The Importance of Living

Having more free time in hand, I have started leisure reading again.

About 3 months back, a friend of mine passed me a Chinese philosophy book to read as I was keen on reading something different. The title of the book was 'The Importance of Living' by Lin Yutang. I managed to read a couple of chapters before putting the book aside as I had to attend to my thesis writing then. Nevertheless, I have started reading it again and it is, indeed, refreshing to the soul and mind.

Here is an excerpt from the book, which I think is food for thought - the author's take on the definition of wisdom within mankind:-

'....I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life's tragedy and then life's comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of sadness comes the awakening and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot.'


The thing that interests me most about Lin Yutang's book is his opinions about Science. This thing he wrote really amused me (...and which I thought was so true):-

'....Science, if anything, has taught us an increased respect for our body, by deepening a sense of the wonder and mystery of its workings........The workings of the internal parts of our body and the wonderful correlation between them compel in us a sense of the extreme difficulty with which these correlations are brought about and the extreme simplicity and finality with which they are nevertheless accomplished. However, instead of simplifying these internal chemical processes by explaining them, science makes them all the more difficult to explain!.....'

Anyhow, I shall not bore you with anymore excerpts from my new-found joy. ;p
May you all have a good week ahead!!



~~~The cover of the book ~~~
(sorry for the minute image, couldn't find a larger image on the web)