Sean Lau Zhengyi Daoist Priest · Feng Shui & Yi Jing Practitioner Book→
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Writing

How I see the Dao

No mystification — only the parts that touch the ground. Classical meaning, technique, case notes, and modern life as one Daoist sees it.

7 min read

The Ten Gods: The First Layer of a Bazi Chart

Ten labels for how everything else in a chart stands in relation to the day master. What they give you, what they don't, and why Seven Killings is a name rather than a verdict.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
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7 min read

Luck Pillars and Annual Luck: Why Some Years Are Simply Harder

The ten-year pillar is the environment, the annual pillar is what this year adds. A hard year is one where both lean the same way as the chart already does.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
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7 min read

The Useful God and the Taboo God: The Key to a Chart

The useful god is the phase a chart most needs, the taboo god the one it can least afford. Both are about need, not absence. Also why this is the step practitioners disagree about most.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
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6 min read

Why "Facing South" Fails in Australia: The Stars Don't Move, the Earthly Trigrams Do

Southern-hemisphere Feng Shui is not the whole thing turned upside down. Landform doesn't flip, the star cycle doesn't flip, the compass doesn't flip. What flips is the Later Heaven trigram placement and the seasons.

  • Feng Shui
  • Australia
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8 min read

What a Feng Shui Audit Actually Looks At Before You Buy

Ten minutes on the footpath, a compass reading, then room by room. What gets checked, and what ends up in the report.

  • Feng Shui
  • Australia
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8 min read

What a Bazi Chart Can and Cannot Tell You

It reads tendency and timing. Events, no. Plus the part nobody advertises: what to do when the birth hour is wrong.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
  • Basics
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6 min read

The Front Door Is the Most Important Position in a House

What the old term "mouth of qi" actually means: the first three steps inside, which way the door swings, and what your eye lands on. Plus the Australian complication, which is that a lot of the houses here aren't entered through the front door at all.

  • Feng Shui
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5 min read

Is Feng Shui Superstition? I Get Asked at Almost Every First Meeting

I don't accept the word superstition, and I don't accept the compliment that it's "actually very scientific" either.

  • Feng Shui
  • Basics
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6 min read

Bedroom Feng Shui: Where the Bed Goes Matters More Than You Think

Not sleeping is the most common reason people call me in. Six things to check in a bedroom, all of them visible from the doorway.

  • Feng Shui
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6 min read

How Much Weight to Give the Shensha: Nobleman, Canopy, Travelling Horse, Peach Blossom

The shensha are lookup-table symbols sitting one level below the Ten Gods and the favourable element. What the four common ones say, and why reading any of them on its own gets it wrong.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
  • Basics
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6 min read

Where the Stove Should Sit: Kitchen Feng Shui in the Age of the Island Bench

Backing, traffic, the sink, the fridge. And what to do about the island cooktop, which the classics never had to think about.

  • Feng Shui
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7 min read

Liuyao Divination: How a Single Question Gets Cast and Read

Three coins, six throws, a hexagram built from the bottom up, then dressed with relatives, spirits and the subject line before anything can be read. Plus the questions it should never be pointed at.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
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7 min read

Apartment Feng Shui in Australia: A Problem the Classics Never Faced

The building's facing is not your unit's facing, and strata rules mean every remedy has to live inside your own front door.

  • Feng Shui
  • Australia
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5 min read

Does Wu Wei Just Mean Doing Nothing? My Students Ask Every Year

In pre-Qin Chinese, wei leans toward contriving and forcing. Cook Ding's blade lasted nineteen years, and he was cutting the whole time.

  • Daoist Studies
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6 min read

Xiao Liu Ren: The Simplest Method, and the Easiest to Misuse

Six palaces counted off on the fingers, learnable in two minutes. It answers one small question with a quick result, and most of the trouble comes from asking it bigger things.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
  • Basics
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7 min read

Date Selection for Weddings, Openings, Ground-Breaking and Moving In

The almanac prints the same verdict for everyone on earth. Real date selection starts from your own chart, and in Australia it usually starts from a calendar that is already full.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
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6 min read

Santi Standing Post: What Standing Still Is Actually Training

Santi shi looks like leg conditioning. What it trains is position: fixing the relative placement of every joint so force from the rear foot reaches the hand without leaking. With the three faults beginners make.

  • Xingyiquan
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7 min read

The Dao That Can Be Spoken: What Chapter One Is Really About

The received text reads 常. The silk manuscripts read 恒, and the swap happened because an emperor was named Heng. Also there is a comma nobody has settled.

  • Daoist Studies
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7 min read

The Five Fists and the Five Phases: Pi, Beng, Zuan, Pao, Heng Are Not Metaphors

Splitting is metal, crushing is wood, drilling is water, pounding is fire, crossing is earth. The pairing describes which way the force runs, and the generating and overcoming cycles turn into the order you drill in and the way each fist gets answered.

  • Xingyiquan
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5 min read

Why a Daoist Priest Can Marry and Eat Meat: Zhengyi and Quanzhen Are Two Different Schools

Quanzhen priests are monastic, vegetarian and celibate. Zhengyi priests are mostly householders with families and day jobs. Which school is stricter is the wrong question.

