Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989) | Hacker News Reader

Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989)

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I've seen Tao Te Ching's translation on the HN front page for several times. It seems people are interested in it.

The thing with Tao Te Ching is it's too ambiguous because: 1) The Chinese language is very overloaded and thus very ambiguous. 2) Classical Chinese is even more so. 3) Tao Te Ching is intentionally filled with clever puns which makes it more ambiguous.

The problem with translations is the translator has to interpret source texts into specific meanings in the target languages. It's like opening Schrödinger's cat box, or unwrapping monads in Haskell and Rust, which essentially deduct multiple possibilities into a single deterministic value.

If you're really into it, you probably want to learn some basic Chinese and classical Chinese (lucky they're not so different from each other), and figure out how to look up in the dictionaries. It's probably not as difficult as it sounds - all you need to do is decrypt with dictionaries.

Maybe there should be a new form of digital translation, just like hovering texts on Duolingo and it will display all the possible meanings of the word/expression.

There was a period in my life in my early 20s when I dabbled heavily in taoism. The book was a staple read for me and I tried to adjust my Outlook accordingly for a long time.

Finally though, i dropped it and went back to who I was. Your comment makes me wonder if the specific translation of the book I read was a big factor.

I can relate to this comment. The Tao Te Ching had a profound influence on me. Reading it was the first time I engaged on a "spiritual" level with life (I'm a fairly pragmatic and reductionist guy, perhaps to a fault). But this also wore off for me and I returned to being my usual mostly unspiritual self after a couple of years boring my friends trying to tell my friends about the Tao... Without describing it.

I do feel like I have a respect for such things where before I just considered it all manipulative woo or self-delusion. I also think it paved the way to my being able to appreciate Wittgenstein's ideas (the ones I can grasp anyway).

I read through a few different translations of the TTC, two of which had commentaries. Both the text and the translations had somewhat different takes. So it's definitely worth trying a few versions.

Two I recommend: DC Lau's translation and Philip Ivanhoe's.

Interesting. I have always been a religious person but wandered from my own traditions for a while. Those days, my main attraction was taoism. But, like I mentioned, i dropped it.

Traditionally Taoism was a path for the old, for those who had completed their duty. Confucianism is the path for the young, for those who must fulfill their duty. One might say that fulfilling your duty without resistance is in fact following the Tao.

Is it possible to dabble heavily? If you're dabbling heavily are you still dabbling?

> Maybe there should be a new form of digital translation, just like hovering texts on Duolingo and it will display all the possible meanings of the word/expression.

If anyone's interested, I've already self-promoted on a previous Tao Te Ching thread a tool/website[0] which precisely does that. I've still haven't had the time to add the Tao Te Ching though (and I've just observed one or two bugs. Oh well.)

[0]: https://zhongmu.eu/book.html#c=2;w=2;b=qian-zi-wen

There’s also [0], which has the same functionality (click the >> icon).

[0] https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing

Thanks, I didn't knew about it

Same thing with the Bible - to me reading it as a single translation seems making little sense. Reading every verse in multiple versions in multiple languages, looking up multiple meanings of every word feels a whole different story. Luckily reading Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Old English is much easier than reading Chinese. I still feel like learning Chinese to read Taoist texts though, because they are so cool, Alan Watts inspired me to the point I can't imagine giving up this idea.

Regarding the Bible, you should read Young’s literal translation. It blew me away how much liberties that king James version took in their interpretation.

Thanks for the tip. That sounds fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_Literal_Translation

Text: https://www.bible.com/bible/821/GEN.1.YLT98

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1xjL2wFDoY&list=PLciALUPf8s...

"THE WORD OF GOD IS MADE VOID BY THE TRADITIONS OF MEN."

So cool.

