matters. While the poor are offered addiction as a way to avoid thinking too much, working people are encouraged to shop. Consumer culture silences working people in the middle class. They are busy buying or planning to buy. Although their fragile hold on economic self-sufficiency is slipping, they still cling to the dream of a class-free society where everyone can make it to the top. They are afraid to face the significance of dwindling resources, the high cost of education, housing, and healthcare. They are afraid to think too deeply about class I understand the resistance that comes with thinking about class because we’re all complicit. We all have contradictions inside of us.* In 2009, Mark Fisher put words to the totalising effect of capitalism in his book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, speaking on behalf of all those who feel suffocated by a system that not only serves capital over the people, but also closes off all theoretical exit routes. When a community or an individual is being oppressed, there really is no more radical or necessary act than to look beyond the apparent limitations of the present in order to believe that something other than what appears to be real and pragmatic might one day arise, and probably sooner and in more forceful ways.* As early as the late 1800s, people thought the ultra rich from Gilded Age were doing weird things with their money. Sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen captures the absurdity and greed with rational clarity in The Theory of the Leisure Class. Two hundred years later, people are doing increasingly absurd and greedy things, but at least now we can (and should) call them out on it – while looking inside of ourselves to sit with our own contradictions.* The cover image of this post is by Lewis Hine, of a fourteen year old spinner in Brazos Valley Cotton Mill in 1913. See the collection here.Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The NCLC photos are useful for the study of labor, reform movements, children, working class families, education, public health, urban and rural housing conditions, industrial and agricultural sites, and other aspects of urban and rural life in America in the early twentieth century. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yunshu.substack.com

I taught this class yesterday, on summer solstice, during the hottest month of the hottest year according to ancient Chinese cosmologists. Are you exhausted? Does time feel like it’s slipping through your hands like fine silk? This episode is an energetic reset for you, for the days are long but the years are short, and we best be awake to it all.If you’re new here, start with an earlier essay I wrote “A Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Astrology Through The Lens of Daoism.”Timestamps00:00 embodying yin and yang using the breath08:08 yin and yang theory (refer to image below)12:44 re-introducing the fire horse year17:19 prompt 119:10 fire horse year check-in20:45 prompt 222:38 “the cost of anything is the amount of life force you exchange for it”23:19 closing meditation & readingReflective Writing Prompts*  Where in your life have you reached maximum yang and yin is begging to be integrated? And where have you bottomed out with yin in your life and action and visibility is being asked of you? How can you be more in alignment?*  Reflect on how you can build more yin energy into your life, and what resistance/blockages you have towards doing so. Further reading* The yin and yang theory from this class forms the basis of the ancient Chinese divination text, I Ching, or the Book of Changes, which posits that every situation in your life maps to a certain yin-yang configuration of six lines, called hexagrams. It’s from the I Ching that Daoist thinking was borne – this is your sign to get a copy and learn how to do a reading.* The reading at the end of the session is from Good Company, an anthology of answers to all kinds of questions by H.H Shantanand Saraswati. Profound insights in simple language; it sits on my altar like a bible. Here’s the quote I read out:Q: “ It seems obvious that there is a world of consciousness as well as a world of movement. One wonders why it takes so long to discover it when it is so obvious that in a world of consciousness there is stillness and one cannot be moved.”H.H: “Birds have two wings by nature, and it is the interplay of both the wings which allows them to fly high in the sky. If one of the wings is cut off or put out of action, then the bird is forced to stay on the earth and it cannot fly anymore. Similarly, there are two wings of our existence there — the material and the spiritual. Somehow, people seem to prefer the use of one wing only and either cling on to the material wing or the spiritual wing. Since both are naturally necessary, there is much strife in search of bliss. Unless people do realise the need to use both wings and refrain from being partial, they will be deprived of the freedom and bliss which all seek Unless this truth is realised, the work cannot pick up speed nor can the flight into the spiritual world materialise.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yunshu.substack.com

