The book is divided roughly into two halves, each consisting of two chapters. The first two chapters delve into philosophical territory as they lay out the background and precepts of understanding and working with internal energy. This information would be of interest to anyone practicing Tai Chi or, indeed, any of the other internal martial arts or even yoga. The book’s second half is a discussion of methodological foundations and techniques. Though its information is necessarily basic in terms of techniques—those being best learned from a teacher—it is long on the methodology, laying a firm foundation for future progress in meditation.

Jou opens with a short introduction that defines the Tao…. Okay, you can’t really define the Tao, but he explains that we use the word to refer to the base substance and force of the universe before they separated into substance and force. From there, he quickly waxes philosophical in a most uplifting manner—eager to help the reader learn as much as possible and advance in any way he or she can. He writes:

“How can we discover those gifts which nature bestows on each one of us?…. We must look within ourselves, not once, but again, and again, and again, to discover those things about ourselves that are most important to us.”

He continues in this humane tone to explain the background of meditation and many of the reasons to practice the art. Interestingly, he makes an effort to de-link meditation from specific religions, saying, “By helping us think clearly and concentrate fully, Ching Tso [meditation] enables us to commune totally with our God, without distracting or artificial thoughts.”

Next he discusses approaching meditation from a scientific standpoint. “To use scientific knowledge to understand meditation,” he writes, “is, as the Chinese proverb says, ‘To scratch an itching foot with the boot on.’” Science, in other words, can monitor heart rate, brain waves, and the like, but it can never pierce the veil to the infinitude on the "other side" of the meditator’s mind. The problem is, the other side is not like it is here and is not amenable to measurement.

As proof, we have glimpses of more “tangible” places where the reality we know vanishes into we know not what. We call them black holes, and there’s no telling what lies beyond their event horizons. Or what lies beyond the farthest distance that we can see with our telescopes into the visual and radio spectrums. And if the universe is constantly expanding, its farthest distance is, in itself, a vanishing horizon. More to the point, very few of us can truly see into our own souls. But Jou points out that we do have a way to actually do that, and it’s called meditation.

Chapter one is “Yin-Yang and Tai-Chi.” By Tai-Chi, he does not mean the martial and meditative art but rather the concept of duality acting in unison as one. He begins by discussing the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, and his explanations are thorough and illustrative. They are geared, however, more for those who do not yet have a grounding in these concepts, and more-knowledgeable readers might find themselves skimming, like a bird over water, looking for a good fish to dive down after. But that doesn’t mean that Jou’s discussions and explanations are facile, just basic, and he employs a large enough school of fish to keep even the more knowledgable reader diving in repeatedly. Ironically enough, some of his explanations are scientifically based, but such is the way of yin and yang within our state of reality.

Things get more interesting when he talks about how yin and yang interact to creatively form reality. This begins with the yin aspects of creativity, which are mental, and gradually transitioning them into the yang aspects, which are physical. The lessons of this section apply to Tai Chi Chuan in demonstrating how passive mental images can transition, through the intent-driven energy of chi, into physical force.

He continues extolling the virtues and applicability of yin/yang philosophy for several more pages, growing both more cosmic and more abstract and carrying the reader along with him. Then he comes back to Earth with the simple question, “Who am I?” To answer this question, which probably has been asked by nearly every human who has ever lived, he begins at the beginning by considering the creation of humankind and moving on from there.

All of this is very philosophical, interesting, and informative, though sometimes, Jou’s arguments don’t work out. For example, in a discussion of God, he cites the religious skeptic’s argument: “If God created the universe, where is God? If I do not know God, I cannot believe He created the universe.”

“This is a meager argument,” Jou responds, “because we could counter that question with another question: ‘Do you know the creator of the fie hydrant? Of not, can you believe that it was in fact designed by someone?’”

