Michael Puett - The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

Praise for

THE PATH

I read The Path in one sitting and have been talking about it to everyone. Its brilliant, mesmerizing, profoundand deeply contrarian. It stands conventional wisdom on its head and points the way to a life of genuine fulfillment and meaning.

AMY CHUA , Yale Law School professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Triple Package

This is a book that turns the notion of helpand the self, for that matteron 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 rereading sections, letting the wisdom steep like a good cup of tea.

ERIC WEINER , author of The Geography of Bliss and The Geography of Genius

The Path illuminates a little-known spiritual and intellectual landscape: the rich body of Chinese thought that, starting more than two millennia ago, charted new approaches to living a meaningful life. But Puett goes a lot further, creatively applying this ancient thought to the dilemmas of modern life. The result is a fresh recipe for harnessing our natural energies and emotions to strengthen social connection and build islands of order amid the chaos that sometimes surrounds us.

ROBERT WRIGHT , author of The Evolution of God

This book is a revelation, a practical way through a fractured, distracting world. I thought I knew these philosophersand 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.

EVAN OSNOS , National Book Awardwinning author of Age of Ambition

The Path will not only change your lifeit will change the way you see history and the world. From its wondrously fresh take on Confucius to its quietly profound read of just what it is the great sages have to say to us, this book exemplifies all that can come of the radical openness of Chinese philosophy. Read it and be transformed.

GISH JEN , author of Tiger Writing and The Love Wife

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Copyright 2016 by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2016

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Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara

Jacket design by Christopher Lin

Jacket illustration Christies Images/Bridgeman Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Puett, Michael J., 1964

The path : what Chinese philosophers can teach us about the good life / Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh.First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Philosophy, ChineseHistory. I. Title.

B126.P84 2016

181'.11dc23

2015022551

ISBN 978-1-4767-7783-2

ISBN 978-1-4767-7785-6 (ebook)

For JD, Susan, David, Mary, Brannon, Connor, and Meg

MP

For Benjamin, Daniel, Mia, and Annabel

CGL

It is not that the Way broadens humans; it is that humans broaden the Way.

Confucius, the Analects

O n a crisp, sunny morning in the fall of 2013, I sat in on a course at Harvard University on Chinese philosophy. I was there to write an article for the Atlantic on why an undergraduate class on such an arcane subject had become the third most popular on campus, after the predictable choices of introductory economics and computer science.

Professor Michael Puett, a tall, energetic man in his late forties, stood on the stage at Sanders Theatre speaking animatedly to over seven hundred students. His famously engaging lectures are done without any notes or slidesfifty minutes of pure talk every time. Students arent assigned any readings except the translated words of the philosophers themselves: Confuciuss Analects , the Dao de jing, the writings of Mencius. They are not assumed to have any prior knowledge of or interest in Chinese history or philosophy; they merely need to be open and willing to engage with these ancient texts. The course is well known for the bold promise the professor makes every year on the first day of class: If you take the ideas in these texts seriously, they will change your life.

Id completed a PhD in East Asian history at Harvard and, when I was a graduate student, taught undergraduates about Chinese philosophy. This material was not new to me. But as I listened to Michael that day and during the weeks that followed, I saw him bring these ideas to life in a way that I had never experienced before. He asked his students to not only grapple with the ideas of the thinkers but also to allow the ideas to challenge some of their fundamental assumptions about themselves and the world they are living in.

Michael speaks on Chinese philosophy at other universities and organizations throughout the world. After each talk, people invariably come up to him, eager to know how these ideas can apply to their own lives and real issues: their relationships, their careers, their family struggles. They realize that these principles present a fresh perspective on what it means to live a good and meaningful life; a perspective that stands at odds with so much of what they have assumed to be true.

It is a perspective that has affected many for the better. Michaels students have shared with me stories of how their lives were transformed by these ideas. Some have told me that they have changed the way they look at their relationships, now recognizing that the smallest actions have a ripple effect on themselves and everyone around them. As one student explained, Professor Puett opened the door to a different way of interacting with the world around me, of processing my feelings, of establishing with myself, and with others, a sense of calm that I hadnt felt before.

These successful young people, positioned to become future leaders in whatever career they might pursue, told me how these ideas changed their approach to major life decisions and their own trajectory. Whether they decided to go into finance or anthropology, law or medicine, these ideas equipped them with different tools and a different worldview than those with which they had been raised, opening a new window onto the purpose of life and its infinite possibilities. One student told me, Its very easy to have the mind-set that youre building toward some ultimate goal and climbing a ladder to some dream endwhether thats a certain position or a certain place in life. But this message really is powerful: that by living your life differently, you can open yourself up to possibilities you never imagined were even possible.