Sean Lau Zhengyi Daoist Priest · Feng Shui & Yi Jing Practitioner Book→
中 EN JA KO

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.

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
Read →
7 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
Read →
7 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
Read →
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
Read →
5 min read

Is Feng Shui Superstition? I've Been Asked That for Ten Years

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

  • Feng Shui
  • Basics
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →
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
Read →