The Path

This book by Christine Gross-Loh and Michaell Puett is an unacademic, but unflinching in its acerbic accuracy of phrasal gutpunching to the Western mind; short introduction to the range and content of (an initially-seeming-somewhat-disingenuous but explored with real nuance) ancient Chinese philosophies.

   As readers of this blog will know, while my life is still in Christ Jesus the Tao has helped me walk with God through His crazy-at-times world - and there is a notable lack of talk of God, especially in the kind of personal terms monotheists often attribute to They Who Transcend All Thought - which is to say, this can be safely read by any agnostic on any fence and it will probably help you out in some form or other. We're walked through the as-if ritualization practices of Confucian living; the staunch disciplines and Chuang Zhi and the raw spontaneous whimsy of Lao Tzu clashing in midair as arguments around the Tao fail eternally to Pin it Down; Mencius helps us simplify anxiety-causing choices we have to make in the modern world; while Xunzi keeps the pattern of ethical humanity very much at the core of everyday living. There is a lot in here that a lot of people would find extremely salubrious to their mental health if they drank it in and tried to get it, not by striving to fully understand; but by submitting in ignorance to the mysterious nature of Nature and Humanity itself as we shamble about beneath the Heavens - and obeying. It is not idolatry to comply with ancient wisdoms about how our own bodies and minds work. And if it is, then that might be a jealously too far for whatever that god is - because the God I believe in made Everything for a Reason, and the Tao wouldn't be floating about in the real-spacetime arcane umbra without some kind of purpose.

   The book's subtitle; a new way to think about everything - one could, being generously cynical, argue is the case for pretty much any book assuming it has contents that would seriously affect the contents of the heads of its readers. For me it has not fundamentally altered my worldview - only helped flesh out the carpet a bit better, and vaguely try to grab snatched memories of whatever the wallpaper in Purgatory looked like.