Comment by 🚀 hyena
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.
2025-08-05 · 9 months ago
3 Later Comments ↓
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?
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.
Original Post
— 8by3.net/~sbr/others/theway/2025-08-04.tao-te-ching.gmi
tao te ching