Dan Millman

The author and first-person narrator of this novel, Dan Millman is an ex-gymnast, who marries in 1967 during his senior year at the University of California Berkeley, has one daughter, Barbara, and teaches briefly at Stanford before taking a position at Oberlin College. Earlier, as he describes in his book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan endures a five-year "ass-kicking" from a gas station mechanic/guru, Socrates, who expands Dan's awareness and sends him out to assimilate his teachings.

As this book begins, Dan and Socrates have been out of touch for some time, and Dan has fallen into a comfortable but unfulfilled life. He forgets Socrates' prediction that he will study under an Hawaiian shaman. Dan obtains a summer travel fellowship, hoping to rediscover his "transcendent sense of freedom," but finds "Sacred India" disappointing. He decides to fly home but during a stopover in Hawaii remembers the...