Takuan Seiyo was born in Communist Eastern Europe and socialized there and then in Switzerland, France and elsewhere. He emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-60s, received an Ivy League education while doing unskilled gardening for the rich (with no bilious feelings) and then climbed: slowly but honestly. His hometowns first on the East Coast and then in California having been destroyed by similar strains of the Body Snatchers’ invasion, he felt forced to expatriate after 40 years and now lives in the Far East.