Tao Te Ching

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C.Lau and I listened to multiple audio versions, driving to and from work, but still, I feel I only received just the barest glimpse into the depth of Lao Tzu’s words. Le Guin says: ”As a model for the Taoist, a baby is in many ways ideal: totally un-altruistic, not interested in politics, business or the proprieties, weak [and] soft”.

Tao Te Ching – Stephen Mitchell

His 2019 book, Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness, is a Zen-inflected midrash on the Joseph story from the Book of Genesis. Mitchell’s 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.I get the message and I love it, but I think it is well laid out and adequately covered in the verses on CD1. In all seriousness though, Lao Tzu usually uses this phrase in relation to governance, as in, a leader should lead with minimal meddling in the affairs of the people. Just trying to wrap your mind around these concepts and spending a while contemplating them is beneficial. For me, the Tao Te Ching is more folk wisdom than religious treatise and is more useful than a million sermons. Instead of being caught up in princely pursuits like governing, hunting, or dallying with his concubines, there he was in the kitchen, taking exquisite notice of the lowly, which turned out to contain the supreme.

Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell, Lao Tzu - Ebook | Scribd Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell, Lao Tzu - Ebook | Scribd

When the gods created mankind, they also created death, and they held back eternal life for themselves alone.Thus the Tao cannot be expressed, it has no name, it is indivisible, inaudible and immutable but also the origin of multiplicity that gives way to ambivalent interpretation, which in turn engenders the befuddling suspicion that the more one wants to unravel the Tao the less one masters it because its aim relays precisely in attaining unforced wisdom. For me, the tragedy of the Great List is that the three that top it serve only to divide the world into believers and nonbelievers: regardless how closely you follow the last seven, if you don’t believe in God you’re not worth a fig.