I read his book All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten a long time ago. I remembered it as rather cornball, but I did remember it, which is something. I read something about this volume recently and decided to give it a try.
This one is pretty cornball as well, and formulaic, but I can’t say didn’t enjoy parts of it. The title come from a newspaper article, an interview with a guy, who when asked how his matteress got on fire, answers that it was already on fire when he lay down on it.
A couple stories stood out to me. The one about the driver instructor who was loved by his students because he just listened to them and tried to get to know them. Another good one was about his time at a Zen monastery. The head of the place reads to him this:
There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.
However. It helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains , the earth gets wet.
There was also the story about the Hunt Saboteur Association, whose purpose was to break up fox hunting events – often humorously – thereby saving foxes from death. The interesting point was that doing good can also be fun, it doesn’t have to be grim and hard work.