Power for the Peaceful: A Course in Tao Marc Mullinax

This verse gets to the heart of what we are made of, and made for. Origins and Destiny. Often, however, we get trapped by the shiny blings of life and lower our ceilings, and have these vulnerable places I call targets for our temptations. But we are more than enslaved slabs of meat susceptible only to reactive thoughts, acquired tastes
and cultivated addictions. Listen for more! Who knows? It’s perhaps my most important episode.Kenny Meade is our voice and question-raiser. Find out more about him at https://www.kennethmeade.com/.

I make reference to a teaching from J.R.R. Tolkien that parallels today’s episode. You can find that teaching here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtHfY06sP1s

 May your days begin in original peace, and become laboratories for radical hope!


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Today’s verse 49 teaches how to live with natural grace and peace in what seem like pivotal and violent times. We dissect in this episode how the servant leader, or Taoist, holds to their original vision of peace without compromise. It’s a difficult path, but to become adjusted to society’s neuroses and fragmentation into violent factions and self-righteous means to live in knee-jerk reactivity, not in mindful response or engagement with life.

Trent Moore is our valued voice and question-raiser.

May your days begin in peace, to become laboratories for radical hope in this pivotal year.


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We are taught to add to self to be a self, but where is the wisdom that to increase is really decreasing, and to decrease is actually a positive? It’s here in Taoism, but also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Orthodox Christianity, to start a list.

I reference a pretty crazy podcast from OnBeing by Krista Tippett: https://onbeing.org/programs/colette-pichon-battle-on-knowing-what-were-called-to/

Thanks so much to Naomi Joy Gill for lending her energy, voice, and – for me – a devastating question (in the good sense!).

May your days begin in emptiness, to become wombs to birth radical hope!

Marc Mullinax


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The Beatles put this verse into a song, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swT6YTPYwgM.


Verse 47 has a mystical teaching, one claiming that we can sense the entire universe from our tiny rooms or spaces in which we live. How does one even begin to explain this unitary, unified, worldview where all creation intermixes,
interpenetrates, and intermingles in one unified vision or field? So, we talk about developing spiritual literacy.

Thanks to Chris Haynes for his voice and timely question, that links this verse with climate change.

May your days begin in peace and become wombs for radical hope! Marc


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Knowing when enough is enough is a choice, of quality over quantity, a free determination and conclusion of the wise mind, a free choice made by free persons; “enough” is not an amount or quantity, it is a learned attitude that helps us merge more quickly and easily into the way of the universe.

Eric Cain (https://www.christschool.org/node/290008)
is our reader and question-asker.

May your days begin in the awareness of what is Enough, to become wombs for radical sufficiency and gratitude.

Marc Mullinax


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Much of Tao te Ching teaches us how to hear and experience Tao. To this end, we need to remove our mental interferences and filters that act to weaken or neutralize the experiencing of Tao.

This Verse 45 teaches such removal, by helping us to embrace the Paradoxical and the Ambiguous. We start with the Rolling Stones and end with guest Mattie Miller-Decker's beautifully phrased question on how Taoist paradox and Buddhist Original Mind are complements.

Mattie is at https://www.hidasta.com/.



May your days begin in peace, and become wombs for radical hope!



Marc Mullinax - mmullinax@mhu.edu


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