I won this book in a give-away.

I signed up for the give- away, because I spotted the word ¨spontaneity¨ in the title. I was not disappointed: the book is a lively description of the solutions to the paradox of trying to be spontaneous (wu-wei) in Ancient Chinese philosophy and modern science (especially psychology). Slingerland uses examples from modern culture, funny anecdotes and personal experience to illustrate his point. Since I was somewhat unfamiliar with the details of Confucianism and Daoism and their offshoots, I appreciated this approach very much. It is very clear that Slingerland himself has made the texts his has studied for so many years part of his day to day thinking. That's wu-wei in action. ( )

The thing about ancient Chinese philosophy is, it's ancient. As relevant as the core teachings might still be, the original context and many of the metaphors suffer from such an enormous time gap that many modern-day folks (myself included) simply can't relate, and therefore miss the message. These days one typically isn't faced with dilemmas such as how to most elegantly butcher an ox for ceremonial offering, or what to do with a crop of comically oversized gourds.

And from a Western point of view, the other thing about ancient Chinese philosophy is, it's Chinese. That is to say, it's incredibly foreign. Many Westerners (myself included) sometimes struggle to understand even modern Chinese culture, simply because Western and Chinese cultures differ so greatly. The two take radically different approaches even to something as fundamental as language: non-tonal pronunciation versus tonal, a phonetic alphabet versus a complex logography, etc.

These represent two considerable hurdles for the modern Westerner interested in ancient Chinese philosophy. However, Edward Slingerland overcomes both of these hurdles seemingly with ease in his book Trying Not to Try. With an extraordinary understanding of ancient China and its great thinkers, Slingerland excels at "modernizing" their teachings — explaining the original meaning and context in ways that instantly click. He then goes one step further, backing up these ancient teachings using examples from modern science, focusing on fascinating topics such as charisma (bombing an interview versus nailing it), high-level performance (being "in the zone" versus choking), happiness (why trying to be happy usually fails), and many others.

Slingerland's fluid and engaging writing style held my attention all the way through, and even though I'm not particularly interested in philosophy or ancient China, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. ( )

Excellent... although it's not discussed by Slingerland, it actually tied into my understanding of Ezra Pound's use of of wu wei in some of his early poetry, in opposition to his more Confucionist tendencies. I read it at a time when I was loosening up--enjoying myself, letting go of control and expectations, while I was living in Florida and experimenting with new kinds of writing. I will return to the book with a certain romance, to be sure. ( )

This book takes the concept of wu wei and explains it very well, in the process also showing a lot about Chinese philosophy. If this sounds dry, it isn't. The author knows his stuff well enough to translate it into relevant concrete examples and throw in a occasional joke.. ( )

I casually ordered this book because I had read an article in Nautilus magazine of Butcher Ding and his effortless and unselfconscious way with a meat cleaver, having dispatch an ox smoothly and efficiently for the emperor. I thought this was an eastern spin on the idea of flow, a concept that Mikaly Csikszentmihalyi established in western psychology literature. While Csikszentmihalyi approached it from a strictly western way, using neurosciences and psychology to try to teach how to get flow in all that we do, Slingerland took a decidedly eastern route, and I found his approach completely satisfying and indeed, I found it inspirational.

Slingerland is a professor of Asian Studies in the University of British Columbia, it is not surprising that he would take the Asian route. He is in fact a very astute scholar and teacher. Slingerland tells a great story, with a scholarship and attention to detail that is rare to find these days, especially given the immediate gratification oriented ethos of our culture. He does, however, have a sometimes unfortunate and sometimes welcomed quirky propensity to use slang terms in certain portions of his explanation. It was sometimes distracting, yet also is a sometimes welcomed digression.

The book is broken up into eight chapters, each of the first two chapters set the stage for explaining flow, or wu wei as well as de. The next four chapters explains how each of the major Chinese school of thoughts, divided between the Confucian and Daoist schools. We are introduced to Confucius, Mencius of the Confucian school; with Laozhi Zhuangzhi presenting the Daoist schools.

If this sounds kind of long and boring, be warned, it isn't. Slingerland has a wealth of understnading of Chinese religious and philosophical schools. More importantly, he is quite at ease explaining these convoluted and coupled approaches to the idea of wu wei. In fact, it is almost as if he was demonstrating how to work in a wu wei manner while explaining the wu wei concept.

The last two chapters explains the contradictions embodied by wu wei and finally, what do we do with the concept and how do we can attempt to reach a state of wu wei ourselves. The entire idea with wu wei is very strange, or shuen, in Chinese. Slingerland was able to encircle the vast amount of tendrils that makes up the idea, sort and separate each one, and present the essence without making it dumbed down or diminished.

It is, in fact a bravura performance and fascinating. In a way, as a Chinese person, I felt almost ashamed that it took a Canadian academic to show me the essential philosophy of my culture. But that shame went away quickly, as my joy of having finally understood the idea made me overlook the discretion.

Another fortunate characteristic of this book is that it does not promise a quick and easy formula, something most popularizing books try to accomplish. There is a belief that what the reader is looking for is not a deep understanding but a quick application. In this case the loss that would have been incurred on the body of knowledge would have been too great and take away from the richness of the history and philosophy. What Slingerland did was to be quite Confucian: carving and polishing the topic for us.

But this is not just an exercise in aimless pedagogy. The idea is to draw parallels between Asian history and philosophy with the latest in neuro science and mind research. I feel that goals was also met successfully. Slingerland pulls ideas from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, Mikaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, as well as many other western research in mind psychology to round out an excellent presentation of wu wei. ( )