E05. Peng Zhiyong: Return to Age Three, Empty Yourself to Receive All Things

🎙️ Episode Introduction

This episode, we welcome Peng Zhiyong — a friend who walked away from the iron rice bowl of a physics teaching post to devote himself to meditation and inner exploration.

Peng was among China's first cohort of university physics students. For over three decades, he's moved between Zhuangzi and everyday life. He dislikes being defined, and he's in no hurry to teach anyone anything — because, as he puts it, "We already knew what mattered when we were three years old. Stay curious, let go of discriminating judgment."

We talked for a full ten hours this episode — about freedom, meaning, change, vitality, and a dao-heart willing to breathe.

It's not suited for speed-listening. But if you find a quiet afternoon and sink in slowly, you'll likely emerge with a sense of grounded stillness.

👤 Guest Bio

Peng Zhiyong: Studied physics in his early years, served as a university lecturer, then chose to leave the system and dedicate himself to practice.

Three decades of meditation, seeking the dao, and reading Zhuangzi — committed to helping people rediscover the feeling of aliveness through sitting practice. He doesn't call himself a teacher; he's more like a friend exploring alongside you. He believes what matters has always been inside us; we simply need to quiet down and let it grow on its own.

🕒 Selected Timestamps

01:22 The turning point: beginning meditation in high school, how folk tales and curiosity pushed open the door

03:24 Letting go of the "teacher" identity, and the freedom and energy released in return

07:42 First meditation experience in high school: folk tales, qi sensation, and "eyes like electric lamps"

15:18 "Studying physics was actually a misunderstanding": solving problems through intuition rather than relying solely on mathematics

23:26 "Our life has bounds, but knowledge has none": when knowledge anxiety meets the finitude of life

31:44 "Emptiness awaits things; only the dao gathers in emptiness": meditation isn't forced control, but clearing space

39:07 The secret of breath: don't control it, let it find its own length — that's natural breath regulation

46:58 From entropy to heat death: when science says "everything ultimately falls silent," the tremor it sends through the heart

55:22 The state of being three: no inner depletion, no dualistic splitting, jing-qi-shen cycling naturally

1:02:36 Zhu-you, Xingyi quan, and bodily memory: the body-mind relationship in traditional arts

1:09:48 Yu wu wei chun — "being spring with things": letting day and night flow without seam, mood harmonized, changing into spring alongside all things

1:16:03 "No self, no merit, no name": xiaoyao isn't escape, but a more at-ease presence

1:22:47 Gathering and resonance: after meaning loosens, life grows lighter

📚 References

Xu er dai wu / Wei dao ji xu: From Zhuangzi·Renjian Shi: "The vital energy is empty and awaits things; only the dao gathers in emptiness. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind." Often understood as maintaining a mind-state of open receptivity, without preconceptions or attachments, meeting the world with a hollowed heart.

Zhu-you: An ancient folk healing art, a category of treatment through incantation and ritual prohibition, referenced in Huangdi Neijing·Suwen·Yi Jing Bian Qi Lun's phrase "may be treated by zhu-you alone." Scholars generally approach it through textual and historical analysis.

An shi chu shun: From Zhuangzi·Yangsheng Zhu, meaning to accord with the times and circumstances, not excessively resisting one's environment.

Wei you e ren (The beauty of the ugly man of Wei): From Zhuangzi·De Chong Fu, the story of an ugly man in Wei who was beloved —寓意 the power of what lies beyond external conditions.

Yi yang lai fu: From the Zhouyi·Fu Gua, meaning the return of yang after its complete exhaustion, symbolizing rebirth, cyclical renewal, and hope.

Twelve message hexagrams: Also called the twelve pi hexagrams, a lunar system pairing twelve hexagrams to the waxing and waning of yin and yang through the year; the Fu hexagram corresponds to the winter solstice and "the return of one yang."

Jing transforms to qi, qi transforms to shen, shen returns to xu: From Daoist self-cultivation theory, taking jing, qi, and shen as the three treasures of life, transformed through practice to return to the root of emptiness and stillness.

Zhan bi que zhe, xu shi sheng bai: From Zhuangzi·Renjian Shi, meaning to grasp things from a holistic view; when the mind-chamber is empty, brightness naturally appears.

Yu wu wei chun: From Zhuangzi·De Chong Fu, "causing day and night to be without seam, and being spring with things" — living in harmonious and pleasant communion with all things.

Zhi ren wu ji, shen ren wu gong, sheng ren wu ming: From Zhuangzi·Xiaoyao You, meaning to shed self-fixation, seek no accomplishment, and claim no fame, arriving at a state of free and easy wandering; ultimate freedom lies in not being bound by "I / merit / name."

Heat death of the universe: One of the ultimate scenarios in thermodynamics and cosmology, where entropy reaches maximum, temperature becomes uniform, and no free energy remains available.

Entropy: A physical quantity measuring a system's disorder or unavailable energy; the second law indicates that spontaneous processes never decrease total entropy.

🎵 Music

Jordan Critz - Beau Et Rapide (Piano)

🎤 Production Team

Host | Jinjian Zhang

Produced by | Oasis Capital

Editing & Production | Shengdu Studio Podcast Workshop

💬 Join the Conversation

Have you ever had a moment of wanting to "return to being three"? Have you experienced a state of "reaching emptiness" in your life? Share your experiences in the comments, or tell us how you recover inner quiet amid the noise. Leave a comment with your experience and feelings — we'll randomly select readers to receive Oasis Capital's book The Way of the Heart as a gift.

✨ The new session of "Primordial Breath" offline course will be held during the National Day holiday. If you'd like to follow Teacher Peng in further study of Zhuangzi and the way of breath, follow the WeChat public account "Zhidao Xuetang 666" for more reflections and shares.

If you'd like to join the listener group chat, scan the QR code to add and note "Signal & Noise Listener Group" 🩷

Disclaimer

Any investment-related content in this podcast is for exchange and sharing purposes only, for reference, and does not constitute any market prediction, judgment, or investment or consulting advice.

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View episode transcript on Xiaoyuzhou