Hello friends,
Inspired by the online course I created at Retreat West, my latest Substack is a new home for writers who want to explore Taoist philosophies and take their writing to a deeper level.
We find ourselves living in tumultuous and fast changing times and I believe that as storytellers, we have to start to change the way we portray humanity and the world to bring more positivity and love to the universe. I also write The Mindful Writer where I have other posts related to this. You can read one here. And I run The Slow Story Club there too.
I believe that by writing our stories with the chapters of the Tao Te Ching as inspiration we can start to heal ourselves. And if we heal ourselves, we will start to heal our planet too.
Each month I will post a chapter of the Tao Te Ching along with associated discussion content linking the chapter to our world today, a short story reading, craft development section, and a writing prompt.
The Tao Te Ching is a Chinese classic text which is the basis for the Taoist philosophy and religion. It is believed to have been written around 400 BC by Laozi, who was a Chinese philosopher and writer. Also known as “The Book of the Way”, as Tao Te Ching translates roughly as “the way of integrity”, it is considered to be one of the most important books of spiritual literature and is thought to have been written to help restore peace and harmony to a kingdom where discord and disorder were rife.
In the short course, I used a selection of chapters but here in this new publication, I am going to start at the beginning and work through them all. I am excited about the prospect as writing the initial 8 workshops was a joy and helped me develop my own writing practice too. The first post inspired by Chapter 1 will be posted in September.
Here’s a sample of one of the course workshops to show you what kind of thing I’ll be sharing:
Chapter 2
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
Balancing Act
At the heart of Daoism is the concept of balance, which is expressed through the belief that you cannot have light without dark, happiness without sadness, slow without fast, day without night. The yin-yang symbol is the embodiment of this and the black and white portions of the symbol are equal to one another.
In the book Qigong and the Tai Chi Axis by Mimi Kuo Deemer, she explains:
"The original meaning of yin and yang, however, referred to the shady and sunny side of a mountain. Ancient Daoist and shamanic sages observed that as the sun rose and crossed the sky, one side of the mountain would be in sun while the other was in shade. By afternoon, the light on the mound was the opposite. This non-hierarchical idea came to reflect the notion that the world exists in a harmonious balance of opposites; if something contracts it must first expand."
Storytelling
What I want to look at more closely for storytelling from the ideas in Chapter 2 and how they relate to the time we find ourselves living in now, is this part:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
This part of the chapter seems to me to be showing the world as out of balance and to reflect our times. We are living in a time of division — the them and us mentality seems, to me, to be growing by the day. People splintering into different groups and aligning themselves with that group's ideology only. Demonising other groups, and even people who are in no groups and are accepting of all, as they're not saying what the people in that group want to hear. We see it in politics all the time.
Anyone who has seen any of the news from the UK over the past decade in particular will know about the demonisation of 'others' by the media and politicians. Those others take many forms depending on the stance of the media outlet, or political party. In 2016, the people living in the country were divided into Stay and Leave and the repercussions of that are still reverberating now.
In 2022 I spent a few months travelling to Turkey, Mauritius, Thailand and Malaysia and in all of these places (bar Thailand), people I spoke to told me how their government marginalises people based on their religion and/or ethnicity. I have seen the fast-widening gulf between the haves and the have nots, and the fast-growing numbers of have nots. These social issues are wrong and upsetting, they are not the harmonious balance of opposites at the heart of the Tao. But they are the kind that make for interesting stories.
Conflict is at the heart of storytelling — both external in the world of the plot, or premise, that starts the story off and internal in the mind of our main character. That conflict doesn't have to be huge and explosive, but it does have to be there.
So for this first week's workshop, I want to look at the idea of the 'other' in stories.
Reading
Useful Sister
Weike Wang
Story Analysis
I chose this story because the conflict isn't huge and explosive and becasuse it seems to me to have the 'other' within it in different layers. It's present right from the start with the youngest sister, Veronique, being named differently and parented differently, and subsequently, as our narrator believes, behaving differently. Then there is the otherness of being a Chinese immigrant family in America and, all through the story, the narrator lists the ways in which Veronique is not doing things the way they should be done.
Also, these passages in the story have a Tao Te Ching kind of feeling to them:
Blend in just enough but also aim for the top.
Stand out too much and you will inevitably be cut down.
Save and live frugally so you can be rich.
Throughout the story though, it feels to me that it is the narrator who really feels, fears, that she is the 'other' and I believe that feeling lies at the heart of everyone driving division and splintering into groups today. That people are afraid they don't fit in so they have to join a group, or create one, where they can try.
What did you think of the story and it's sense of otherness? Let us all know in the comments below.
In this extract from the craft book, Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc, Dara Marks talks of the "Eternal Story" and that at the heart, all stories are about life and death. Not always a physical birth or passing, but of hopes, dreams, ideas, judgements, all of the things that make up a human life and psyche.
So as you approach the writing for this week, think about how you introduce this life and death into your story and how it is tied to the conflict at the heart of it.
Writing Prompt
This week I want you to write a story that features 'the other' and a character that has to confront their assumptions about them.
When you write the story, think about how you can also bring in this element of the Tao chapter as part of the character's emotional journey.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
How does someone teach without saying anything? For me, this is all about actions speaking louder than words. What ways do you think this can be expressed in a story?
Things to think about when drafting/planning your story:
How can the otherness be present in the story in layers?
What changes for your narrator during the course of the story?
What is the overarching message of the story?
All of the posts will be free to all but comments and sharing of ideas and responses to the prompts will only be for paid subscribers. I do hope you’ll join me in exploring this ancient wisdom to inspire stories that can help change us today.
With love,
Thank you for this reflection. I see myself in much of this.