  • Daoism
  • Basics
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6 min read

Boxing and Inner Alchemy: Why a Boxer Ends Up Reading the Dao De Jing

Xingyiquan's talk of refining jing into qi and qi into shen was borrowed from Daoist inner alchemy. The two share a vocabulary for the body, but boxing wants use and alchemy wants cultivation, and the words do not line up.

  • Daoist Studies
  • Xingyiquan
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4 min read

"The Highest Good Is Like Water" Does Not Mean Go With the Flow

One of the most framed lines in Chinese, and the one most often read backwards. The trouble is the eighteen characters that don't fit on the scroll.

  • Daoist Studies
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6 min read

Pixiu, Gourds and Five-Emperor Coins: Do Feng Shui Cures Actually Work?

Three layers: the objects that change the room, the ones that work on you, and the ones sold on claims I won't make. A classical remedy is mostly layout and circulation, not a purchase.

  • Feng Shui
  • Basics
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6 min read

What Kind of Book Is the Yi Jing, Actually?

The copy in your hands is two texts bound as one: a Bronze Age divination manual, and a body of philosophy written centuries later. Most translations don't tell you which is which.

  • Yi Jing
  • Basics
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7 min read

Where to Sit and Where to Put the Counter: Orientation for Offices and Shops

Shops and offices get read from both ends, not just for the people inside them. Where the principal sits, the staff route, the counter, and how little of it a lease in Australia lets you touch.

  • Feng Shui
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6 min read

Why a Daoist Priest Writes Code

Code in the morning, a house inspection in the early evening. Both jobs ask the same thing of you: see the structure you can't see, before you touch anything.

  • Personal
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7 min read

Ancestor Rites from Australia: When the Grave Is Back in China

How to make the offering from a distance: which direction to face, whether you need a tablet, and what to do about the smoke alarm.

  • Daoism
  • Australia
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6 min read

Feng Shui FAQ: Yang Zhai, Yin Zhai, Bazi, and What an Audit Actually Involves

This page sat on my old English site reading like a reference book. Rewritten the way I answer these questions out loud.

  • Feng Shui
  • Basics
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6 min read

What the Compound Laozi-Zhuangzi Hides

The Laozi is written for someone who runs something. The Zhuangzi keeps stepping back from the job. The word most often mixed up between them is wu wei.

  • Daoist Studies
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6 min read

Yin and Yang Are Not Good and Bad: The Words Mark Position, Not Value

Yang doesn't mean upbeat and yin doesn't mean gloomy. They mark two ends of a comparison, and the same thing changes sides when you change what you compare it to.

  • Daoist Studies
  • Basics
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7 min read

The Five Phases Are Not Five Substances

Xing means going, moving, a stage in a process. Wood, fire, earth, metal and water name five tendencies in motion. When a chart asks for more metal, it is asking about pace and closure, not about jewellery.

  • Daoist Studies
  • Basics
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7 min read

Stems and Branches: The Chinese Time System

Ten stems pair with twelve branches, offset by one, and come back to the start after sixty steps. A cyclic code for years, months, days and hours, and the ground floor of everything built on top of it.

  • Daoist Studies
  • Basics
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7 min read

How to Read a Hexagram: Image, Line Position, and the Judgement

Six lines counted from the bottom, yang called nine and yin called six. Correct position, centrality, correspondence, supporting and riding, then the three layers of text, worked through on hexagram fifteen.

  • Yi Jing
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7 min read

The Six Lines of Qian: Hidden, Appearing, Vigilant, Leaping, Flying, Overreaching

Read bottom to top, the six lines of the first hexagram run one situation from start to finish. The hardest-working line gets the smallest verdict, and the highest one gets regret.

  • Yi Jing
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7 min read

The Twenty-Four Solar Terms Below the Equator

The solar terms are a solar calendar, not the lunar one. The degrees and the moment of transition are identical worldwide. What has to swap below the equator is the use.

  • Daoist Studies
  • Australia
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6 min read

What Fu and Lu Actually Are: The Core Craft of Zhengyi

Fu is written: a figure on paper that works as a token of proof. Lu is conferred: the roll of names and the rank you receive at register ordination. Receiving registers is not learning to draw.

  • Daoism
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6 min read

Inside a Rite: What a Daoist Liturgy Is Actually Doing

Purify the altar, summon, submit the memorial, perform, send off, close. Every step is written down beforehand, and none of it promises a supernatural result.

  • Daoism
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7 min read

The Daoist Pantheon: Three Purities, Four Sovereigns, and the Star Lords

The Three Purities are the Dao given three registers rather than three personal gods. The list of Four Sovereigns varies by source. The Star Lords are the layer that touches ordinary life.

  • Daoism
  • Basics
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7 min read

Naming a Baby: What "Supplementing the Missing Phase" Actually Means

The phase a chart lacks is usually not the phase it needs. Chart first, useful god second, name last, and that last layer is thinner than parents hope. Plus the Australian paperwork nobody warns you about.

  • Chinese Metaphysics
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8 min read

First Year in Australia: What Chinese Families Ask Me Most

The ten questions that fill my inbox during someone's first year here, answered one at a time.

  • Australia
  • Basics
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