Is there a difference between '-th' and '-s' suffixes in English? I thought 'seeth' was just an old fashioned way of saying 'sees' but now I'm wondering if this is saying something about tenses that I'm missing.

saith is to says as says is to sez, in the sense that each spelling is an attempt to represent English pronunciation in writing and their progression tells us something about how the pronunciation changed over time, but not everyone who uses a certain spelling necessarily also pronounces the word the way one might naïvely expect based on the spelling.

-(e)th was the Middle English ending for 3rd person singular and plural present tense. It has mostly been replaced by -s in Modern English, except for a few fixed expressions (e.g. my mum used to say "quoth he" which is subtly different from the modern "he quoted" or "he quotes" which is normally followed by an object that is being quoted as well as the quote itself).

Middle English is quite interesting in general, as it still has a pretty regular inflection system for verbs that's largely been lost now (3rd person singular -s is the main vestige): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Middle_English_verbs...

It's also interesting to look at the case system for ME nouns too, as it makes some things easier to understand. For instance the 's in Modern English for possessive is really just an abbreviation for the -es genitive case, which probably occurred when spoken forms had changed from -es to -s, which in turn was probably due to the shift to drop terminal -e from words which had started even by Chaucer's day (some places in Canterbury Tales you need to treat the -e as its own syllable to hear the rhyme, in other places it needs to be silent).

For people who aren't Christian or aren't as familiar with the various translations:

English translations of the Bible tend to be a tradeoff between making the text easy to read for modern English speakers (at the risk of inserting the translator's own interpretation of the text) versus translating the text literally. The tradeoff is particularly important since some sects of Christianity believe that the specific words of the Bible as originally written were inspired by God. As you might expect, most translations fall somewhere in the middle between literal and readable.

The existence of the King James Version (KJV) further complicates things. As I understand it, most scholars would consider it an accurate translation but not necessarily an extremely literal translation. Being written in the 1600s, it doesn't incorporate the most recent scholarship and archeology; e.g. certain verses that scholars no longer think were in the original text[1]. However, because of how culturally influential the KJV is there can be significant resistance to using other versions. The extreme being the King James Only Movement which believes that the KJV is the only acceptable version of the Bible.

Wikipedia has pretty good articles on a lot of these subjects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_version_debate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement

[1] I want to emphasize here: These range from relatively minor differences in wording, to stories that appear to be original but may be in the wrong chronological place in the narrative, to passages (notably the story of "The Woman Caught in Adultery") that may not be original. Although personally I don't think these differences call the reliability of the Bible into question, it's a nuanced subject and you definitely shouldn't just take my word for it.

The ambiguity of the Dao is just the Dao being the Dao. You can not explain something which has no duality with direct words so to try to translate the meaning of “Dao” will always need puns and metaphors.

Writings at point to the Dow are meant to get you to stop thinking, not to think for. They’re supposed to get you to contemplate life.

But I agree, the language and cultural barriers to understanding Daoist writings as an English speaking American makes it more of a challenge.

Derek Lin has done a translation which might be helpful.

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/DerekLin.html

And there is also a literal translation

https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-Translation-Introduction-Co...

These translations need to provide original Chinese alongside. Otherwise, it is too hard to evaluate.

ChatGPT allows everyone to gain their own interpretation.

As it currently stands, ChatGPT is quite bad at classical Chinese.

I think it is great for things that have lots of translations like the Tao Te Ching.

道生一，一生二，二生三，三生万物。万物负阴而抱阳，冲气以为和。

Try it with plus. Ctexts is a great source for classical Chinese texts: https://ctext.org/

No, I mean, I'm native in Chinese and reasonably literate in classical Chinese, and my assessment is that ChatGPT's understanding and generation of classical Chinese leaves much to be desired.

As an aside, if your reading of the Tao Te Ching does not include possibility of transcription errors, borrowed homophones (words with same sounds at the time of writing), etc. you're probably not exploring the full extent of the intended meanings of the original author(s). ChatGPT does none of that.

