Forget mindfulness, stop trying to find yourself and start faking it | The Guardian | April 2016
Unlike the philosophers we are more familiar with in the west, these
Chinese thinkers didn’t ask big questions. Theirs was an eminently
pragmatic philosophy,
based on deceptively small questions such as: “How are you living your
daily life?” These thinkers emphasised that great change only happens
when we begin with the mundane and doable. Their teachings reveal that
many of our most fundamental assumptions about how we ought to live have
actually led us astray. So what are the ideas we hold dear, and what
alternatives do Chinese philosophers offer in their place?