About

About the Author

Sung Yee Poon lives in Taipei, Taiwan. She was born and raised in Hong Kong, studied in US but worked mostly in Taiwan. She pursued science and marketing careers, contributed to Economic Daily  News and published nonfiction in Chinese “Exercise for the Heart” and “Easy Choices for Small Potatoes” before writing in English for the past few years.

She likes to call herself City Hermit, plowing books and farming words as a recluse in the library utopia amidst hustles-bustles of Taipei city.Her next book project “Buddhas of All Colors” is inspired by two darlings at a Buddhist orphanage in Lesoto, Africa  in photo below.

How “Free Easy Mind” Came to be

After a long journey to find inner peace from Christianity to Buddhism and then from Zen to Tao, I landed on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching late in life but Chuang Tzu rescued me at the lowest point of my life when everything turned upside down.

In the short span of nine months, I was struck by two tragic deaths, my dearest husband after almost three decades of combat with cancer or heart surgery and endearing brother with camouflaged psychological ills. And then due to conflicts on better care for elderly mother with sibling or enforcing financial independence of my only adult child, I was kicked out of the home by the only three surviving members of my married or biological family in US and Taiwan.

A friend in Taiwan was kind to take me in only to kick me out again. Expecting companionship, she was irritated by my preoccupation with job hunting; she had only worked one year in her entire life and could not understand how desperate I was to find purpose and meaning to live on alone after not working in the last years of my husband. I was very fortunate to land on three dream jobs during the first couple years after my husband’s passing but had to quit each time due to clashes on values with colleagues, boss or circumstances.

Without a real home, family or job, I could not make sense of what happened and terrified by the reality of human nature. I was wondering if I or the world was mad. What is right and wrong? Why live on when useless and unwanted? Why can’t I have a meaningful life to do some good with my God given abilities and experiences in accordance to Christian or Confucian values I was brought up in? I resorted to studying Chuang Tzu’s Inner Chapters to come to terms with life and death, right and wrong or success and failure in a world falling apart from conflicts and financial crises.

Determined to make ancient teachings relevant to daily life today, I spent a few years to test out Chuang Tzu’s teachings in real life challenges with my own experiences and later the life of Su Shih, best loved poet in Chinese world past and present, who struggled with conflicts and loss in exile.

Going along with the flow of life and accepting human nature, I finally suit my innate nature and serve my own mind leading a very simple frugal life of no concerns doing what I love. I am so grateful for Chuang Tzu freeing my mind and putting me at ease and peace.

May you free your life with Chuang Tzu’s teachings as well!

City Hermit

Freeasy Peace sites:
Peace Characters (Original Pictograms/ Personalities)
Peace Think (Original Words of Zen Tao Founding Fathers)
Free Easy World (Blog on Global Conflicts)

Daily Living Charm Blog (living with less and loss, doing good despite differences and not belonging)
MILLENNIUM CHARM Su Shih’s life story illustrating free easy mind in conflicts and loss with quirky characters and names, poetry, calligraphy, food, sights and indigenous tribal cultures mirroring today’s world)

Buy ebook at Amazon 
Sales revenue will be donated to Anders Home project.

Common ZENSE Easy TAO
for Instant Peace
(coming soon)

Let the Heart Go in Peace
A novel
(coming soon)