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Comment by sentimentscan | Hacker News Reader

Can you recommend something similar to tao the ching? I don't mean anything like tao of pooh/new age stuff/alan watts, but similar in the spirit of tao.

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The obvious second book to read after Laozi is Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu). His book is a joy to read, full of humor and anecdotes, where Laozi's reads like cryptic poetry. Both books describe a common worldview of harmonious living with the natural world, from complementary perspectives.

I personally recommend Burton Watson's translation of Zhuangzi.

Seconding this-- and I can recommend the Merton translation. Great for late night reading, or if you are feeling especially unsettled.

I personally like Angus Graham's translation, Chuang-tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the Book Chuang-tzu, as well as his essays on it, A Companion to Angus C. Graham’s Chuang Tzu.

For one thing, it gave me some significant sympathy for analytic philosophy for the first time.

Trying Not To Try by Slingerland is a great accessible introduction to the different modes of Chinese philosophy, and the two approaches to Daoism by Laozi and Zhuangzi are discussed.

For more depth I highly recommend Van Norden's Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. I took a course that used this book as its text and it was really life changing and made me hopeful that there are some more practical philosophies out there for us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)

Not OP but "Wandering on the Way" is a great collection of later daoist writings

https://www.google.de/books/edition/Wandering_on_the_Way/dpF...

An interesting contrast is the later work of Xunzi (aka Hsun Tzu; not to be confused with Sun Tzu), which is a sort of synthesis of Taoism and Confucianism. He tempers the idealism of Laozi (Lao Tzu), finding "freedom from obsession" also in the perfection of the social contract.

A similar transformation occurred around the same time in the West, as the idealism of Cynicism was refined in Stoicism.

It is a bit more concrete and has no reference to Taoism unlike the other shared recomendations, but I also enjoyed Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet. To me it is in the spirit of the Tao. Finding the balance and harmony and not declaring dogmatic truths.

(but it is a imaginary prophet sharing wisdom, so there is maybe a association of dogmatism, but I did not perceive it like that)

A recent "Hermetic Theory of Everything [Evolution, Morality, Structures, Simulation, Alchemy]", by a programmer IIRC. However, I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BjCpLh_myY

The Heart Sutra, an extremely condensed version of core Buddhist teaching. But, in my opinion, such texts are useless without explanations. Bernie Glassman explains it in the book "Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen".

In the spirit of the Tao, there is also the I Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching

I love the I Ching for divination. Not in the "tell me my fate!" sense, but as a way to use randomness as a means to look at things differently. It's like Oblique Strategies but even obliquer.

- the "shin jin mei" of sen ts'an

- "On Zen" by Daio Kokuchi

- "Shobogenzo" by Dogen. I especially venerate the loose translation (or paraphrasing) by Brad Warner.

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