_ Tao Te Ching

• Preface
• Table of contents
• Related Entries
• References
  • Word-by-word English translation from which I constructed my translation — and which you could use in the same way
  • Website I also used, with Chinese text and word-by-word English dictionary look-up
  • Translations with chapter-by-chapter comments
  • Other translations I consult
• Inspiring illustration

Preface

This page has links to the chapters of my attempt to translate and comment on the Tao Te Ching, or The Classic about Ways and Instances, by Lao Tzu (or Laozi, Lao Tze, Lao Tsu, Lao Tse, Laotse).

I also plan posts discussing other early Taoist writings, and they’ll be listed here.

My point of view, different from most published translators, is explained in the Introduction. I am not a scholar and do not read Chinese; I do write English and I’m interested in Lao Tzu.

I’m perfectly aware that this translation and commentary break the rules. I use simple language, and in my comments I use simple, personal illustrations. The idea is to make Lao Tzu direct and practical, as I imagine he intended to be. I see the Tao Te Ching not as a key to some esoteric, other-worldly, special universe but as the reflections an intelligent man gave to his own actual life and to what he saw around him: he only thought these things because he needed them to stay alive. It seems a record of the journey he made; and he seems to hope most sincerely that we’ll find some of his record applicable to our own journey — that we’ll need whatever we can salvage from it as badly as he did.

Just as with Plato, I think it’s a travesty to imagine Lao Tzu was a special spirit who lived a life on a different plane from ours — a life we’re not called to but can only reverently contemplate from the outside. I think Lao Tzu lived the same life we do — but he lived it better — and he describes it superlatively. To think his book doesn’t apply to lives like ours is a slap in his face. He worked hard and honestly and with genius to explain himself to us because he thought it was important.

I may well have gone overboard in my attempt to make Tao Te Ching everyday, and in my immense ignorance of Chinese language and culture. If so, then maybe that’s a needed, and useful, correction. I’m not attempting to have the definitive say — merely to contribute to a discussion I imagine will continue and evolve.

Please expect the chapters to be revised, in their translations and in their commentaries, after posting—as I learn to understand Lao Tzu more.

Table of Contents

Tao Te Ching –
The Classic about Ways and Instances

• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19

Related Entries in This Blog

• Chinese poetry translations

Poems especially relevant to Taoism

• Wang Wei — My Retreat at Chung-nan Mountain

References

Note: The entries here are linked, via the ISBN number, to Wikipedia’s Book Sources. If you scroll down their page you can find multiple, worldwide sources from which to buy new or used books, to trade them with other readers, or to check them out of libraries.

Word-by-word English translation of Tao Te Ching from which I constructed my translation — and which you could use in the same way

Star, Jonathan. Tao Te Ching. New York: Jeremy P Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. ISBN 1-58542-099-9.

Website I also used, with Chinese text of Tao Te Ching and word-by-word English dictionary look-up

Wengu — Chinese Classics and Poems. Select the link at the top for a chapter number, then hover mouse over any Chinese word for a basic definition — or click for a more extended one. Read from top to bottom, right to left.

Translations with chapter-by-chapter comments on Tao Te Ching

Ames, Roger and David Hall. Dao De Jing: “Making this Life Significant.” New York: Ballantine Books, 2003. ISBN 0-345-44419-1. Extensive introduction, commentary, glossary of key terms, and thematic index.

Chen, Ellen M. The Tao Te Ching. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1989. ISBN 1-55778-083-8. Includes comments by the translator, with many quotations from earlier writers.

Lin Yutang. The Wisdom of Laotse. New York: The Modern Library, 1948. (Too early for ISBN; here is a link for US Library of Congress.) Each chapter has appropriate quotations from Chuangtse. This is the book whose first chapter got me started, as a teenager, in my life-long love of Tao Te Ching.

Pine, Red. Lao-Tzu’s Taoteching. San Francisco: Mercury House, 2001. ISBN 1-56279-085-4. Includes numerous comments from classical Chinese authors.

Waley, Arthur. The Way and Its Power: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought. New York: Grove Press, 1958. ISBN 0-8021-5085-3.

Other translations of Tao Te Ching I consult

Feng, Gia-Fu and Jane English. Tao Te Ching. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. ISBN 0-394-71833-X.

Henricks, Robert. Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching – a New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-Wang-Tui Texts. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. ISBN 0-345-37099-6.

Hinton, David. Tao Te Ching. New York: Counterpoint Press, 2002. ISBN 1-58243-182-5.

Lau, D.C. Tao Te Ching. Harmondsworth Eng.: Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0-140-44131-X.

Mair, Victor. Tao Te Ching. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. ISBN 0-553-34935-X.

Inspiring Illustration

painted silk
from Han Dynasty Tombs at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province
(a few hundred years after Lao Tzu)