SUN TZU THE ART OF WAR / Psychosocial Commentaries / A Wayfaring Sojourner’s Rendering of The Way of Wandering

Raymond Bart Vespe

ISBN 13: 978-1-58790-692-3 / 292 pages / paperback / 6” x 9” / $24.95

Psychosocial and spiritual aspects of military strategy and warfare

ABOUT THE BOOK

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is a Chinese classic in military strategy and warfare that has been consulted and applied by international leaders for over two-thousand five hundred years. It is founded on the fundamental principles, wisdom and practices of ancient Chinese Taoism and shares the ethical value of resolving conflicts, winning battles and defeating enemies through knowledgeable, enlightened and compassionate ways of not fighting a war.

The Art of War is relevant for managing both interpersonal conflicts between ourselves and fellow human beings and intrapersonal conflicts between our primary executive ego-self and our various subordinate ego-selves.

Its practical value, relevance, applicability and usefulness are its being a context and springboard for encouraging, inspiring and stimulating the creating, devising and implementing of your own ways of navigating intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts based upon the nature of your unique self, the nature of specific conflicts and the nature of particular opponents and adversaries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ray Vespe is a former Associate Professor of Integral Counseling Psychology and a retired Licensed Marriage Family Therapist after; 1) enjoying a fifty year long professional career educating, training, supervising and mentoring graduate school counseling trainees and psychology interns and 2) conducting an individual psychotherapy and counseling private practice for children, adolescents and adults and individuals, couples and families.

He has studied with prominent philosophy and psychology educators and trained with master psychotherapists and counselors in the fields of Phenomenology and Existential, Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy. He has worked as a clinical psychologist in a wide variety of inpatient hospitals, outpatient clinics and group and individual private practices and have held clinical directorship positions in several community counseling centers and substance abuse treatment centers.

He has experienced principal teachers, teachings, Masters and meditation practices in the spiritual traditions of Hinduism; Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Ekayana, Ch’an and Zen Buddhism; Taoism and Zen. I have participated in small group shamanic medicine circles and experienced consciousness awakenings and openings and the transformative healing power of various natural plants and psychotropic substances.

He has written five other books integrating the spiritual and practical wisdom of Taoism and Zen:

1) A rendition of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

with psychotherapeutic commentary.

2) A rendition of Chuang Tzu’s Seven Interior Records with psychotherapeutic commentary.

3) A rendition of Lieh Tzu’s The Nature of Real Living

with psychotherapeutic commentary.

4) A rendition of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

with Soul-journeying commentary.

5) A rendition of The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures

with psychospiritual commentary.