Product Details
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching
By Ursula K. Le Guin

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Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #35494 in Books
  • Published on: 1999-04-01
  • Original language: Mandarin Chinese
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 125 pages

Editorial Reviews

Synopsis
Ursula LeGuin, best know for her sci-fi novels, has studied the Tao Te Ching for more than 40 years. Included in this translation are LeGuin's own personal commentary and notes.

Customer Reviews

unpretentious, simple, beautiful, and thought-provoking.5
I've bought several versions of the Tao Te Ching over the years, my favorite being that by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. Le Guin's "rendition" startled me with its everyday language and showed the Tao in a new light.

Translations of this work vary considerably, so I was particularly impressed with Le Guin's inclusion of material explaining what led her to this undertaking and why she cast Lao Tzu's ideas the way she did. This honesty and the bare, simple beauty of her language seem to me very much an expression of the Tao.

In a world where everything seems so strident and competetive, this simple account of what one person found in this very old and much-loved book is more valuable to me than shelves full of scholarly, definitive, acclaimed, or approved translations.

This book not only talks about the Tao, it exemplifies the Tao.

Sensible and Beautiful5
After looking at dozens of translations, this is the one I kept. It hasn't lost all poetry, and seems true to the spirit of the Tao as I understand it. Still, it's readable by anyone who sits down with it and contemplates.

My first Tao Te Ching translation!5
I had read Ursula's science fiction, and loved it.
I was walking through "a book store" and her


name caught my eye in the Eastern Thought


section. The rest is history. The Tao Te Ching


is a book that can help you survive in this


century, by remembering what to treasure the most.




Ursula's version is free of sexism, and other power-tripping sometimes added by Westerners.


She does an excellent job of helping us get to


the meaning of the Tao Te Ching, without destroying the beautiful poetry.