Tag Archives: Wisdom

BOOKS: “Live Like a Philosopher” by Massimo Pigliucci, Gregory Lopez, and Meredith Alexander Kunz

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Live Like A Philosopher: What the Ancient Greeks and Romans Can Teach Us About Living a Happy LifeLive Like A Philosopher: What the Ancient Greeks and Romans Can Teach Us About Living a Happy Life by Gregory Lopez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Hachette / Headline Press

This book is for a person in the market for a philosophy of life, but who only knows that they want a system rooted in Ancient Greece. While the coauthors are all Stoics, the book explores twelve additional philosophies and gives each roughly equal consideration. In addition to the expected systems, such as Epicureanism, Stoicism, Platonism, and Skepticism, there are also several lesser known or defunct philosophies such as Cyrenaic hedonism, Cynicism, Pyrrhonism, and Megarianism.

The book is organized into four parts. The first examines schools that value pleasure (Cyrenaicism and Epicureanism,) the next investigates schools that focus on virtue and character (Aristotelian Peripatetics, Stoicism, Cynicism, and Political Platonism,) the penultimate focuses on systems encouraging doubt or caution in knowledge (Socratic philosophy, Academic Skepticism, Sophism, and Pyrrhonism,) and the last set are posed as questionable candidates for a life philosophy (i.e. those of the Pythagoreans, Megarians, and Neoplatonists.) The last three schools are questioned on various grounds, including: is enough known about what its practitioners believed, did they live their philosophy or just ruminate on it, and could the system be considered a full-fledged philosophy (as opposed to a stance on a specific issue or issues.)

The book is presented in self-help fashion, with each chapter ending in a set of exercises designed to help the reader build practical understanding of each school. The goal of these exercises (as comes together in an appendix) is to help the reader determine which philosophy is best suited to their disposition and inclinations.

I enjoyed this book. The authors use stories to convey ideas and the book’s readability is kept inviting to general readers. If you’re interested in better understanding Greek schools of philosophy, I’d recommend the book as quick and easy way to get a better grasp.

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FIVE WISE LINES [May 2025]

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It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Ralph waldo emerson

Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.

Hans christian andersen

Don’t abandon kindness, mercy, and sympathy in an emergency.

Qiānzì wén [千字文], Ch. 3

Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

albert Einstein

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Henry david thoreau

BOOKS: “Wen-Tzu” Trans. by Thomas Cleary

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Wen-TzuWen-Tzu by Lao-Tzu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Shambhala

This work is presented as “further thoughts of Laozi [老子].” Readers of the Dàodé jīng [道德经] will recognize many a familiar statement of that work, but this book is much more extensive and detailed. I say “presented as” because scholars no longer believe this was a product of Laozi and his lifetime (if such an individual ever existed.) For one thing, the book seems more syncretic than the Dàodé jīng, that is to say there are points at which it sounds strikingly Confucian — rather than purely Taoist.

As with the Dàodé jīng the Wénzǐ [文子] covers a lot of ground from metaphysics to individual ethics to political philosophy, but this book has more room to sprawl on each subject.

As with other Cleary translations, it’s a pretty readable translation.

I’d recommend it for readers interested in Chinese Philosophy.

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Five Wise Lines from George Carlin [April 2025]

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Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot,
and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant
like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country,
no matter how tough it is,
that Americans,
when they roll up their sleeves,
can’t completely ignore.

Here’s all you have to know about men and women;
women are crazy,
men are stupid.
And the main reason that women are crazy
is that men are stupid.

I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete.
It’s so fuckin’ heroic.

FIVE WISE LINES [March 2025]

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Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?

george bernard shaw, PygMalion

Refrain from talk of others’ shortcomings; don’t rest on your strengths.
[罔谈彼短; 靡恃己长.]

Thousand Character classic [千字文]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

george bernard shaw, Man and superman

A child is the most reliable measure of time. His daily growth is proof of your daily ageing and decline. The child’s gains are your losses, and the closer a child gets to anything, the farther you withdraw, as though you were tied to one another on opposite spokes of a wheel and the wheel, without your noticing it, turns. Dawn for the child is dusk for you.

