One Last Thing: A Time-Travellers’ Guide to Taoism, Martial Arts and 21st Century Thinking

By Paul Read and Gerald Greene

2nd Edition: Now with Added Doctor's Travel Notes, extended Editor's comments, more illustrations, and (with 2019 paperback) QR-coded Future-proofed Glossary. 

Internationally renowned journalist, Gerald Greene, postpones his imminent retirement in order to complete One Last Thing: Travel back in time to interview the greatest writers, fighters and thinkers that have defined and shaped the 21st century.

Assisted by a temperamental time-machine, a short-tempered Doctor and a dysfunctional webcam, Greene retrieves data that will shock the inhabitants of the 21st Century: confessions, previously unheard anecdotes, eye-witness accounts and fresh dialogue that casts a new light on everything we have ever known. 

"Impudent, cheeky, saucy, and beautifully –wonderfully –insanely irreverent! I love this book for all the reasons I love rock-n-roll, American muscle-cars, and 1970's Shaw Brothers martial arts flicks. Reading this book, you'll be stained by its wisdom! Anthony Guilbert, author of 'Notes From The Drift'.

Fact, fiction, comedy, and drama blend together in this parody on productivity and the history of martial arts, where boundaries between people, places and times dissolve and reunite in the most unexpected of ways.

Featuring: 

*The biggest (and wettest) copyright case in legal history: Be Like Water my Friend, featuring Lao Tzu, Bruce Lee and David Allen 

* Pizza Pandemonium as Chuck Norris and popular Guru, Krishnamurti, sit down to break garlic-bread and discuss freedom, liberty and the relevance of chest hair.

*The Shaolin Temple Talks: Alan Watts lectures the Shaolin Priests on how to update their training methods

* When Rocky Balboa offers Marshall McLuhan a lift home, they discuss the evasive qualities of winning and losing.

*Bruce Lee (inseparable from his nunchaku) fidgets on the couch of a curious Carl Jung.

* Lao Tzu - the productivity guru and father of Taoism - explains the Origins of Everything and the Meaning of Nothing

* Life on the set of the Kung Fu TV series is explored as Kwai Chang Caine reveals the importance of Flutes, Floppy Hats and faked Fighting.

The History of the Martial Arts, the role of Culture and Tradition and the relationship of East to West are all blown wide open in this philosophical comedy, from the author of The Manual of Bean Curd Boxing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Craving Distraction Ltd
• Release date: Sep 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781386447900

Paul Read

Born restless in the very centre of London, England, Paul Read now fidgets his way back and forth between the Uk and Spain in search of good coffee, good conversation and fresh vegetables. In the absence of finding any of these, he writes, schemes and plans for global domination but generally settles for a series of podcasts, books, and online teaching courses: All freshly brewed and 100% guru-free.

Book preview

One Last Thing: A Time-Travellers' Guide to Taoism, Martial Arts and 21st Century Thinking

By Gerald Greene & Paul Read

Published by Craving Distraction Ltd

Copyright 2014 Paul Read

2014 1st Edition

2019 2nd Edition

This book is also available in print

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

ONE LAST THING: A TIME-TRAVELLERS’ GUIDE TO TAOISM, MARTIAL ARTS AND 21ST CENTURY THINKING

First edition. September 10, 2013.

Copyright © 2013 Paul Read and Gerald Greene.

ISBN: 978-1386447900

Written by Paul Read and Gerald Greene.

Table of Contents

ONE LAST THING:

DOCTOR'S NOTE

EDITOR'S NOTE

CHAPTER 1: LAO TZU AND THE ORIGINS OF EVERYTHING

THE DIGITAL TAOIST: LAO TZU AND THE ANALOGUE AGE

CHAPTER 2: CHANG SAN FENG AND ANIMAL ASSISTANCE

THE DAILY SIMIAN INTERVIEW: HE LEFT ME FOR A BETTER OFFER

CHAPTER 3: YANG LU CHAN AND THE VILLAGE OF THE CHENS

TAI CHI LEGENDS (PART 1) YANG LU CHAN

TAI CHI LEGENDS (PART 2) YANG LU CHAN

CHAPTER 4: YANG CHEN FU AND THE BATTLE WITH INVINCIBILITY

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: THE BIGGEST SELL OUT IN HISTORY?

