I mean, this website is so good, you almost don’t need to buy the book.

And who else puts so much effort into communicating an idea so clearly? Some authors, yes, in their books. But in the websites for their books?

I did, at some point, have a fantasy of selling zillions of books and making zillions of dollars. I mean, why not? Others have. That Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance guy. That The Power of Now guy. That A Return to Love gal.

O well, it wasn’t to be.

My father-in-law tells me that he knows Steve Biddulph, who once told him that you don’t write books for money. The money from a book is like a trail of silver coins winding up the driveway. (Don’t picture a pirate’s silver coins. In Australia, silver coins are low denomination. The dull-silver coins winding their way up Biddulph’s driveway, and mine, promise to pay for the occasional cup of coffee.)

My first version of this book was back in the 90s, back before the internet. Back then, I was content to have managed to get a physical book made that I could give to friends and family. It was only later that the fantasy of mass sales surged in my brain. I’m not sure why it did, which is of course a stupid thing to say, because I am human, and human brains produce surges like that. I am relieved that that wave has broken and passed, that I am now back to the calm sea where I started.

I have shelter, food, a wife, a daughter, dogs, a coastline to walk, and no-one trying to kill me. It is more than most people who have ever lived have ever had. More than most people who are currently living have.

It is the book that matters. Chuang Tzu’s stories, ideas, vision. My ideas and vision, arrived at independently of Chuang Tzu. A vision arrived at independently by many people across cultures and ages. Discovered and forgotten. And rediscovered again. Across the aeons.

The vision is not unique. It is as common as the grass, as Whitman might say. But Chuang Tzu’s way of saying it, his stories, they’re a uniquely helpful expression of this common-as-the-grass vision.

One way to get a vision out into the world is with a book. But this modern world, for all is faults, is truly a marvel. For now there is another way. A nobody like me can make a website, a good website, and anyone in the world can access it.

To live in such times!