This is, to use Jou's own adjective, a meager counter. In the first place, we cannot physically touch or even see, much less encompass, God and the totality of reality. However, we can touch a fire hydrant and embrace it nearly fully within our arms. We cannot know where God or reality came from, but we can watch a crew install a fire hydrant and follow them back to the public works building where the fire hydrant came from and where others are stored. We can learn what companies manufacture hydrants, and with some diligent research, we most likely could discover just who did design the fire hydrant. But no matter how hard we look, no matter how deeply we delve into things or how far outward we look, we can’t go back to the moment of creation and watch it unfold, nor can we see forward to the end of space-time. Without being able to do either those things, science can never make a definitive statement about the totality of reality. For them to do that, they would have to stand outside of reality, which would fundamentally alter the reality into something else. The eyes of Heisenberg, after all.

For the most part, however, Jou's arguments and statements are valid, and the tenor his discussion/explanation/speculation is highly philosphical, and for those of us who like to engage that sort of thing, it’s mostly interesting. I say “mostly” because a lot of what he’s talking about is, again, aimed at the less experienced and knowledgable reader, so I sometimes found myself skimming explanations of something I already know about. But not always, because Jou has a knack for telling anecdotes and employing a witty sense of humor that has an occasional nip, all of which make for entertaining reading even if you already know the story.

Next, Jou delves into the dimensions—the three spatial and time—to lay the groundwork for the concept of extra-dimensionality. His discussions of the three spatial dimensions—length, width, and depth—begin with the French philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes, who provided a mathematical way to define the three spatial dimensions by utilizing three graduated axes—X, Y, and Z—to represent them. As with the previous chapter, the text is aimed at those with little background in these matters, which also were thoroughly covered in Edwin A. Abbott’s novel, Flatland, first published in 1884. Abbott’s primary purpose was to satirize Victorian society, but the book’s more lasting contribution was its clear description of what perception might be like for sentient beings living in one or two-dimensional worlds. What would it be like for those beings to encounter objects or beings from more complex dimensions, such as our three-dimensional reality?

Jou’s examples aren’t exactly those employed by Abbott, but they are necessarily very similar, so if you have a clear image of Abbott’s argument, you can skip much of this section, which ends in another skippable passage that is a retelling of the famous parable of the “Blind Men and the Elephant.” I say you can skip this material if you know it already, but that doesn’t at all mean that it isn’t cogent or germane to Jou’s intent. Then, immediately after, Jou winds up the chapter with an interesting discussion on the Flatland parable from a theoretical four-dimensional point of view. What would our three-dimensional reality seem like to a being from a four-dimensions?

Time is the subject of the next section. What is it? That depends, Jou says, on how you look at Time, and he proceeds to discuss several ways that Time can be viewed and experienced. And since we three-dimensional beings can, to some extent, manipulate length, width, and height, Jou wonders what Time would seem like to a four-dimensional being for whom it is a common and manipulable element of its environment? Jou also wonders if Time is always constant in its display/flow within the real world, and he shows by inference that it is not. To illustrate his points, Jou uses simple examples, and he also relates a couple of Chinese stories on Time. In the first, a man dreams an entire and vivid lifetime during a few minutes of sleep, and in the second, a man becomes so engrossed in an external activity that he looses all sense of time and stagnates as the world changes around him—a sort of Rip Van Winkle story. Jou concludes this section by noting that we humans are stuck in our three-dimensional world and remain subject to the fourth dimension of Time. This is, he finishes, “the space in which we live.”

Since Jou has consistently addressed the Really Big Questions, it’s no wonder that he continues with a chapter titled, “Where Can We Find the Truth?” He opens with Chuang-Tzu’s famous passage in which the sage tells of dreaming that he was a butterfly, and upon awakening, was not sure if he was Chuang-Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-Tzu. From there, Jou moves on to a discussion that takes in yin and yang as a constant state of change, transformation, and alternation, all within the constraints of Time. This is a fairly deep discussion that includes clear example of this cyclic nature of the universe.