CHAPTER 5: FROM INVINCIBILITY TO YOGA-JAZZ WITH CHENG MAN CHING

THE WIKILEAKS PAPERS (FRAGMENT)

CHAPTER 6: BRUCE LEE IN GO WEST YOUNG MAN

THE ROUND TABLE DEBATE: WORKING WITH THE LITTLE DRAGON

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: POSTER PROBLEMS

CHAPTER 7: CARL JUNG ON NOTEBOOKS AND NUNCHAKUS

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: JUNG’S INSTITUTE OF DREAM ANALYSIS (OPEN 24HRS & FREE WIFI)

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: WEEKEND INTRODUCTION COURSE 1

THE FUTURE OF THE MARTIAL ARTS GENRE

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: HOLLYWOOD

CHAPTER 8: THE FIRST ANTI-GURU APPEARS - JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

‘PHILOSOPHY IN AN AGE OF MOBILE APPS’ (TRANSCRIPT)

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: WAYS OF SEEING

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: WINNING AND LOSING

CHAPTER 9: WATTS, SHIPPING AND WIGGLING

‘PHILOSOPHY IN AN AGE OF MOBILE APPS’ (TRANSCRIPT)

CHAPTER 10: KWAI CHANG CAINE AND THE WESTERNISATION OF THE EAST

THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE

TALES FROM WITHIN THE TARDIS (PART 1-TRANSCRIPT)

TALES FROM WITHIN THE TARDIS (PART 2-TRANSCRIPT)

A PASSION FOR PATTERNS

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: INTERNAL AFFAIRS (FRAGMENT)

THE SHAOLIN LECTURE: APPROACHES TO COMPLEX KUNG-FU PATTERNS WITH ALAN WATTS

CHAPTER 11: MCLUHAN AND ALLEN ON CULTURAL CONFUSION

THE ROUND TABLE DEBATE: FIVE QUESTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND TAOISM

CHAPTER 12: TRULY A GLOBAL VILLAGE

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: THE ANIMALS HIT BACK

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: THE INTRODUCTORY WEEKEND COURSE 2

THE DOCTOR’S TAPES: THE ORIGINS OF DIVISION

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DELAYED GRATIFICATION (FRAGMENT SENT ANONYMOUSLY TO GERALD GREENE )

CHAPTER 13: THE ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY

THE WIKI-LEAKS PAPERS (E-MAIL FRAGMENT)

ONE LAST THING

LETS GO DEEPER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: PAUL READ

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BRING THE WORDS ALIVE

posterbeach

LEARN TAI CHI ONLINE

Discover another world of 21st Century Tai Chi

www.teapotmonk.com

fingerraiseleft

 "Impudent, cheeky, saucy, and beautifully – wonderfully – insanely irreverent! I love this book for all the reasons I love rock-n-roll, American muscle-cars, and 1970's Shaw Brothers martial arts flicks. Reading this book, you'll be stained by its wisdom! 

- Anthony Guilbert, author of 'Notes From The Drift'. 

ONE LAST THING:

CRITICAL REVIEWS FOR ONE LAST THING: 

krish MINI

I don’t think the Doc ever realised. There were no passengers on the Tardis, we were all crew.

- Marshall McLuhan

Creativity in the martial arts has sneaked back across the border

 - Lee. 

The availability of the new Shaolin wifi -enabled nunchaku have changed the course of proletariat history

 - Karl Marx

All the dead ever talk about is tradition? Don’t listen to us. It’s just our way of maintaining peer pressure. "

 - Lao Tzu

Some of the stories, if you ask me, could have been a lot less bouncy

 - Colt

I found the Tai Chi Fridge Magnet Set stuck well and made my kitchen chores far more satisfying. 

 - Mao Tse Tung

tardismini

DOCTOR'S NOTE

My most humble apologies for the changes that occur in chronology during these journeys. It is an inescapable consequence of my travels that 'fact', will - if not supervised - become 'fiction', and 'drama' become 'comedy'.

The TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension In Space) minimizes these effects whenever possible, but words do have a tendency to move from one voice to another despite my efforts to tie them down to a place, individual or time. Conversations can get frozen in mid-sentence or interviews cut-off without warning. Even the boundaries between what we know as true and what we know as false, can so easily dissolve during such expeditions.

Given these circumstances, not everyone chose to accompany myself and Mr Greene back and forth. In such instances we were left with little choice other than to leave behind a viewing device to record the moment for posterity. We can only hope that such intrusions did not irretrievably alter the true course of history.

Finally, if, like me, you are completely new to this elusive history of the martial arts or the popular western interpretation of eastern philosophy, then you may want to consult the illustrated glossary for additional information. Although consultation is not strictly necessary, it is included (at my insistence) for additional details.

The Doctor 2028

EDITOR'S NOTE

Greene

Working as a foreign journalist and radio host these last 38 years, I have interviewed world leaders, spiritual leaders, and military leaders on every continent of this world. There was nowhere I had not been, no leaders I had not met. 

