The Tao of Abundance: Eight Ancient Principles for Abundant Living

Not since Alan Watts has there been a lay expert with the erudition and insight to so expertly pack a difficult package of unfamiliar notions into a book of immediate relevance. What is consumerism to me? and sex? and money? How do they relate to my goals and aspirations? Laurence Boldt, a career counselor and author of the bestselling Zen and the Art of Making a Living, presents a sophisticated alternative to life as we know it. Fully equipped with opinion polls, sociological studies, intellectual histories, and classic economics texts, Boldt dismantles the foundations of our consumer society brick by brick and, more importantly, our unquestioning acceptance of it. The alternative is a path of awareness, of flowing, and of sufficiency that together result in the joyful abundance of a productive, natural life. The shift in world view that Boldt seeks to effect in the reader has such profound practical implications that this book could very well change your life--which is exactly the author's intention. Boldt can be excused for slipping into fuzzy notions like the so-called perennial philosophy, for his recasting of modern life in Taoist terms of ready abundance is so convincing that it makes you wonder how we got stuck in our lifestyles of lack in the first place. --Brian Bruya