Vegetable Roots Discourse Wisdom from Ming China on Life and Living

Written 400 years ago, by a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, "The Caigentan" or "egetable Root" has been a fundamental literary guide for hundreds of years,utlining Asian philosophy. This edition, translated by Robert Aitken andaniel W.Y. Kwok, contains 360 observations of life: its exaggerations,bsurdities, grotesqueries, and falsities. Terse, humorous, witty, and timely,hese Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucianist epigrams provide fundamentalrinciples of life. Though often strict, puritan, and tough to live by, theyrovide the foundation for the art of living. Pocket sized and agreeingeamlessly with the impulses of all ages, this discourse is read as a set ofhilosophical notions on personal development for all types.

Hong Zicheng was a Chinese philosopher who lived during the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Robert Aitken is the author of more than a dozen books about Buddhism, including A Zen Wave, Encouraging Words, and Taking the Path of Zen. A dedicated Buddhist for most of his life, he is a former abbot and roshi of the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, which he co-founded with his late wife Anne Hopkins Aitken in 1959. He now lives in retirement at the Palolo Zen Center in Honolulu.