It's possible that ChatGPT's training data includes a couple translations of Tao Te Ching, in which case I'm not sure whether that better or worse in terms of results.

ctext.org is great though, no question about that. I've been using it for decades..

I got to read, shortly after the Tao, a book that compiled for part of the texts something like 4 of the 'best'[0] translations. It was very enlightening to see how different yet similar they could be. If you think of it as semantic vectors, I would say the meaning is probably the common part between all translations. It is definitely a recommended exercise to read different ones.

It's not unique to taoist texts either, as I recommend to check different translations of works such as Dante's Comedy, Beowulf, or Goethe's Faust. When there is meaning, style, sub-meanings and connotations, a translation can only convey some parts accurately. Different translations will usually make different trade-offs.

[0] Note that 'best' is a term that markedly changed meaning these last two centuries, for anyone who would read more in-depth about the subject. For instance some of the earliest translators dismissed more modern taoist authors as having strayed too far from the Tradition, but the attitude changed in a few generations.

This website lets you choose various translates and compare them verse by verse:

https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh

(Select different translations to add/remove from the hamburger menu)

If you can find the oversized print copy of this Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation, originally published by Random House, it is one of the most visually inspiring books to read:

https://eheart.com/TAO/TTC/TTCchapters-small.pdf

Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English were married (by Alan Watts!), and each chapter of the book includes inspiring black-and-white photography by English, with artful Chinese calligraphy from Gia-Fu.

They also published a translation of Chuang Tzu in the same beautiful format.

This translation was my introduction to the text, and is still my favorite. Though I've seen other translations I prefer purely on a textual basis, I find their combination of photos, handwritten calligraphy, and English text very powerful still.

(Parenthetically, I got to meet English about twenty years ago and have her inscription in my copy of the book. She studied high energy physics at Madison about twenty years before I did.)

Looks beautiful - is this that edition?

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/180810/tao-te-ching...

The original was published by Random House in 1972; mine is a 25th anniversary copy published by Vintage in 1997.

The one you link to, published by Penguin - Random House in 2011, says "Jane English and her long-time editor, Toinette Lippe, have refreshed and revised the translation" and that it "features over a hundred new photographs by Jane English", so seems like it might be a 2.0 version. I'm sure it's beautiful and inspiring as well, but I've only personally read the original version.

I remember reading Stephen Mitchell's version waaaay back in 1991, when I was still young and impressionable. There was one line that really blew me away in his translation, and I might be remembering it slightly incorrectly: "The Tao is older than God".

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html

The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.

My favorite, although my favorite depends on the season

9 Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

9 is my favorite, too.

9 strikes a dagger into the heart of capitalism.

Not really

Well verse 53 twists the knife

https://twitter.com/yoginho/status/1244892104196870146

Not really, that chapter is more about irresponsible nobles. Starving the farmers and consequently others is rather characteristic of communism, I would say. A better chapter to make your point would be chapter 80. But if all one tries to use the tao te ching for is scoring points for or against some ism, a large point has been missed.

> Starving the farmers and consequently others is rather characteristic of communism,

You're confusing communism with dictatorship. Communism is about communal ownership, and likely some version of worker-ownership ("own the means of production"). If the system, or its leaders, are starving the farmers, and the farmers and their customers can't actively negotiate against that practice, you don't have communism at all.

Dao-ism is the only ism I see. It’s not about scoring points, it is trying to live in accord with the Dao.

80? That is about government!

What about 19??

Give up ingenuity, renounce profit, And bandits and thieves will disappear.

29?

Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done.

66?

Because he does not compete, He does not meet competition.

Here is Red Pine's translation of both, in case you are interested. He spent ~20 years including substantial time in monasteries studying Chinese classics. His translation is much more tightly linked to the actual work.

