道德經

Introduction to the Dao De Jing [Tao Te Ching]

by Lao Zi [Lao Tzu]

Its many riddle-like poems are famously obscure. However, once you can interpret them you'll find that it is actually a very practical philosophy book that dispenses timeless wisdom about leadership qualities and interpersonal relationships ...and maybe the Theory of Everything. Perhaps Steven Hawkins is looking in the wrong place...

The Dao De Jing consists of 81 chapters. It can be read from the first to the last chapter as a typical book but it is ot necessary to do so. In any event, true understanding will require multiple readings. For this reason, in addition to the Next and Previous page buttons we have provided a Random button which will take you to a randomly chapter.

Notes on the Translations

The complete text of the Dao De Jing is presented here side-by-side with three different translations. Translation is an inherently difficult task not just because of the difficulty of translationg words without exact equivalents but also because translators tend to overlay their own religious and social contexts on the translated work. It is hoped that by presented these three translations side-by-side the reader could better determine the true meaning of the original text. The sources of the three translations are:

• "The Tao Teh King" or "The Tao and Its Characteristics", translated by James Legge, 1891. (Source: Project Gutenberg)
• "The Canon of Reason and Virtue", translated by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus, 1913. (Source: Internet Sacred Text Archive)
• "Laotzu's Tao and Wu Wei" translated by Dwight Goddard and Henri Borel, 1919. (Source: Internet Sacred Text Archive)

To aid current bilingual readers, we have replaced the transliterated Chinese names from their original romanization to Pinyin.