The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything

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If you have read Peter’s or Tony’s other books this will sound a bit repetitive. If you haven’t though, this is a great book that may not go into a lot of details, but certainly covers some key topics. Puett argues that we are far more malleable and flexible than we give ourselves credit for. The ancient Chinese understood this. Subscribing to the idea that we have a true self just waiting to be discovered is an example of negative thinking and self-doubt. It is a safe option that allows us to limit ourselves and cling to long-held beliefs. Believing there is one true path, and that we’ve somehow found it, gives us permission to stop trying. Once we stop expanding then we’re living our lives wrong.

The Path - Penguin Books UK The Path - Penguin Books UK

This is a book that turns the notion of help—and the self, for that matter—on its head. Puett and Gross-Loh bring seemingly esoteric concepts down to Earth, where we can see them more clearly. The result is a philosophy book grounded in the here and now, and brimming with nuggets of insight. No fortune-cookie this, The Path serves up a buffet of meaty life lessons. I found myself reading and re-reading sections, letting the wisdom steep like a good cup of tea.” But many of the Chinese thinkers would argue that you are not and should not think of yourself as a single, unified being. Let’s say that you think of yourself as someone with a temper; someone who gets angry easily. The thinkers we are about to encounter would argue that you should not say, “Well, that’s just the way I am,” and embrace yourself for who you are. As we will see, perhaps you aren’t inherently an angry person. Perhaps you simply slipped into ruts—patterns of behavior—that you allowed to define who you thought you were. The truth is that you have just as much potential to be, say, gentle or forgiving as you do to be angry. From roughly 600 to 200 BC, an explosion of philosophical and religious movements throughout Eurasia gave rise to a wide variety of visions for human flourishing. During this period, which has come to be called the Axial Age, many of the ideas that developed in Greece also emerged in China and vice versa. (Location 170)The Path, like the Harvard lectures on which it is based, is exceptionally popular for a book of its kind - on the face of it an esoteric philosophy which doesn’t offer self-help so much as the re-definition of what constitutes self. I suspect, however, that the reason for its appeal is not its ‘doctrines,’ of which it has none, but its offer of a sort of religion which has been lost in the West for almost two millennia. The Path outlines a religion of ethical and ritual habit rather than a religion of faith and belief. The loss of this sort of religion has been so total that many are likely to perceive its suggestions - for this is what they are - as no religion at all. The sixth chapter focuses not on the ideas of a particular author but a particular work, “The Inward Training.” This manual describes how one can increase one’s vitality (readers maybe familiar with the idea of “chi” or “qi,” as in “tai chi” or “qi gong”) by a mystical approach that cultivates the divine within one.

Salt Path by Raynor Winn review – walking to freedom The Salt Path by Raynor Winn review – walking to freedom

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall. But what do we make, then, of the unhappiness, narcissism, and anxiety surging in the developed world? We are told that hard work will lead to success, yet the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically, and social mobility is on the decline. Our lives are mediated by all kinds of fascinating and impressive devices, we have achieved unprecedented medical advances, yet we face environmental and humanitarian crises on a frightening scale. Several decades later, our great optimism has disappeared. We no longer feel as confident as we did in the way we have structured our world. The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways. The breakdown of old aristocratic religious institutions left the people of the Axial Age in search of new sources of truth and meaning. Similarly, in our own age, we feel we have broken free of older, confining ways of thinking and are looking for new sources of meaning. Increasingly, we have been told to seek that higher truth within. The goal of a self-actualized person is now to find himself and to live his life “authentically,” according to an inner truth. I would give it five stars if it didn’t occasionally (often) feel like a commercial for Peter Mallouk’s company. Still, it’s a very worthwhile read especially if you haven’t yet had any financial planning done, and if you have had some it’s a good refresher; helps open your eyes to any possible bad (or hopefully good) advice you may have been given.I want to share an analogy that’s useful for conceptualising how we make decisions and make lasting change. I become aware of it from the work of Dan and Chip Heath (it was in their book Switch ), but the originator of the analogy is Jonathan Haidt. It is the rider, the elephant, and the path. The Rider How did Confucius define goodness? How would he suggest that we become a good or ethical person? Which is more important ethically according to Confucius: big changes or minor shifts? Explain. I couldn't wait for this. Brilliant. This is where it's at now . . . so fascinating Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2 Alexander Douglas Gillespie, the inspiration for the Western Front Way. Photograph: Imperial War Museum This book is organizationally and conceptually similar to a book by Edward Slingerland that I reviewed recently entitled “Trying Not to Try.” I’ll first discuss how the books are alike before differentiating them as I believe they are both worth reading. First, both books essentially look at how the ideas of ancient Chinese philosophers—both Confucian and Taoist—can be put into practice to improve one’s life in the modern world. Second, the heart of each work consists of chapters devoted to the thinking of one particular philosopher and how the ideas of said philosopher compare and contrast to those of the others.