  The Tao is so empty
  those who use it
  never become full again
  and so deep
  as if were the ancestor of us all
  it dulls our edges
  unties our tangles
  softens our light
  and merges our dust
  it's so clear
  as if it were present
  I wonder whose child it is
  it seems it was here before Ti

  Instead of pouring in more
  better stop while you can
  making it sharper
  won't help it last longer
  rooms full of treasure
  can never be safe
  the vanity of success
  invites its own failure
  when your work is done retire
  this is the Way of Heaven

Notice how different, in particular, 4. The text reads much, much closer to Red Pine's translation. The 4th line literally reads "deep !", but that word is nowhere to be found in Mitchell's translation.

I strongly recommend Red Pine!

Are there two versions in the same translation? You gave two versions to number 9 in this very post!

Hi- Those are the same translation (Red Pine's) of the two sections from Mitchell that you quoted, 4 and 9. They are quite different than Mitchell, and correspond about as closely as one can to the text (given assumptions on punctuation; Classical Chinese was not punctuated).

To give a bit more detail of the first one, 4:

Mitchell 4a: The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.

  1. The original text does not mention a well.
  2. those who use it are not full, not the Tao not used up.
  3. there is no mention of eternal voids just a lack of fullness for users.
  4. there is no mention of infinite impossibilities, but it is possible "as it were the ancestor of us all" is mistranslated by Mitchell where "all" wan wu (literally 10,000 things) is translated as infinite, and the ancestor part is dropped.

Mitchel 4b: <blank>

  It appears Mitchell skips the middle part of the section, which discusses dulled edges, tangles, light, and dust.

Mitchell 4c: It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.

  1. The first half is clear / as if it were present, not hidden.
  The rest is reasonable.

By all means if you found something in Mitchell, enjoy, but he's taken many liberties while translated a language he did not understand, and so it doesn't match the original text as well as other alternatives.

It seems like his is a much more zen-infused translation, which given his other work isn’t surprising. It’s great to have so many takes on the translation though, I’ll be appreciating this text for the rest of my life. Already have been for a good 15 years already, and whoever old Lao Tze was, they were likely one of the greatest geniuses in history.

It’s almost as if they’re saying: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and grasping of the wind… “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,” -‭‭Ecclesiastes‬

IIUC much of the bible's "wisdom" is taken from older root traditions. According to Mitchell's (the same Mitchell, he IS an expert in ancient Hebrew) translation of Job the entire book isn't even about a Jew but is far older.

Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon, King David's son.

The wisdom of Solomon was so great, the Queen of Bathsheeba made a year-long journey just to hear him.

The time of Solomon, and his accomplishments, are not taken from older traditions but from the man himself.

Perhaps read some for yourself. The Bible doesn't indoctrinate people do that. The Bible has so much wisdom and knowledge packed within its pages I'm not sure why people are so reticent to peruse or even read through it.

The Bible doesn't bite, but it certainly does cut to the quick.

Qohelet was most likely compiled by multiple authors well after the Babylonian conquest. The presence of loanwords in the text makes a date in the 10th century BCE highly unlikely.

Solomon the Biblical personage probably never existed. No archaeological evidence, as far as I’m aware, has been found.

It's not perfect, but Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao is wonderful. A wrong translation being perfect is the eternal Tao.

Stephen Mitchell's translation is excellent.

I also like Ursula K Le Guin's. It's not a good general-purpose text, but it's quite interesting which meanings she draws out of the text.

Stephen Mitchell has no real training in Old Chinese.[0] His “translation” is simply repackaging or distorting what was found in earlier, informed translations, for the sake of a publishing industry keen to cash in on “wisdom lit”. He is an analogue of Coleman Barks the Rumi “translator” who doesn’t know Persian, and Brooks Haxton the Heraclitus “translator” without a background in Greek.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/litthe/article-abstract/34/4/486/60...

Wow, I had no idea. Like I said, that was so long ago. Interesting the notes in the abstract of that paper, that he infused Christian and Buddhist ideas. It might be why I took to it so well.

