The Chinese teachings
The Plum of the Tree
The eastern blossom on the tree, the plum that opens in winter, the zodiac, the five elements, the Book of Changes, the asking-arts, feng shui and tea.
The Plum of the Tree
The plum opens on a bare branch in the cold, and a whole way of reading the moment opens with it.
02Twelve Ways to Cross the Same Cold Water
The twelve animals, the Great Race that set their order, and the sixty-year cycle that names your year.
03Five Ways the Year Turns
Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and the two cycles that move between them.
04The Book of Moving Water
How the oldest book of changes reads a moment by stacking lines, and why nothing it shows you is fixed.
05The Asking-Arts of Old China
A family of small rituals from China for putting one clear question to the world and reading how it answers.
06The Room Breathes, The Leaf Wakes
Two slow Chinese arts, feng shui and the way of tea, taught as one practice: paying close attention to where you live and what you drink.
07The Way of Tea (Cha Dao)
What cha dao and gongfu brewing actually are, the small vessels, and a simple home ceremony you can keep, steep after steep, with nothing fancy.
08How to Read the Tea Leaves
Drink the cup down, swirl it, turn it over, and read what clings, by where it sits and which way it points. The whole simple method of tasseography.
09The Bagua, Room by Room
The nine-square map at the heart of feng shui, what each life-area means, where it sits, and how to lay it over your own home tonight.
10The Eight Trigrams
Heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountain, lake, the eight three-line figures that underlie the bagua, the I Ching, and the whole Chinese cosmology.
11The Five Elements at Home
How the wu xing, the five Chinese elements, feed and check one another, and how to use their two cycles to balance any room.
12Compass vs. Black Hat Feng Shui
The two main schools of feng shui, the traditional compass (Lo-Shu) method and the Western Black Hat method, what each one does, and which to use.
Going deeper