The Mad Monk Manifesto

Today’s readers are outraged by world events, often frustrated by their own personal battles, and disenfranchised from government and leadership. Born of moral indignation, informed by decades of study, and seasoned by a life of devoted self-cultivation, Mad Monk Manifesto is exactly what they are looking for, organically cohering personal prescriptions and calls to social and political action in one powerful document. Based on ancient Chinese wisdom, the manifesto is part tour guide to consciousness, part recipe for personal development, part prescription for environmental salvation, and part handbook for social change. In clear and concise language, Monk Yun Roul reveals traditional Daoist prescription for changing the larger world by changing ourselves first. In the same way ripples move away from a stone dropped into a pond, the prescription begins with exercise and diet and moves to techniques for awakening consciousness with meditation and mind/body practice. Advice for a healthy, conscious lifestyle come next, followed by choices the reader can make to enhance the effects of personal changes on the lives of friends, family, and coworkers. Following this comes consideration of how we can enlarge and change our community through cultural shifts. After that comes an examination of what we can do to help commerce and government evolve through civil disobedience and legislative means. If we don’t have a habitable planet, nothing else matters, so the manifesto treats environmental issues next, linking them to the Daoist veneration of nature and conservation of natural resources. Finally, the narrative returns to spirituality and service as the highest goals of an awakened life. Each chapter is creative and fresh, offering proactive solutions in single-paragraph exhortations and prescriptions against a backdrop of lessons from Chinese history, the wisdom of ancient sages, and stories born of the author’s journey from privileged Manhattanite to practicing Daoist monk. Inspirational and informative, exhortative and prescriptive, the book creates a complete and immersive experience for the reader—a portrayal of everything from the mundane to the sublime through the lens of the philosophy best known from George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, the Green Movement, and surf and hippie cultures. The reader emerges with a new way of seeing life, a series of concrete steps to take for personal transformation, and an action plan for working in the community to change in the world. At a time of unprecedented environmental disasters, international instability, and divisive and unreliable leadership, this is precisely the manifesto the world needs.