Tao Te Ching

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Savour your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. Of an ancient Chinese philosopher, perhaps, or of a nineteenth-century Oxford don who was enchanted by little girls. The translations and Mitchell’s commentaries are poetic, mystical, imaginative, and deeply spiritual. The result is occasionally a bit helter-skelter, but mostly hits the mark -- at least, as far as I can tell, not being enlightened myself. Written more than two thousand years ago, the Tao Te Ching is one of the true classics of spiritual literature.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu | Goodreads Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu | Goodreads

For decades he had been putting on his one-man show for an audience of zero: no one was watching—not even he. It is Stephen Mitchell's astute translation of Lao Tsu's teachings, which are bare bones, no frills, few words that dcover the most important things in life. The book is split in half; the left side is the translated version of the Tao Te Ching while the right side is the author's commentary. Alongside each adaptation, Mitchell includes his own commentary, at once explicating and complementing the text. The Tao Te Ching, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism.

I’m not particularly surprised by this, people spend their entire lives studying the Tao, attempting to keep to ‘The Way’. The Second Book of the Tao is a gift to contemporary readers, granting us access to our own fundamental wisdom. The CD introduction is also good in that it gives a background to the Tao and the speaker is a Zen Buddhist too.

Tao Te Ching: Mitchell, Stephen, Tzu, Lao, Mitchell, Stephen Tao Te Ching: Mitchell, Stephen, Tzu, Lao, Mitchell, Stephen

Every touch of his hand, every ripple of his shoulders, every step of his feet, every thrust of his knees, every cut of his knife, was in perfect harmony, like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, like the chords of the Lynx Head music. A must have book to refer to over and over again, to bring us back to reality in this fast paced, competitive, highly technological world filled with information overload. Naturally, since all three texts tell of the Tao that can’t be told, there are passages in The Second Book of the Tao that overlap with the Tao Te Ching. I own a few others and they're all well and good, but this one is the one I continually read from and refer to when people ask me about the Tao.

I'm an unbeliever and have been since the first time I played hooky from Sunday services and the Eye in the Sky didn’t say boo. His renditions are radiantly lucid; they dig out the vision that’s hiding beneath the words; they grab the text by the scruff of the neck—by its heart, really—and let its essential meanings fall out. Taking secondary passages by taoist masters in the era following the Tao Te Ching, we get a further glimpse into the "workings" of The Way and each passage is followed by the author's commentary. For six days I would not let him be buried, thinking, 'If my grief is violent enough, perhaps he will come back to life again. None of the other translations comes off as smooth, clear, and simple — as Taoist — as this one… His intuition and willingness to improvise revitalizes the message of the Tao Te Ching.

Stephen Mitchell’s Version of the Tao Te Ching: A Spiritual Stephen Mitchell’s Version of the Tao Te Ching: A Spiritual

something real and tangibly mysterious, but also something practical and spiritual – a connector between eye and heart that through some subtle gravity guides our feet along a path. Thus identity melts away, and we are left with something more valuable: a self—a non-self—that includes it all. Stars or raindrops, acorns or ashes, apparent blessings, apparent disasters—when the mind is clear, each is an occasion for rejoicing. With regard to Chapter 24, Ursula says: ”My version of the first four lines of the second verse doesn’t follow any scholarly translations, and is quite unjustified, but at least, unlike them it makes sense without horrible verbal contortions”.He is best known for his translations and adaptions of works including the Tao Te Ching, the Epic of Gilgamesh, works of Rainer Maria Rilke, and Christian texts. I agree that Stephen Mitchell's book is not the best if you are looking for literal translation of the original ancient Chinese Toa Te Ching. He is also coauthor of three of his wife's bestselling books: Loving What Is, A Thousand Names for Joy, and A Mind at Home with Itself.