Hong Zicheng was a Chinese philosopher who lived during the end of the Ming Dynasty. Robert Aitken is the author of more than a dozen books about Buddhism, including A Zen Wave, Encouraging Words, and Taking the Path of Zen. A dedicated Buddhist for most of his life, he is a former abbot and roshi of the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, which he co-founded with his late wife Anne Hopkins Aitken in 1959. He now lives in retirement at the Palolo Zen Center in Honolulu.
It can be enjoyed merely for its sage advice and for the charm of the Chinese idiom that Aitken and Kwok have preserved. As an author, intellectual, and historical figure, Aitken knows how important transmission of information can be.