Yet when I was approached by the publisher with a proposal to travel not in distance, but in time, I was naturally intrigued. After a guided tour of the TARDIS and a glimpse at the range of historical figures to interview, I could do little to contain my enthusiasm for such a challenge. What serious journalist could turn down the possibility of interviewing the dead as well as the living, the real as well as the fictional?

Over the following three years, we travelled across time and space. The results, captured in recorded interviews, email conversations, radio-show scripts and fly-on-the-wall video recordings have finally been collated and presented in this special volume. 

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Doctor for his patience, his time (though 'time' has apparently been returned to him in a process I still have yet to grasp) and for his delicate skill in depositing webcams in places that aroused little suspicion. 

It has been an exceptionally experience, if for no other reason than to provide these remarkable writers (and fighters) with a final opportunity to raise one quizzical eyebrow, one index finger to the air and utter those immortal words: One last Thing.

Gerald Greene

Editor 2014 

laotzu

CHAPTER 1: LAO TZU AND THE ORIGINS OF EVERYTHING

Of course we never had wifi back then...

The contentious history of how Chinese philosophy and the martial arts emigrated to the West is a story that has been purposely shrouded in the mists of legend, impossible to authenticate without first-hand contact with the authors themselves.

Thanks to a recent discovery of fragmented newspaper interviews, email snippets, courtroom transcripts and the surreptitious placing of a webcam in the homes of various sages during their lunch breaks, the story of how the arts moved West can at last accurately be re-told.

With a special focus on the humble and soft practice of Tai Chi Chuan, we begin our journey through space and time with the father of soft thinking, the founder of Taoism and the first productivity coach in the history of the world: Lao (Leave It Alone) Tzu.

Lao was reputedly the author of the classic book on Taoism, ‘The Tao Te Ching’, said to have been written in the 6th Century B.C. It is claimed that he emerged from his mother’s womb with 10 toes on each foot and already aged 97. Clearly, such attributes gave Lao a head start in the 'World of Dust', but to what extent and in what specific fields they aided and abetted the many-toed one, historians have failed to agree.  

When he eventually tired of the dust of life and the petty warring amongst states, he departed from the royal court - where he had been keeper of the Imperial archives - in order to seek a meaningful retirement in greener pastures.

We can assume he picked up a few useful titbits during his working life, for he was stopped by the sentry at one of the gates of the city and asked for guidance and philosophical directions for those he was leaving behind to wallow in the muddy pools of selfishness and ignorance.

Clearly not in too much of a rush, he whipped out his portable writing set, composed a fluid eighty-one chapters, a table of contents, a snappy title and a list of keywords before riding off on the back of an ox.

These sets of vague guidelines for living a less effortful and immensely harmonious life have been interpreted by many scholars over the centuries, but none have been able to elicit the real meaning behind the 81 chapters of the ‘The Tao Te Ching’.

Thanks to recent developments in mobile technology and the loan of a TARDIS, award-winning journalist Gerald Greene spoke to the sage who remains alone in insisting that to accomplish all that needs doing, we should do less and less, until we need do nothing at all.

*** ***

THE DIGITAL TAOIST: LAO TZU AND THE ANALOGUE AGE

Editor's Note: Sadly, only a short clip of this original interview remains with the father of all Sages, Lao Tzu. Recorded in the studios of The Digital Taoist during the heat-wave of 1976.

***

Gerald Greene: Sometimes, over lunch at the ‘Digital Taoist’, we techno-journalists like to wonder what the great ones would have made of this ocean of nonsense we live in today; the flotsam and jetsam that washes up on our digital shores each morning. We wonder what some of the great thinkers of the past would have made of our flirtation with technology and, more specifically, what they would have done when faced with the same decisions we must make each day, each year. Would Lao Tzu have kept a blog today? Would Chuang-Tze's short stories have gone viral on Instagram? Or would these wise ones have simply picked up the moon and strolled off, preferring to merge with the stellar dust?

penguin

Gerald Greene: Hey 'Old Man', how are things with you? Did you have a good trip?

Lao Tzu: Not bad Gerald, not too bad indeed. The weather coming over was good. Worryingly good I would say. 

Gerald Greene: You think we should be worrying about the weather Lao?

Lao Tzu: Personally, I think you should be giving it a little more of your attention. I'm not used to this amount of sun-shine. Back in my day things were a little cooler.

Gerald Greene: Well, worrying and fretting is partly why we have asked you to join us on the Digital Taoist. Although these days Lao we have a range of productivity tools at our disposal,