To me, this is the most interesting episode so far – but my lapel mic is off. Audiophiles, I am so sorry, but it does get better after 20s and markedly improves after 06:00. If you can deal with the static and erratic bass thumping from the club downstairs, you will be greatly rewarded.Timestamps00:00 landing in the body05:08 a personal story about my Traditional Chinese Medicine journey08:22 theme 1: exploiting oneself as both master and slave (refer to Materials below)12:24 prompt 113:17 theme 2: rest as a divine right, not a productivity tool18:52 prompt 219:36 integration & closingMaterialsThis week, we focused on passages from “The Burnout Society” by Byung Chul Han, a South Korean-German philosopher. “The acceleration of contemporary life also plays a role in this lack of being. The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints. Ultimately, the dialectic of master and slave does not yield a society where everyone is free and capable of leisure. Rather, it leads to a society of work in which the master himself has become a laboring slave. In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside. This labor camp is defined by the fact that one is simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator. One exploits oneself. It means that exploitation is possible even without domination.”“If sleep represents the high point of bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation. A purely hectic rush produces nothing new. It reproduces and accelerates what is already available.” In the closing meditation, I read the poem below:Lost by David WagonerStand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you.If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.No two trees are the same to Raven.No two branches are the same to Wren.If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knowsWhere you are. You must let it find you.Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.Wherever you are is called hereReflective Writing Prompts* How do you exploit yourself? What is your relationship to your inner master and inner slave?* What is your relationship to rest? How can you share these concepts with your community so that people don’t think it’s a moral or personal failure? * At this point in our society, rest is resistance, naps are resistance, slowness is resistance – all these ways of being human are resistance. You have to wonder: what are we in resistance to? What does our society shape us to be, that makes being human a form of resistance? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yunshu.substack.com

This is the second episode of a new audio series called “Living Philosophy”, recorded live from my class in Berlin. Listen to the first episode here.Timestamps00:00 landing in the body04:09 the chinese psyche: buddhism, daoism and confucianism 5:59 theme 1: discernment. who is worthy of your depth? (refer to Material below)9:44 prompt 110:25 theme 2: caregiving. reciprocal or extractive?12:02 prompt 213:02 a personal story: “i will not be the deep person in the room for three months; i’m only talking about your t-shirt”MaterialThis week, we focused on a passage from Xunzi, a classic Confucian text. Do not answer one who asks about something improper. Do not ask questions of one who speaks on something improper. Do not listen to one who tries to persuade you of something improper. Do not debate with a person of combative demeanour. Only if people approach you in the proper way should you receive them.If they do not approach you in the proper way, then avoid them. And so, only if they follow ritual and are reverent should you discuss the methods of the Way with them.Only if their speech is calm should you discuss the pattern of the Way with them.Only if their countenance is agreeable should you discuss the culmination of the Way with them.To discuss these things with those unfit to discuss them is called being presumptuous. Not to discuss these things with those fit to discuss them is called being secretive.To discuss these things without first observing the person’s manner and countenance is called being blind. The noble person is neither presumptuous, nor secretive, nor blind.They carefully act according to the other person’s character. Reflective Writing Prompts*  What modes of relating do you default to? Are there situations where you are – in Xunzi’s terms – presumptuous or secretive or blind?* Reflect on the systems, places, and communities you are in. Where do you give your care, your emotional labor, your life force? Where is it reciprocal, and where is it extractive? Make it actionable: Where can you call back your energy?Further reading* Xunzi: The Complete Text by Eric L. Hutton. A clean English translation with plenty of footnotes, useful for understanding Chinese history and contexts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yunshu.substack.com

Timestamps00:00 landing in the body06:24 two lenses to view the world: spiritual and material 08:26 theme 1: plato's cave (refer to image below; start at bottom left hand corner) 11:40 prompt 113:04 theme 2: plato, buddhism and the choice to return15:50 prompt 216:10 thoughts from the room18:06 how to create your own worldview 19:35 closingReflective Writing PromptsUsing the metaphors of the shackles that bind the prisoners and the illusions projected on the walls, what shackles and illusions hold you back?Thought starters: shackles could be social expectations, fear of judgement, financial pressure, identity roles; illusions could be beauty standards, productivity culture, news cycles, influencer/celebrity culture, economic systems.If you were freed from the cave, would you go back for the others? Do you feel more aligned to Theravada or Mahayana Buddhism?Further readingTo read Plato’s works in English, I recommend David Horan’s translations at the Foundation for Platonic Studies. The allegory of the cave is from Republic: Book VII – read here.For a primer on Buddhism and the religions of the world, I recommend reading The World’s Religions by Huston Smith (1958). One of my favourite books by a rare soul who traversed the worlds of academia, religion, and psychedelics. Rest in peace, H.S. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yunshu.substack.com