From the dust jacket:
In My Country and My People there were broad hints of an outlook on living which comprehends both East and West, and throws on American life the light of Oriental perceptions. Now in The Importance of Living Dr. Lin offers for the first time a complete and matured work in this vein–too human to be called philosophy, too honest to be classed with so-called "self-help" books. Gaily serious, profoundly naive, cynically kind, shot through with a sense of comedy and backed by science, as well as by the thoughts of the Chinese sages of many centuries, it brings forth the salt and flavor and tang of life. We are in danger, the author says, of forgetting that we are animals and that life cannot be separated from animal activities. Life doesn't consist of achievement, in making a fortune, in the mental sallies of philosophers or the imaginative flights of poets. Life rather consists in the enjoyment of ourselves and one another, of home, of rocks and trees and stars and sounds or, to quote directly, in having a haircut once in two weeks, or watering a potted flower, or watching a neighbor fall off his roof." Life is to be valued in itself because we are living here and now, and not as a means to attain other ends.
Vivid passages deal with the arts of loafing, of conversation, of smoking, of travel, of enjoying food, of reading, of appreciating nature, with the creative impulse, and above all, the importance of all our daily habits. The book distills for the Western world the Chinese philosophy of three thousand years, in the hope that it may bring help to men and women who have not yet learned, as the Chinese have, that the meaning of life lies just in living itself.
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