He has translated many works from other ancient languages and is a trained Zen monk. In the spirit of Taoism he is likely a better translator than an intellectual.

The work is brief. There is room for multiple translations and interpretations.

> He has translated many works from other ancient languages

Not really. Most of his other "translations" from ancient languages were made the same way as with the Tao te ching: he simply rewrote existing translations. As far as I can tell, the Book of Job translation is the only one made from the source text. I don’t think you understand how notorious Mitchell has been within the field of literary translation for decades now.

> is a trained Zen monk.

Zen and Taoism are different philosophical systems. As the linked paper underlines, choosing someone with a background in Zen to translate that foundational work of Taoism, was peculiar, but it is understandable within the context of a Western publishing market that wants to cash in on wisdom lit and doesn’t really care about the details of Asian religions.

> There is room for multiple translations and interpretations.

Attention is finite and marketing is dishonest. There are myriads of people out there for whom the Mitchell Tao te ching is the only one they will be exposed to, and they won’t even be aware that it isn’t a real translation and they will need to consult other translations in order to make up for that.

> Zen and Taoism are different philosophical systems.

My understanding (and some points in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Buddhism echo it) is that Chan/Zen Buddhism is a descendant of Mahāyāna Buddhism and Taoism. In that way, it is itself a Taoist religion.

> Most of his other "translations" from ancient languages were made the same way as with the Tao te ching

This is incorrect for any Ancient Hebrew or Greek works. Genesis is listed as "translated". On the Psalms he says:

  I have translated fairly closely where that has been possible; but I have also paraphrased, expanded, contracted, deleted, shuffled the order of verses, and freely improvised on the themes of the originals.

And then there's "Gospel According to Jesus", also listed as a translation.

From Googling "does stephen mitchell know ancient greek"

  Some of his translations aren't, strictly speaking, translations, but adaptations. He knows Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, German, Italian and Danish, but he's also rewritten works in languages he doesn't know—Chinese, Sanskrit and Babylonian.

> My understanding (and some points in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Buddhism echo it) is that Chan/Zen Buddhism is a descendant of Mahāyāna Buddhism and Taoism. In that way, it is itself a Taoist religion.

It is still problematic, for the same reason that a translation of Christian work by a Muslim or a Mormon with no background in Christianity, in a language they're not familiar with, would raise eyebrows.

It feels less problematic than those cases due to those religion's own views on truth and divine prophecy. Christianity largely views Muslim/Mormon views as a kind of Heresy. Toaism/Buddhism don't really map to this kind of thinking IIUC.

I would also counter that a Muslim or Mormon's view of the Bible would probably be very useful, if for no other reason that they would have a alternative but still reverent lens on it; vs an intellectual's which contains little or no reverence. I found a Jew's (Stephen Mitchel's) translation of Jesus's writings to be very enlightening indeed!

I think the line you’re referring to is 象帝之先. I haven’t studied ancient Chinese (speak modern mandarin) but that would approximate to:

象 has the appearance of/seems to

帝 the Di, the highest or supreme deity/Zeus like king-of-the-gods

之先 A (the Dao) comes (typically chronologically or in terms of precedence) prior to B (The Di)

I think there may be an analogy to neo Platonic emanations (including as imagined by Christian thinkers ) in Western thought where the One or ground of Being comes logically prior to the gods/angels/spiritual powers etc.

I've said this here before, but Ursula Le Guin's rendition is one of the best

I started by reading Michael LaFargue version, and it is pretty good delivering a basic understanding of the text. I can understand acient Chinese text pretty well, and the original, somehow still feels different from all these translations, but I guess this does not matter that much to a taoist.

She had the humility to admit she knew little about ancient Chinese and the courage to go ahead and venture a translation anyway, striving to touch something deeper than language.

Her success is extremely laudable for this reason.

It's great that you've found something you like, but if you are interested in staying close to the text, a translation by a person that deeply understands Classical Chinese literature and philosophy is worth a read.

