Lao-tzu's Taoteching: with Selected Commentaries of the Past 2000 Years - Softcover

Lao-tzu ,

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1562790854 ISBN 13: 9781562790851

Publisher: Mercury House, 2008

Synopsis

Red Pine's translation of the most revered of Chinese texts corrects errors in previous interpretations, truly breathes new poetic life into the English version, and includes selected commentaries-judged by Chinese scholars to be essential to understanding the wisdom of Taoism. Pine incorporates the commentaries of emperors and prime ministers, Taoist monks and nuns, Buddhist priests, poets, scholars, and the country's most famous philosophers of the past 2,000 years. This marks the first time that non-Chinese speakers have been given access to such a range of wisdom explaining the deeper meaning of China's famous ancient classic. With its clarity and scholarly range, this version of the Taoteching works both as a readable text and a valuable resource of Taoist interpretation.

Lao-tzu, founder of Taoism, is supposed to have written the Taoteching around 600 BC in the Chungnan Mountain region, where Red Pine (Bill Porter) interviewed contemporary hermits as described in his book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. Bill Porter is also the translator of The Zen Works of Stonehouse, of Sung Po-jen's Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, and of The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain.

About this title

Review:

Red Pine (a.k.a. Bill Porter) offers a new perspective on the Chinese classic Taoteching. A competent translator and interpreter of Chinese religion, he renders his work with an eye for detail and a spiritualism cultivated during years of Zen monastery living. It's odd that many read translations of Chinese classics as bare-bones texts, whereas no Chinese would tackle such obscurity in the absence of a helping hand from previous pundits. Fortunately, it is no longer necessary to rely on mystical insight in order to understand the Taoteching. Instead, we can look to the 12 or so commentators that Red Pine resurrects from Chinese history. With its clarity and scholarly range, this version of the Taoteching works as both a readable text and a valuable resource of Taoist interpretation.

About the Author:

Red Pine (aka Bill Porter) is one of the world's leading translators of Chinese literary and religious texts. After dropping out of a Columbia University Ph.D. program, Red Pine moved to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan; he eventually became a popular radio journalist in Hong Kong, famous for his descriptions of traveling around mainland China. Lao-tzu (ca. 600 BCE) was a Chinese sage who Confucius called "a dragon among men." He served as Keeper of the Royal Archives and authored of one of the world's most cherished spiritual and poetic texts, the Tao Te Ching.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mercury House
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1562790854
• ISBN 13: 9781562790851
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208