Still Point of the Turning World

This moving book chronicles the life of modern-day Taoist rogue and sage, Gia-fu Feng. Born to a wealthy, traditional family in Shanghai, Gia-fu lived through tumultuous periods of exponential change in China. After leaving his homeland for graduate studies in the States, he found himself stranded on the other side of the world with the home he knew crumbling before the world's eyes. Landing in the mid-1950s at San Francisco's American Academy of Asian Studies, Gia-fu unexpectedly found a niche, a place from which to explore who he was. Within a decade, his path took him to Esalen in Big Sur and the human potential movement of the 1960s. Gia-fu went on to found Stillpoint, a Taoist community of families living simply and honestly with each other in nature. Teacher, translator and Tai Ji master, Gia Fu-Feng is remembered for his colorful life in which he learned and taught alongside some of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers, including Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts. Through his life and work, he sought to bring the ancient wisdom of the Tao into the modern world. His translation of the Tao Te Ching has sold over 1,250,000 copes and is widely considered to be one of the most readable and influential translations of our time. His translation of Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters, now published by Amber Lotus in a 35th anniversary edition, has sold over 150,000 copies. Still Point represents thirteen years of research by dedicated author Carol Ann Wilson, sister to Gia-fu's heir. Using Gia-fu's biographical notes and numerous outside sources, Wilson has given us the extraordinary story of a rogue Taoist sage.