From тАЬperhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary WestтАФand an author who тАШhad the rare gift of тАШwriting beautifully the unwritableтАЩтАЭ (Los Angeles Times)тАФa guide that draws on Chinese Taoism to reexamine humanityтАЩs place in the natural world and the relation between body and spirit.
Western thought and culture have coalesced around a series of constructed ideasтАФthat human beings stand separate from a nature that must be controlled; that the mind is somehow superior to the body; that all sexuality entails a seductionтАФthat in some way underlie our exploitation of the earth, our distrust of emotion, and our loneliness and reluctance to love. Here, Watts fundamentally challenges these assumptions, drawing on the precepts of Taoism to present an alternative vision of man and the universeтАФone in which the distinctions between self and other, spirit and matter give way to a more holistic way of seeing.