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Sinosophy
Xuanzang went west and came back with sutras that took the rest of his life to translate. I'm going the other way, from India to Confucian Asia, without the Tang emperor paying for my travels. Philosophy can be a system of doctrines, or it can travel as a mood. I'm going to read Chinese thinkers the way Joyce read Homer, and I won't make truth claims about what they meant.
Qi gets translated as vital energy, which is how it ends up in wellness brochures, but the character also means breath and weather. Feng shui is a pattern language for habitability, roughly two thousand years older than Christopher Alexander's. Spivak says we inhabit the planet on loan, and the Monkey knows that in his bones. Bodhidharma's answer to the emperor is the motto for this room: I don't know.
Choose a theme and walk.
Themes: where the road keeps turning
where to?Xuanzang walked west to India and came home with sutras. Bodhidharma went the other way, and it's sometimes said he was a Pallava prince from Kanchipuram, not too far from my ancestral home. In 2026 the Monkey set out from India for Confucian Asia.
Start walkingConfucian modernity5In late 2020 I followed Biden and China through a run of daily posts I called Xiden, starting with how China got to re-embrace Master Kong. Neoliberal capitalism is the dominant theology, and Confucian capitalism the upstart dogma. The Monkey essay tries to read Confucian modernity on its own terms.
Start walkingShi and correlative thought3Shi is the propensity of things, which I picked up from François Jullien. A good general senses the natural order of the terrain and arranges what he has. In Indian terms, it's as if Krishna won the Mahabharata war and Arjuna just placed the arrow in his bow when told to.
Start walkingMood, qi and habitability3Philosophy can travel as a mood. Qi is atmosphere in the literal sense before the figurative one, and feng shui reads a site for wind and water. Sinosophy asks what it feels like to live inside a planetary order.
Start walkingDon't-know mind3Emperor Wu asked, "Who is facing me?" Bodhidharma replied, "I don't know," and crossed the Yangtse. I say I don't know a lot in the Monkey essay, and I mean it every time. Zen's beginner's mind, from 2019, is a close cousin.
Start walkingYour walk so far
On the reading shelf
waiting to be readThese names come from the reading list I drew up in The Monkey Goes East. Most are still waiting. Each name links to Wikipedia, that canonical source of truth.