Please try Red Pine- https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906

To see the difference, let's compare her translation of 4 and 9 (Here, we have Stephen Mitchell and Red Pine's translations) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843#38095107

4: Sourceless

  The way is empty,
  used, but not used up.
  Deep, yes! ancestral
  to the ten thousand things.

  Blunting edge,
  loosing bond,
  dimming light,
  the way is the dust of the way.

  Quiet
  yes, and likely to endure.
  Whose child? Born
  before the gods.

9: Being Quiet

  Brim-fill the bowl,
  it'll spill over.
  Keep sharpening the blade,
  you'll soon blunt it.

  Nobody can protect
  a house full of gold and jade.

  Wealth, status, pride
  are their own ruin.
  To do good, work well, and lie low
  is the way of the blessing.

For 4, some of the concepts don't even appear in the original (quiet?)

For 9, it feels like there's a lot of overstepping and blank-filling.

I don’t judge scholarly translations by their poetics, so perhaps you shouldn’t judge poetic interpretations by their scholarly merit.

The world is big enough for both.

She understood that translating. The Dao is not so much about knowing Chinese, but knowing the Dao.

The most important part of translating the Dao De Ching is to be as close as possible to understanding Daoism as one can.

Red Pine's translation, with translated historical commentaries, is the best I know in English.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906

I've read the original in Classical Chinese, as well as many translations, over many years, and for me, his translation is the best and most grounded in the work itself. He is an American that has spent substantial time in Chinese monasteries, and has won prizes for his translations generally.

Of course the linked version by Feng and English is a classic, and if you like it or can take some value from it, by all means enjoy it. I'd suggest skipping Stephen Mitchell or work from others that don't actually understand Chinese, as it's more likely new-age feel-good, and not the work itself.

For those interested in Taoism, I'd also advise reading Zhuangzi (the best version in English I know is the comic book drawn by Tsai Chih-chung, translated by Bryan Bruya, "Zhuangzi Speaks: The Way of Nature" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691008825/

For every person that likes Dao De Jing/Laozi, I'd recommend reading Heraclitus. For every person that likes reading Zhuangzi, I'd recommend reading Diogenes... and vice versa. I am not a student of Western classics so I don't know the best translation, but Guy Davenport's "Herakleitos and Diogenes", https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912516364 , was good for me, and includes both.

None of these translations work if you really want to understand the work itself and not the author's interpretation. For example, in the Analects,『學而優則仕』is translated by Legge as "The student, having completed his learning, should apply himself to be an officer." This isn't what the sentence says. It could be what it means but that should be up to the reader. (This is a common phrase in Chinese and has a completly different meaning today although it's hard to say if this meaning comes from the understanding of this text or if the text is simply being used as a source for the current meaning of the phrase.)

This is an issue with translations in general but is more of an issue in classical Chinese. Tao Te Ching is particularly bad in this regard. Just read more than one translation and you will see.

Technically you can say this to most text. You can even say practically no one alive never read The Bible.

I've read eg. different translations of Crime and Punishment written more than 100 years between each other and I still feel that I read the same book and the meaning, even if somewhat blurred, as been perserved. There is no definite meaning to many passages in classical Chinese so all you have is the text itself. It's not a question of if the author can take the meaning from the original and use that to write a new text in a different language with the same meaning but if the author has the meaning to begin with. A better way would be to give every possible translation of each line where needed, starting with the various relevant translations of each character and then what the phrase probably means literaly and then what the author meant by it (which is another point I havn't even mentioned until now).

It's funny to say there is "no definite meaning" when the action proposed is non-action, the meaning defined is un-meaning, the way is wuwei.

GP is talking about Confucian text for f's sake...

Whatever the meaning of the text that GP quoted, there is a definitely clear call for action, something to do with studying hard and taking on official duties.

