Tao Te Ching - Softcover

Tzu, Lao; Lau, D. C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014044131X ISBN 13: 9780140441314

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1964

Synopsis

Traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, an older contemporary of Confucius (551 - 479 BC), it is now thought that the work was compiled in about the fourth century BC. An anthology of wise sayings, it offers a model by which the individual can live rather than explaining the human place in the universe. The moral code it encourages is based on modesty and self-restraint, and the rewards reaped for such a life are harmony and flow of life.

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About this title

Book Description:

Tao Te Ching, also commonly known as Lao Tzu, is perhaps the most important of Chinese classical texts, with an unparalleled influence on Chinese thought. This bilingual edition consists of two parts. The English text in Part One is a reprint of the earlier translation of the so-called Wang Pi text, first published by Penguin Books in 1963. Part Two is the fresh translation of a text which is a conflation of two manuscripts of the Lao Tzu, dating at the latest from the early Western Han and discovered at Ma Wang Tui in December 1973. The result is a text with a fuller use of particles, free from the scribal errors and editorial tampering of subsequent ages.

From the Back Cover:

The Tao Te Ching is surely the most terse and economical of the world's great religious texts. In a series of short, profound chapters, it elucidates the idea of the Tao, or the Way--an idea that in its ethical, practical and spiritual dimensions has become essential to the life of China's enormously powerful civilization. In the process of this elucidation, its author Laotzu both clarifies and deepens those central religious mysteries around which our life on earth revolves.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1964
• ISBN 10: 014044131X
• ISBN 13: 9780140441314
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176