The premise of the ancient Buddhist teaching of the Wheel of Life, centered on the 12 “links” or “triggers” that keep this cycle going, is that just being alive is a lot like having fallen into a pit of quicksand already. If we really know our stuff, we can calmly do everything we need to do to get help and escape successfully. But if we don’t know how quicksand really works, then everything we do to get out actually just makes things worse.
And so the purpose of this book is to give us some of the very most intelligent and compelling instructions ever written in human history, for navigating our life successfully; including the navigation of what comes after our life. Because all of us have this (correct) feeling that—if a life like this can happen to us once, then it’s a simple mathematical probability that it can happen again, given countless years of future when this could occur.
Over many years’ time, your two translators have studied many examples of the classical literature of Asia, especially on this topic of successful life-quicksand strategies. We have put together for you a selection of some of the finest and most effective pieces written over the last 25 centuries, as strategies for escaping the pain, and attaining true & lasting happiness.