As if all this wasn’t philosophical enough, the the first chapter if the second half of the book is actually titled, “Philosophy.” Perhaps all the foregoing should have been subsumed in a section titled, “Background and Philosophy of Meditation,” and the present chapter titled, “The Process, Methodology, and Technology of Meditation,” for those are what this chapter covers, beginning with “The Goal of Meditation.” The subsequent discussion includes a number of practical reasons to practice meditation, from its promotion of physical health all the way to its providing a path for spiritual enlightenment. Included are clues about impediments to clearing one’s body and mind not just of tension, but of physical, emotional, and psychic blockages that impeded the flow of chi within the self.

A discussion of Zen and one of the tools it uses to achieve enlightenment—the Koan—comes next. After definitions and descriptions of the precepts of Zen, Jou relates several famous Koans, all of which are germane to Jou’s arguments. In the last subsection in this chapter, “The First Stage of Enlightenment,” Jou does not go into the specific methodology or technology of meditation, but its process—how one develops through and with meditation over time. As with other chapters and subsections, this one has its share of stories, most notably here about the Buddha and his development from a worldly child of wealth and power into the exact opposite: an enlightened being. Again, the stories and anecdotes help illustrate the pedagogical points Jou is making, particularly the stories about his own life as a malnourished child and refugee from Communist China. His personal experiences and subsequent development are both illustrative and inspirational.

The second chapter of the second half of the book is titled simply, “Meditation.” Its purpose is to supply the methodology and technology of meditation. This book, however, isn’t exactly a how-to manual, but rather a “this is the way it’s done when you’re starting out, and what you can expect as you progress” sort of book. It defines the meditation environment, which includes not just what’s around the meditator, but what the meditator is seated on. Next come a handful of drawing showing specific seated or lying postures, followed by a set of twelve seated chi kung exercises that are mostly stretching, though a few are simply postural.

The following subchapter covers the Microcosmic Orbit, which is the body’s main chi circuit. For those who don’t know, Jou tells us that it consists of two channels called vessels. The Conception Vessel runs from the tip of the tongue, down the front of the front of the body through the digestive tract, to the perineum, and the Governing Vessel runs from the tip of the tailbone, up the spine and through the top of the brain, then down to the hard palate. The goal of meditation is to empower the flow of chi energy through the Microcosmic Orbit, increasing it in both quantity and strength until it breaks through the psychic barriers at the top of the head and fountains forth to merge with cosmic consciousness, producing enlightenment. This is a major difference in the treatment of chi by meditators and by Tai Chi Chuanists. The purpose of Tai Chi practice is to strengthen the chi but also to maintain its circular flow through the Microcosmic Orbit and, further, to willfully empower the chi through the network of channels, or circuits, in the limbs referred to as the Macrocosmic Orbit.

This is a pretty intense discussion of value to Tai Chi Chuanists, other internal martial artists, and yoga enthusiasts as well as to meditators, though, obviously, it’s geared for the latter. The subchapter includes snippets from a novice meditator’s diary, indicating his rapid advancement over the course of just a few months—included, I suppose, partially as a roadmap for the reader, but also as an endorsement of the method of meditation in producing tangible effects on those who take up the practice.

The next section discusses transferring chi and shen (spirit), and includes specific exercises to achieve further stages of development, and the section after that discusses proceeding from shen to void and enlightenment. With that, Jou closes the book. After all, where can you go after enlightenment?

I can’t really call The Tao of Meditation a manual on meditation, although it serves admirably for that purpose. Rather, it is a meditation on meditation. But it does contain enough practical information, methods, and exercises to get a novice meditator going, and all the intense philosophical material serves to prepare the meditator physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. The book also concludes with sage advice for anyone undertaking not just meditation, but any activity that builds or increases abilities: Learn valid techniques, which requires a good teacher, diligence, and persistence, but in the end, you are your own best teacher. The author also recognizes that increasing or improving abilities, as with life itself, is not a matter of simple arithmetic progression but can become geometric—and often even allows the practitioner to take a quantum leap into a cosmic paradigm. That's what meditation is all about.

The Tao of Meditation, as with The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan, is an excellent and thoughtful book that would be of value to any reader interested in pursuing any of the internal energy arts.

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