The Path

Une entrée fracassante directement dans mes livres les plus marquants et une grande découverte des maîtres de la philosophie asiatique. Tout comme avec le stoïcisme, j'ai retrouvé ici une philosophie applicable à la vie de tous les jours, à nos luttes, nos questionnements, une vraie béquille sur laquelle s'appuyer pour comprendre le monde qui nous entoure dans toute sa complexité. Ce livre ouvre les yeux d'une façon magistrale tout en restant extrêmement accessible et en brossant un portrait fantastique de cette philosophie peu connue dans nos contrées, et très loin de la vague new age. A lire pour toute personne en recherche de conseils ou en questionnement face à notre existence.

Okay, this did not “change my life”, as the Harvard undergrad course on which this book is based claims. It did, however, give me some good food for thought, and provided a useful outside view to this prison of post-Enlightenment rationalism we all live in (insert smiley faces :)))))))), as well as a nice dialogue with and against Buddhism.

My main takeaways (and reminders to my future self) would be:
- The power of “as if” rituals in envisioning and training our better selves, and a better world. I think that was Confucius.
- “Trained spontaneity”, which was akin to finding “flow” - i.e. when we're (joyously) lost in a task, focused and flexible. Jazz guitar?
- The nature of the world as being already artificial, and much more malleable than we imagine; the ways in which we mis-perceive the world around us as fixed or natural or whatever, when, hey, GMOs have been around for millennia! So let's make better GMOs!
- Taoism, and the power of weakness/bending like the young sapling tree. This actually reinforced my deep devotion to Dale Carnegie's (!) “teachings” about social interaction, and how the most liked people are usually the ones that just keep asking questions and appearing interested. I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TAO!
- My New Year's resolution is balancing my qi (“energy force”), which I'll interpret as not over-extending myself with courses, and paying attention to the Full Roundedness that is Angela, or the many Angelas.
- The no-self, or self as a multitude of patterns idea, but yo, that's just plain ol Buddhism.
- The interplay between Buddhism and Taoism and other Chinese philosophies: agreeing on the no-self, disagreeing on the detachment.
- The socio-politial context of Axial Age philosophies and Abrahamic religions; this blew my mind. Puett only mentions it from time to time, but I could have listened to an entire course on JUST that: what was the economic and political context of the rise of Buddhism, Jainism, Confucius, etc., and likewise for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. If I remember correctly, the former, the Axial Age, was a time of fragmented, tradey stuff and the loss of power among aristocratic elites. While the Abrahamic religions thrived in periods of consolidated power and domination (e.g. Ancient Rome). Just like, whoa: I love thinking about how the hyper-macro (political/economic) context can influence that which we find spiritually enlightening. So these aren't universals!
- The specific things that European Enlightenment ignores, and the way some of its big ideas (e.g. a meritocracy) were borrowed from China (!), as reported by Jesuit missionaries there.

This kinda made me wanna watch Crash Course or Khan Academy stuff. A good introduction, gave me stuff to pursue and a good grounding, but didn't (yet) CHANGE MY LIFE. And now, just for some entertainment, an Epic Rap Battle with Confucius, Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu versus Nietszche, Voltaire and Socrates. Haaaahahahaha.