In this book, "How We Saved Everyone's Ass", Mr. Slager recounts his experiences in the US defense business during the Cold War. He also describes his experiences as a retired horseplayer, and how he became interested in Taoism/Buddhism.
He then presents a logical new version of Christianity/ Taoism/ Buddhism for Westerners, and uses numerous examples from modern science and technology to prove ancient principles, which are intended to be either be intuitively obvious, or easy for modern Western readers to understand.
The book "How We Saved Everyone's Ass", is based on the example of Han Shan, the mystical Buddhist/Taoist hermit poet and philosopher who lived on Cold Mountain near Mt. Tientai in today's Chekiang province sometime about 730 AD.
This book could have been entitled Hiking Up Cold Mountain Trail because that's what we are going to do. However, I sort of liked the shock value of How We Saved Everyone's Ass, which we also really did as you will find out in the book. The Other Lessons part will become obvious as you climb higher and higher on the Cold Mountain trail.
I previously wrote a book called Texas City Tales which was about my youth and teenage years along the Texas Gulf Coast. That book was equivalent to visiting a beautiful meadow at the foot of Cold Mountain which leads to the trailhead of the difficult scree covered path up Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain is actually a real mountain in China that was first climbed by Han Shan , a now famous Buddhist/Taoist hermit poet and philosopher. I think others, perhaps only a few, have climbed up this trail. You have to be careful, however on Cold Mountain , once you get up on this mountain you may not be able to find your way back, or more likely you won't want to come back down. Either way you might never be heard from again.
Having an open mind is the most important quality for readers of this book. These kind of people tend to have an innocent childlike mind that wants to see and experience one wonder after another, and they are not really afraid of anything. Also they really don't care what other people think. They just have a super inquisitive mind that just wants to know everything and what the next wondrous revelation is going to be.
You probably won't believe everything you read in this book either, because you really don't trust anyone but yourself. That's good, you are my kind of person, the kind of person who understands the koan,
"Do not stop where you see Buddhas. Hurry on down the road, where you don't see Buddhas" (
