Vegetable Roots Discourse: Wisdom from Ming China on Life and Living

Description

Written 400 years ago, by a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, "The Caigentan" or "Vegetable Root" has been a fundamental literary guide for hundreds of years, outlining Asian philosophy. This edition, translated by Robert Aitken and Daniel W.Y. Kwok, contains 360 observations of life: its exaggerations, absurdities, grotesqueries, and falsities. Terse, humorous, witty, and timely, these Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucianist epigrams provide fundamental principles of life. Though often strict, puritan, and tough to live by, they provide the foundation for the art of living. Pocket sized and agreeing seamlessly with the impulses of all ages, this discourse is read as a set of philosophical notions on personal development for all types.

Author of nine books including, Taking the Path of Zen, Zen Master Raven, and The Morning Star, Robert Aitken has been a leader of the contemporary novel to establish Zen Buddhism in the West and was a founding member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He is a teacher of broad reputation and consequence, who numbers as his own teachers and associates some of the legendary figures of Japanese and American Buddhism. He lives in Hawai'i.