I can’t remember if my last big shift in thinking came when I first read the Tao, or when I read The Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be. They were certainly the last two books to really mess with my head, in a good way. Actually, no, Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland was, but that was more of an inspiration than a paradigm shift…
Anyway, reading the Tao (specifically this translation– though I really didn’t like the commentary in it… partisan and petty, in direct constrast to the main text!) caused a sea-change in much of my thinking, confirmed much of what I was doing as a teacher, and gave stronger impetus to many other fledgling ideas about pedagogy and the world in general.
So, when the lovely Nick Fitzsimons set up a Posterous account to post the 81 stanzas of the Tao across the last 81 days of the ’00s, I started reading it again. And here I am, sat on a train, being reminded again of its timeless radical wisdom, reading words that make sense of so much of the nonsense of the world.
Highly recommended. head over to http://taoaday.posterous.com/ to read more. Take your time, read one a day, and perhaps read it 3 or 4 times during the day. Much deep goodness is to be found 🙂