Yeah the only ambiguity here is if learning is being promoted or if officialdom is. That is, is it saying that "Learning and excellence leads to officialdom" ie. that the end goal of studying is to become an official or is excellence in learning just a prerequisite for officialdom but that is not it's main goal. I think the common usage tends to imply that studying is a means of becomimg an official.

This is my favorite edition, as it is the one I discovered from my parents' bookshelf in my early college years. Highly recommend the translation, and the photos. Lao Tsu's writing is just as relevant today as when it was originally written, thousands of years ago.

The original edition from 1972 is available on Amazon, as well: https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-Tsu/dp/039471833X

has anyone read the translation by james legge? that's the only copy i have but i haven't got around to reading it yet. would it be better to go with something else even if i have to pay for it?

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/laozi/tao-te-ching/james-l...

One pretty good translation is the one by Red Pine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pine_(author) ) which also contains selected commentaries from other ancient Chinese sources thus making it easier to get at the intent/meaning behind the aphorisms.

I really like this translation for the feeling it gives. It leans more poetic, and is less accurate than other translations, but it's quite good.

This book (this translation) is a treasure!

I first found it in the early 80s I believe, and then just a year ago I found several copies in a used/vintage book store and bought multiple copies for my family!

For me, personally, the translation REALLY resonates and can provide heartfelt insights. Also, the images are outstanding, and perhaps are a significant aspect to why this book was so impactful to me.

THANK YOU for posting this link! It's also worth pointing out this one to a pdf [with images](https://eheart.com/TAO/TTC/TTCchapters-small.pdf)

Read this translation back in 8th grade (~2005?) and it blew my teenage mind. Have read a few more - perhaps it's sentimental, but none quite seem to do it for me like this version.

Oh cool! People here might appreciate this rendition:

    http://www.nam21.sakura.ne.jp/tao/

Along with diagrams of how various sections relate to each other, it's also a multi-text version with "the original" along side traditional Japanese readings, a Japanese translation, and an English translation.

A cup that cannot be empty cannot be filled.

Said the sommelier

Irreverent and irrelevant but: what's in a label?

It’s more like a commentary on the cup being considered as important to us - the material, the container, the craft, the use it brings… but the nothingness inside the cup, the emptiness always there waiting to be filled is as important to the equation of the cup’s being as the material, and the material is fixed and hard, while the emptiness is eternally ready to be shaped by anything that we might wish it to become.

How are you supposed to read the Tao Te Ching? I’ve picked up a few copies and didn’t quite understand.

They’re like koans worth contemplating. Not usually direct advice (though that’s there too!). Taoism is about the limitations of our ability to comprehend and “name” things. So by definition it would say we cannot have a literal understanding of the Dao or the universe.

A lot of Taoism is about opposites. Both coexisting / feeding on each other and they’re waxing and waning. You can’t achieve victory without inevitably seeing what you fought for defeated. Learning and unlearning. Power through subservience, etc

Taoism is also about the connection to the natural state of things. In terms of physics this is about things unfolding in a way towards highest entropy and lowest potential energy.

I see it as a reminder of both how transitory and eternal life / the universe is. We’re all part of an ongoing flow. It’s a way of finding balance, and a degree of tranquility, as a mortal in this world

Thank you.

You should revisit the book in a few years. Tao can't be explained. It's something that should be experienced first-hand. Chapter 1 says:

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.

There are several ways to experience it even if it's transitory: Being in nature, Deep meditation, Flow states during any activity, sensory enhancement/depravation (e.g. float tank), Psychoactive substances (last option) etc.

I read it while under the influence of some psychedelics; all the dots connected, and it instantly clicked. YMMV.

Very good question; let me attempt an answer :-)

Any aphoristic philosophical text has a certain "Worldview" which it tries to convey via many means viz. Directly/Symbolically/Analogically/Metaphorically/Allegorically. This "Worldview" is the background canvas on which a philosophical text paints a specific picture.

