Sep 21, 2026 · 2 hr 34 min · 13 segments
It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. David Chai from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Dr. Chai is a specialist in Ancient and Medieval Chinese Philosophy, with an emphasis on Daoism. He is the…
David ChaiGuest
Aldrich ChanHost
You know, there's some interesting interpretations of Adam and Eve and how when Eve eats the apple and they get kicked out of paradise, it's synonymous to them gaining consciousness.
That before that, without the conscious awareness that they weren't suffering, that they were in harmony.
But when she ate the apple, now they're all conscious and we all have to suffer.
And I was wondering, and this is what I put in the book, maybe you read it, maybe you didn't, but the idea that from a Taoist perspective, even after eating the apple, they were always in heaven.
And the same thing would be with us, that we're so lost in our abstractions that we're stuck here.
Okay, so I wanted to pivot just a bit here because we've gotten pretty theoretical and I don't want to lose the audience too much.
But for those who are more practically oriented, how has the concept of nothingness been useful to you? How have you applied it in your everyday life?
First and foremost, as a scholar who writes, the process of writing begins in nothingness.
What are your first thoughts? Where do they come from? That's a state of quietude, of darkness.
These are all attributes of the Tao, characteristics, adjectives used to describe the Tao.
As soon as you start to speak of nothingness, then it's no longer nothing, it's something.
And this is, you know, people say, oh, you know, talking to me, oh, you wrote a book.
200-something pages about nothingness, well, you've not said, you know, you've said a lot about something, but you've not said anything about nothing.
Because if you were to say something about nothing, you wouldn't say anything at all, right? Yeah, okay, that's funny, that's true.
You know, there's some interesting interpretations of Adam and Eve and how when Eve eats the apple and they get kicked out of paradise, it's synonymous to them gaining consciousness.
That before that, without the conscious awareness that they weren't suffering, that they were in harmony.
But when she ate the apple, now they're all conscious and we all have to suffer.
And I was wondering, and this is what I put in the book, maybe you read it, maybe you didn't, but the idea that from a Taoist perspective, even after eating the apple, they were always in heaven.
And the same thing would be with us, that we're so lost in our abstractions that we're stuck here.
Okay, so I wanted to pivot just a bit here because we've gotten pretty theoretical and I don't want to lose the audience too much.
But for those who are more practically oriented, how has the concept of nothingness been useful to you? How have you applied it in your everyday life?
First and foremost, as a scholar who writes, the process of writing begins in nothingness.
What are your first thoughts? Where do they come from? That's a state of quietude, of darkness.
These are all attributes of the Tao, characteristics, adjectives used to describe the Tao.
As soon as you start to speak of nothingness, then it's no longer nothing, it's something.
And this is, you know, people say, oh, you know, talking to me, oh, you wrote a book.
200-something pages about nothingness, well, you've not said, you know, you've said a lot about something, but you've not said anything about nothing.
Because if you were to say something about nothing, you wouldn't say anything at all, right? Yeah, okay, that's funny, that's true.
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