Tao Te Ching

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper

The most translated book in the world after the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, or “Book of the Tao,” is a guide to cultivating a life of peace, serenity, and compassion. Through aphorisms and parable, it leads readers toward the Tao, or the “Way”: harmony with the life force of the universe. Traditionally attributed to Lao-tzu, a Chinese philosopher thought to have been a contemporary of Confucius, it is the essential text of Taoism, one of the three great religions of ancient China. As one of the world’s great works of wisdom literature, it still has much to teach us today, offering a practical model based on modesty and self-restraint for living a balanced existence and for opening your mind, freeing your thoughts, and attaining enlightenment and self-awareness. With its emphasis on calm, simplicity, purity, and non-action, it provides a time-tested refuge from the busyness of modern life.

This new translation seeks to understand the Tao Te Ching as a guide to everyday living and encourages a slow, meditative reading experience. The Tao Te Ching‘s eighty-one brief chapters are accompanied by illuminating commentary, interpretation, poems, and testimonials by the likes of Margaret Mead, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. Specially commissioned calligraphy for more than two hundred Chinese characters illustrates the book’s essential themes.

About the Contributors

Lao-tzu, whose name means “Old Master,” was, according to legend, a contemporary of Confucius in the sixth century B.C.E. and the founder of the philosophical tradition of Taoism.

John Minford (editor/translator) is the translator of the Viking Penguin edition of the I Ching, for which he won the Australian Academy of the Humanities Medal for Excellence in Translation, as well as the acclaimed Viking Penguin edition of The Art of War. He is an emeritus professor of Chinese at the Australian National University.