The Path

What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

By: Michael Puett, Christine Gross-Loh

Narrated by: Michael Puett, Christine Gross-Loh

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today.

Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish.

Astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese scholars exploring how humans can improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities. Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities.

In other words, The Path “opens the mind” (Huffington Post) and upends everything we are told about how to lead a good life. Its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place—just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently. “With its…spirited, convincing vision, revolutionary new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head” (Kirkus Reviews).

An Inspired Book

It is really an inspired book. Everybody can find basic and pragmatical advices they can use them in their daily lives to generate better world.

Great eastern philosophy introduction

Good read for one that wants to take a glimpse at eastern philosophy and not at hype interpretations of it.

Interesting and Informative read.

Good review of historical patterns. Narration is very and presentation of the material maintained my interest.

Good, though refracted through a modern interpretation

This is a good intro to early Chinese philosophy. The author often complains about Chinese philosophy being misunderstood because it’s viewed through the lens if some particular time and place, in this case the modern and early modern west. The irony is that it is clear having read these texts that he too is viewing these materials through a particular lens. Right now and especially at ivy universities such as his everything is viewed though an social activist lens, I’m not saying that is necessarily a bad thing but it is a thing. Look for that in his interpretations and I think you’ll see it too. There is more to these texts than just that and there are deep connections to other traditions. Possibly this is because it’s early Chinese philosophy which was unaffected by Buddhism but in China Confucius, Lao Tzu and the Buddha are called the three sages due to there massive impact on Chinese culture. Thus it is odd that Buddhism wasn’t mentioned much and when it was it was done so somewhat inaccurately. There is for instance deep resonance between Buddhism and the inner training and Taoism that would have been interesting to explore. I am guess this did not happen for two reasons. One that is it is true that Buddhism has been badly distorted by the popular mindfulness movement. For good insight into this there are two meditation apps that show the difference, headspace is a shallow westernization of Buddhism whereas the Waking Up app actually includes a great deal of traditional practices and philosophy that are glossed in headspace if you are interested. The other problem that would lead the author to leave it out is that there are aspects to Buddhism that he probably doesn’t like and do no fit his narrative, same with Taoism really. This is the fact that it really does call for acceptance of the way things are. The argument is simple and powerful. Happiness is having what you want or in the other direction it is wanting what you have. You can always want what you have if you train you mind to do so therefore you can always be happy in any situation if you mind is properly conditioned. I think this is perfectly true but it is also not obviously in alignment with the social activist spirit of today. Since these encourage constant struggle against the way things are to make things better. I apologize for the rabbit hole here but I think that the acceptance of the way things are in a personal level is paradoxically a stronger position from which to effect change. Because it grants one patience, clarity of mind and allows for forgiveness. I will cite the success of the peace movements in India and South Africa against oppressive regimes using peacefulness as examples. These movements were able to succeed precisely because of there compassion and peacefulness, they brought about social change by changing hearts not vitriolic cries to dismantle the very structure of the societies they struggled against. If they had done that, they would have scarred those societies into hatred for them and never would have succeeded without great bloodshed. This peacefulness of mind would be an extremely powerful tool to be added back into the social justice arsenal as it was in the highly successful though incomplete civil rights movements of the 60s but it is not at all popular right now and was thus excluded probably so as for this professor to keep his job at his Ivy. I suggest you read these other non western sources, Indian philosophy in general as Buddhist philosophy as well are another important area if you are trying to expand your knowledge. And I suggest you do, if you only know Western sources you are a Western philosopher, better to be just a philosopher

He is extraordinary and the subject very deep

But the quality of the recording is really poor, it is not the standard audible quality. Too bad, but I have all versions of this amazing book, so that’s fine.