La senda de las nubes

Catherine François brings to the scene some cultural heroes almost unknown in the West, whose lives constitute relevant fragments of Chinese history and a true example of wisdom. With rigorous erudition, Catherine François exposes in this book the subtle relationships that exist between the three great schools of Chinese thought, which are often presented as opposing currents: Confucianism, Taoism and Chan Buddhism. One of the principles that are perpetuated throughout the centuries in these three teachings could be summarized this way: no one can teach you your own path (the Tao) and goodness is achieved without the need to meditate on it. In order to illustrate the fact that the doctrine itself has little value and that individual experience is all that counts, the text narrates in four chapters the history of emblematic characters in the course of different eras. The author uses her imagination to breathe life back into them while remaining faithful to the historical past. The path of the clouds aspires to embody the history of these ideas by fusing poetic emotion with the desire to arrive at the truth typical of a historian, and it does so with a refined and concise style, compatible with the original sources of Chinese thought.