The Circle of Happiness Travel Guide

The Travel Guide follows Mae's adventures in the accompanying novel and explains the foundations of what she is learning. The characters that Mae meets are representational of several important Eastern philosophical figures, including the Buddha, Mahavira, Charvaka, Goshala, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and the Upanishadic philosophers. This guidebook provides in-depth discussions about their lives, the historical context of the time period in which they lived, and their philosophies on what it means to be happy—and what it takes to get that way. It also includes discussion questions for each chapter that will have young thinkers pondering important questions about what happiness means to them. This is a good introduction for preteens and teens to the fundamentals of Eastern philosophy in the context of the question of how to find happiness.