Tao Te Ching

Today my English Teacher recommended I read this and he said I would really like it. Has anyone else read it and if so how is it? I will probably read it anyway, I just want to hear about it.

 

just read it and find out.

 

Yeah, Id really just read it and find out.

It's a short read, but very, very, very worth it.
There's actually free copies online.

 

I read the Tao when I am out of herb to get me that fuzzy feelin in my brain. It is and it isn't and that is all right.

 

I have just finished reading the “Tao Te Ching,” translated and with a commentary by Ralph Alan Dale. I have read several translations. This was a disappointment. To begin with, it was not really a translation, but a paraphrase. Dale admitted in the Preface that his knowledge of Chinese was insufficient to translate directly from the Chinese. In a work as subtle as the “Tao Te Ching” fluency in the ancient Chinese it was written in is essential.

Second, Dale’s paraphrase and his commentary give this classic the flavor of a kind of liberalism that was fashionable in the United States during the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s, but was unpopular then, and is no longer even fashionable. Basically, Dale overestimates human nature and human potential, and assumes that the author of the “Tao Te Ching,” Lao Tzu, does also.

The “Tao Te Ching,” like the Bible, is evocative. Readers bring their personal concerns to it and assume that it is speaking personally to them. However, because their concerns are different, the messages they derive are different. Like the Bible, the “Tao Te Ching” can be interpreted in order to advocate either democratic socialism, or laissez faire capitalism.

The “Tao Te Ching” deserves many readings in several translations. Unlike the Bible it can be read in a single sitting. My advice is that you read a translation by someone who is fluent in the Chinese, and let Lao Tzu speak to you directly. Only then should you read commentaries.

 

I'm taoist. I love it. It contains practically all of my morals.

 

It's probably one of my single favorite pieces of philosophy. Although I don't really know if one can consider it philosophy, so much as it is a way of life, or suggestions as to how one should live theirs. Even that may not do it justice, usually I say it is my favorite piece of "intelligent literature" or something along those lines.

What I found very interesting when I read it was just how much of it I had already agreed with prior to actually reading it, or in other words, had already held true before having read it in the Tao.