Philosophical clarity aside, I can see exactly how these can be useful to helping us in our daily lives. If you've ever read Plato and said "BUT HOW IS PHILOSOPHY USEFUL", read this book. The two final chapters round out this non-interventionist concept of change. The chapter on Zhuangzi is a variation on earlier reflections on epistemological flexibility and centres on our ability to adopt different worldviews in a world in perpetual transformation ("Am I a human being dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I am a human being?"). Xunzi's plea for a wise practice of 'artifice' and 'putting pattern on our world' weaves a lot of the book's themes together. Really recommend this one. I’m usually not a big fan of typical self-help books that wish to ‘change the way you think’ as a lot of them are patronising and ‘work’ only until you put the book down. However, I do enjoy quality pop philosophy and The Path is exactly that. Even though I should say I'm not an expert - I switched my Eastern Philosophy class to Hegel (why oh why did I ever do that) and can’t say I’ve encountered the original texts in an academic setting. This book is a revelation, a practical way through a fractured, distracting world. I thought I knew these philosophers—and I was wrong. Rigorous, concise, deeply informed, The Path retires our facile shorthand about ideas ‘from the East’ and presents a powerful intellectual case to engage, to care, and to remember.” The final part of this analogy is the path, and this represents our environment. The environment that we find ourselves in impacts us both consciously and unconsciously. We typically follow the path of least resistance and are nudged in the direction of convenience.

The Path Summary | SuperSummary

What I love the most about it is that Peter Mallouk found the perfect sweet spot where we get just enough information to learn a great deal on many topics, yet not too much so that it makes the book too long or too detailed.Michael Puett is such a wonderful human being (before being a wonderful lecturer and philosopher), and in my view, he is simply using Mencius and Confucius and Lao-Tze to convey some of his own goodness and some of his own wisdom. As a result, this little book is better than any of that cheap self-help/ self-development / self-actualization airport-type 'literature' that people have been stuffing themselves with for years. We both are drawn to the same philosophers, actually—Confucius and Zhuangzi. They are quite different in some ways (as The Path explains), and yet they are linked by a concern that one of our dangers as human beings is to fall into ruts and patterns of behavior—ruts and patterns that must therefore be broken. E interesanta din păcate cum este de așteptat mult mai potrivita pentru cei ce locuiesc și trăiesc în SUA, chiar dacă perspectiva este globala.

The Path Books - Goodreads On The Path Books - Goodreads

For all the lures, distractions, and glittery advertisements of differing mediums promising endless wealth, this book provides the absolute true north. It’s because the course challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish. This is why Professor Michael Puett says to his students, “The encounter with these ideas will change your life.” As one of them told his collaborator, author Christine Gross-Loh, “You can open yourself up to possibilities you never imagined were even possible.” They tried these thought experiments in classical China, too. But our Chinese thinkers weren’t as intrigued. This is a fine intellectual game, they determined, but you can play these games all day long, and they will have no impact on how you live your ordinary everyday life. None whatsoever.How does this help to refine qi? Music, poetry, art, and literature are composed of discrete elements such as words, notes, sounds, rhythms, and colors. The more we immerse ourselves in them, the more we understand how discrete things resonate with one another, just as qi resonates with qi. They represent how qi relates constantly to all of the other forms of qi around it—for better or for worse. (Location 1522) Make a case for the reconsideration of a commonly held interpretation of a philosophy or teaching not presented in the book. How might we look at this popular philosophy or teaching in a new way? Discuss what you believe has caused us to misinterpret this philosophy or teaching in the past. Although it could be challenging at times to coauthor a book, it was also helpful because we could run ideas by one another and discuss them before even committing them to words on paper. It was also helpful to have someone with whom to “divide and conquer” all the various tasks that go into the writing and publicizing of a book. Why did you choose to coauthor the book, and what was the collaborative experience like? What surprised you most about the process of coauthoring a book?