My reading hobby is somewhat irregular. Yet it constitutes my most important contact with the outside world. I make findings and create ideas of my own. I read for myself. That is also the way I listen to music or draw. I examine my getting older as if it were a great adventure. I start with the wrinkles to draw my portrait. Have the good lines increased, I ask myself.

I am not imagining that I get a bit wiser by reading the texts of the Oriental philosophers. How would I know what they mean by the virtue of the noble man. The texts do not say what really happened thousands of years ago. And even if they did, I might misunderstand.  Besides, all philosophies are patriarchal, written by men and thus deficient. How could one attach great value to something like that?