Otar chiladze, A Man was going down the road

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

George bernard shaw, Pygmalion

FIVE WISE LINES FROM WILLIAM JAMES [Feb. 2025]

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Our view of the world is truly shaped
by what we decide to hear.

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose
one thought over another.

The art of being wise is
the art of knowing what to overlook.

We have grown literally afraid to be poor.
We despise anyone who elects to be poor
in order to simplify and save his inner life.

Whenever two people meet,
there are really six people present.
There is each man as he sees himself,
each man as the other person sees him,
and each man as he really is.

NOTABLE MENTIONS:

We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats
are in our libraries, seeing the books
and hearing the conversation,
but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

Mountain Envy [Free Verse]

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Ah, the mountain!
   Old enough to know 
      When to stay quiet,
   And disciplined enough
      To stick to it.

BOOKS: “Original Tao” by Harold D. Roth

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Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (Translations from the Asian Classics)Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism by Harold D. Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher site – Columbia University Press

This book is built around a translation of an old Taoist manual called “Inward Training” (i.e. 内业,) and the book serves not only to elaborate the meaning of the twenty-six poems that make up the manual, but also to put this work in a context with respect to its place in early Taoist mysticism — which raises further questions as to what constitutes early Taoism and early Taoist mysticism. (Just as the earliest followers of Jesus didn’t think of themselves as “Christians” – at least not as we understand that term – it’s an open question as to when people started to think of themselves as Taoists and how that start relates to when people began holding a set of proto-beliefs that formed the basis of the school(s) of philosophy.)

“Inward Training” presents breathwork and meditational exercises that Roth calls “inner cultivation” — or what some have called “inner alchemy.” The book does contain the entire manual both in Traditional Chinese and an English translation, as well as a much more extensive elaboration of the teachings of the manual. The latter is necessary because, like many old manuals, sparse description, archaic language, and assumptions about common knowledge du jour make it difficult for the layman to get any depth of understanding from the manual, itself.

This is a scholarly work, which means that its readability isn’t the highest and it does dive into matters that will be arcana for non-expert readers. That said, particularly as works of academic philosophy go, its readability isn’t bad. The book is heavily annotated and offers and extensive bibliography.

If you are interested in Taoist practices of breath, meditation, and alignment, this book is well worth investigating.

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FIVE WISE LINES [January 2025]

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“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.”

Philip k. dick

“The Wu and the Yue peoples hate each other. But in the same boat in a storm, they work together like left and right hands.”

SunZi in The ART of War

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks – on your body or on your heart – are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

anthony bourdain

What allows great kings and generals to win, more frequently than ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge cannot be attained by spirits or deduced or calculated.”

Sunzi in The ART of war

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

T. S. Eliot

“Song of the Open Road” (6 of 15) by Walt Whitman [w/ Audio]

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Now if a thousand perfect men were to
   appear it would not amaze me,
 Now if a thousand beautiful forms of
   women appear'd it would not astonish
   me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the
   best persons,
 It is to grow in the open air and to eat and
   sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
 (Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the
   whole race of men,
 Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms
   law and mocks all authority and all 
   argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
 Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
 Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having
   it to another not having it,
 Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of
   proof, is its own proof,
 Applies to all stages and objects and 
   qualities and is content, 
 Is the certainty of the reality and
   immortality of things, and the excellence 
   of things;
 Something there is in the float of the sight
   of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and 
   religions,
 They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet
   not prove at all under the spacious clouds
   and along the landscape and flowing
   currents.

Here is realization,
 Here is a man tallied -- he realizes here what 
   he has in him,
 The past, the future, majesty, love -- if they
   are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
 Where is he who tears off the husks for you
   and me?
 Where is he that undoes stratagems and
   envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously
   fashion'd, it is apropos;
 Do you know what it is as you pass to be
   loved by strangers?
 Do you know the talk of those turning eye-
   balls?