tao te ching

2025-08-05 · 9 months ago · 👍 johano

6 Comments ↓

☀️ sbr · 2025-08-05 at 13:47:

5000 words of sense. Although I have since found translations I like more, this one is very clearly public domain, and was in a easy format to convert to gemtext. Hope to add other translations later.

🚀 hyena · 2025-08-05 at 16:09:

I read this for the first time in Ursula K. Le Guin's translation earlier this summer. The idea of doing "not-doing" has influenced my thinking and sense of ethics. I think I will come back to this text again and again, and through different translations.

Le Guin's translation was beautiful, but it was admittedly less literal and more poetic/interpretive. I'd highly recommend it though, it is very charming and thought provoking.

🚀 hyena · 2025-08-05 at 16:16:

For comparison, here's how Le Guin renders the first chapter:

1. Taoing

The way you can go

isn't the real way.

The name you can say

isn't the real name.

Heaven and earth

begin in the unnamed:

name's the mother

of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul

sees what's hidden,

and the ever-wanting soul

sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,

but different in name,

whose identity is mystery.

Mystery of all mysteries!

The door to the hidden.

☀️ sbr · 2025-08-05 at 16:24:

I also like her version, need to double check its license before creating a gemtext version, but its available here

— https://terebess.hu/english/tao/LeGuin.pdf

There is also a good audio version of I believe her reading it.

They have many translations on that pagw if you go to the folder path. All of them are “poetic” interpretations.

🚀 hyena · 2025-08-05 at 17:05:

Nice, I'll have to check out the audio recording.

What prompted your interest in the tao te ching?

☀️ sbr · 2025-08-05 at 18:15:

I read the Tao of Pooh perhaps 20 years ago and didn’t get it. 10 years later started meditation, some way in, learned more about buddhist philosophy and about a week ago listened to Leguin’s reading of her translation and it all made perfect sense. Then read through the text and made all the more sense.

Without belittling either, it feels like one needs the grounding of buddhism to see you don’t actually need buddhism. Taoism is the distilled essence of it all.