Head of School Christopher Nikoloff introduced the concept of selflessness today as the second part of his leadership lecture series based on the book Tao Te Ching.

Nikoloff started the lecture by recapping the concepts he mentioned two weeks ago with a quick introduction to Taoism. According to Nikoloff, Taoism tries to escape prescriptions to life and deals with natural patterns. He explored the two major ideas of Taoism: Tao, the way and course of nature, and Li, organic powers.

He further mentioned that it is nearly impossible to translate Tao because the definition goes against the beliefs of Taoism. A famous quote from the Tao Te Ching states that “the tao that can be told is not the eternal tao.”

After the introduction, Nikoloff focused on selflessness, which he thought was an overused and misunderstood term.

“Most people get into leadership for egotistical reasons and a lot of times the selflessness aspect is overlooked,” he said.

Nikoloff then examined the idea of unconscious and unstructured thought, something that athletes and performing artists can relate to. For example, a musician may not actively be thinking about playing music; when performing, he or she can become lost in the music and play unconsciously.

Next, Nikoloff tied the 2000 year old learnings to today’s culture by informing the audience about a recent article that discussed how humans are not single beings but rather a walking ecosystem.

He concluded by discussing books on leadership, such as Book of Pao and 5 Levels to Leadership, and asked for clarifying questions from the audience.

“I’m anxious to have a follow up discussion to see how he has applied these concepts in meetings with students, faculty, and parents,” computer science teacher Susan King said.

Sophomore Arya Kaul thought that the most memorable message of the lecture was that the self and the cause merge together.

“Lao Tzu made the claim that the best leader is one who merges with his subjects, which I never thought about in that way,” he said.

Because other activities such as the STEM fair were taking place at the same time, few students attended the lecture. Freshman Jonathan Hochberg hopes that more students will show up at the next meeting.

“I believe it is very informative, unfortunately, also a bit under-advertised. Perhaps they should make it into a meeting that the whole school must attend,” he said.

The third lecture in this year’s series will occur at a later date during long lunch.