How Confucius Changed My Mind

“Charles Jones, in a pithily engaging manner, brings Confucius down to earth. Plainly delineating the contours of the old master’s profound thinking, which is at once practical and speculative, quotidian and metaphysical, his slender but informative book invites us to ponder the contemporary relevance of what the ancient Chinese sage has to say about a flourishing life guided by reasoned views of ultimacy, sociality, civility, and literacy. In the end, it is an earnest but non-preachy plea for cross-cultural understanding: don’t just act and think in terms of what you already know; go explore something new in other cultures, and your mind may well be changed, for the better and richer.”—Dr. On-cho Ng, Professor of Asian Studies and Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University

CHARLES B. JONES is associate professor emeritus of Religion and Cultures at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He earned a PhD at the University of Virginia in 1996 and specializes in East Asian Buddhism. He has published in the areas of Buddhism in Taiwan, interreligious dialogue, the Jesuit missions in China, gentry Buddhism in late Ming China, and Pure Land Buddhism. Among his recent titles is Pure Land- History, Tradition, and Practice (Shambhala, 2021).