Harold Kushner’s classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People addressed an age-old question: How could God allow good people to suffer? Now Vu M Do inverts that question, asking, “Why do good things happen to bad people?”

People expect a fair world where good is rewarded and evil punished. But in Do’s view, our ideas about fairness, justice, good and evil are limited. Our minds see and can express only a narrow perspective within an immense, interconnected universe that functions “like a large network of currents.” Do invites readers to embrace that the universe and its “ways” are mysterious, and both the “good” and “bad” things that happen to us have meaning if they help us grow spiritually.

Do counsels readers to ask, “what is this teaching me?” when confronted by painful experiences. “Pain isn’t a flaw in the universe,” he writes, but a map guiding individuals to deeper self-knowledge. Life isn’t a search for comfort but a journey of self-discovery that, Do posits, might have started before this life and extend beyond it.

Do references Taoism, and his views closely match this perspective, that the universe involves opposite energies: yin and yang. It balances out the forces of light and darkness but in ways and over timescales that humans cannot comprehend. Darkness, evil, the shadow self, have their role in the economy of life. A major theme here is transmuting the shadow self that exists within each of us.

To realize his philosophy in practice requires great patience and openness, and Do provides valuable exercises to help readers practice his ideas. His writing style resembles Taoist masters such as Lao Tzu. He doesn’t argue or persuade but states his philosophy in utterances that resemble a prophet or an oracle. Written in simple words and sentences, this text transmits calming gentleness.

Readers will appreciate Do’s wisdom as he urges readers to stop fighting life and learn to accept that everything — even evil — serves a purpose.

Also available in hardcover, ebook and audio book.