Books

Both books answer the question: What kind of civilization and what ways of thinking can encourage the most people to maximize their creativity, enjoy sustainable happiness, and make our planet more livable? Both journey through an unusual mixture of cultures and examine the ways in which their people have perceived and thought about the world. They then synthesize new concepts that integrate more varieties of human experience and use these novel ideas to give you much larger perspectives to expand your inner space, liberate yourself from habitual thoughts and emotions, and enjoy creative breakthroughs on a regular basis.

Thinking in a New Light

This book will immediately immerse you in different ways of thinking by taking you deeply into underappreciated Asian cultures. It then compares them with some of the West’s most influential movements. This book puts some of the most commonly shared Western and Asian assumptions side by side, looks At/With/Beyond them, shows how you can enjoy both regions’ traditions equally, and soar to higher perspectives which can synthesize all cultures into enriched views of the world. You’ll be more able to continuously enhance your creativity and well-being and see the world anew every day.

Excerpt:

PREFLIGHT CHECK-IN

I fell in love with exploring different cultures when I was seven. My father subscribed to National Geographic and bought the Time-Life series of books on the world’s countries, and I experienced one Wow! after another. Egyptian pyramids, Angkor Wat, ancient Greek temples, the Taj Mahal, Chinese pagodas, Gothic cathedrals, and narrow boats gliding through Bangkok’s canals—what inspired so many different art forms?

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Teaching the Mind to Dance

The first half of this book compares Western and Indian thought and aesthetics. It then expands to Africa and China. Experiencing this diversity of cultures will enable you to leap from one’s way of thinking to another’s as deftly as taking dance steps. Calling an idea revolutionary or paradigm shifting has become common, but those are only substitutions of one bias for another. Since there are thousands of cultures on our planet, people need the capacity to learn about new ways to understand and savor the world with much more speed and ease. This book will show how you can assimilate one culture after another so that you won’t just experience a mere revolution, but one breathtaking new perspective after another.

Excerpt:

INTRODUCTION

I thought I found heaven on earth during a round-the-world trip back in 2007, even though the world has been hellish for so many people. The variety of cultures that I explored on that journey (in Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East) showed me a way to think about our planet which schools don’t typically teach. The diversity of societies’ ways of thinking showed me that most of us learn only a tiny sliver of our potentials for well-being. Before leaving for those places, I studied them as deeply as I could, and that made my adventure so enjoyable that the most apt description of it was “paradise on earth.”

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