In the case of "Tao Te Ching/Dao De Jing" a good starting point can be found in wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao#Buddhist_interpretations

The Tao is the natural way of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom...This seeing of life cannot be grasped as a concept. Rather, it is seen through actual living experience of one's everyday being...Its name, "Tao", or "Dao"...signifies the way, path, route, road, or sometimes more loosely doctrine, principle, or holistic belief.

Laozi in the Tao Te Ching explains that the Tao is not a name for a thing, but the underlying natural order of the universe whose ultimate essence is difficult to circumscribe because it is non-conceptual yet evident in one's being of aliveness. The Tao is "eternally nameless" and should be distinguished from the countless named things that are considered to be its manifestations, ...

The Tao can be roughly thought of as the "flow of the universe", or as some essence or pattern behind the natural world that keeps the Universe balanced and ordered... The Tao is a non-dualistic principle—it is the greater whole from which all the individual elements of the Universe derive.

The Tao is usually described in terms of elements of nature, and in particular, as similar to water. Like water it is undifferentiated, endlessly self-replenishing, soft and quiet but immensely powerful, and impassively generous

Much of Taoist philosophy centers on the cyclical continuity of the natural world and its contrast to the linear, goal-oriented actions of human beings, as well as the perception that the Tao is "the source of all being, in which life and death are the same.

So in simple terms "Living holistically everyday according to Natural order" (analogous to "Systems Thinking"). The idea of "Natural Order" is somewhat similar to "Divine Providence" of western theology but more abstract since there is no "God" here. You have a primordial "Tao" from which everything comes into being and which has inlaid the rules of creation, preservation and destruction and the cycle keeps going indefinitely. If one then adapts one's everyday behaviours, attitudes and actions to harmonize with the above "Worldview" in mind (i.e. holistic viewpoint) one can bear all trials and tribulations with equanimity and grace.

The above background should be enough to start reading the text itself. I recommend reading Red Pine's translation along with any others you might like.

PS: I also recommend reading a simpler text (but with similar ideas) named Caigentan (Vegetable Root Discourses) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caigentan) which you might find helpful in grasping certain concepts.

I find it extremely valuable that there are so many translations available to begin with. With this type of subject matter, where words are but crude pointers to insight, having different phrasing helps to reclaim the insights when words become too familiar.

If we need this to understand technological things (did you learn Docker from just one manual/article for example?) we certainly must need it for spiritual things.

Many would say we need fewer concepts to understand spiritual things, and Taoism is the attempt to unlearn your grasping mind.

Instead we always have more. So it goes.

That is like saying it is easy to fast for 14 days, because there is less cooking needed. Yes that is true technically. But for a mind and body geared towards a modern diet, it would be hell. At least for the first few days.

As a Chinese speaker and reader, this is more readable then the original text :D

I started reading but it's so abstract and poetic I can't extract any information from it. Is it the kind of thing that hit you months after you read it ?

Either upon reading, or seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years later.

I wrote, with the help of ChatGPT-4, a Christian adaptation of the Dao De Jing called "The Dove & the Dao": http://doveandthedao.com. I consulted many translations and commentaries and tried to find where Christianity and Daoism harmonized. Where I couldn't, I adapted it to Christian theology. It was an obsessive endeavor that broke my eyesight due to eyestrain (editing on a smartphone is not recommended) but it's one I was finally able to strike off the bucket list.

Should be mandatory reading for corporate managers.

Like the art of war?

There is "the tao of leadership" by John Heider, which is specifically aimed at this

For me it's the DC Lau translation. Straightforward and clear, or as clear as you can get with this thing.

For the real deal, see https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing?en=off

What is the license on this translation?

My personal favorite is Kerson and Rosemary Huang's translation, which includes some of the historical background for the hexagrams and is a very spare rendition that always seemed to me the closest in spirit to the original.

The book with the hexagrams is the I Ching, not the Tao Te Ching.

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