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Tao Te Ching  By  cover art

Tao Te Ching

By: Stephen Mitchell, Lao Tzu
Narrated by: Stephen Mitchell
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Publisher's summary

In 81 brief chapters, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, as well as a serene and generous spirit. It teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao: the basic principle of the universe.

Stephen Mitchell's best-selling version has been widely acclaimed as a gift to contemporary culture.

©1988 Stephen Mitchell (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Stephen Mitchell's rendition of the Tao Te Ching comes as close to being definitive for our time as any I can imagine. It embodies the virtues its translator credits to the Chinese original: a gemlike lucidity that is radiant with humor, grace, large-heartedness, and deep wisdom." (Huston Smith, author of The Religions of Man)

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What listeners say about Tao Te Ching

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I like this audiobook.

It is basicly the bible of taoism and is good stuff. Lot of ideas about life and how to live it.

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it's an all-time favorite

I wish #45 and all presidents past, present, and future would commit it to heart. .. thus ensuring finding the heart mind

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Excellent translation.

Excellent translation. Buy this and listen while gardening, washing dishes or whatever it is you do! Fill yourself with the dao.

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Hold on to the Center

Let’s think about the incredible human mind performing the most complex operation that it is optimized. Let’s think about an American style football quarterback throwing a pass down field to a receiver that is still in flight.

John Maynard Keynes worked out a thesis on probability and came to the conclusion that whatever “calculations” the mind is making, it isn’t math. He concluded that our quarterback must be doing some kind of probability but without using mathematics.

Ludwig Wittgenstein followed closely behind Keynes shows that what’s going is not words either. Like math, words as useful as they are, as compact as they can be, cannot be how the mind thinks. The football players aren’t working out the imminent future in words anymore than geometry.

So here we are. We are real, but we lack any tools to accurately describe reality. Confusion is endemic.

Loa Tzu realized those truths and many more a couple thousand years before Keynes and Wittgenstein. He grasp our modern dissolution with fluid truth from every direction and calmly tries to help us navigate.

I’m not a religious follower of the Toa, although I am more a religious follower of the Toa than any other religious text. I listen and re-listen again and again to these words because I find them to have transcended their Axial Age roots and captured if not some truth itself, at least shadows of what can really be understood. And how to navigate a world where shadows of the truth is all that is possible with the tools we have. “Hold on to the center”

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Religion

Interesting view on God-Dow. Took me a while to realize Dow meant God. Not a super easy book to understand. Some of it I understood.

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This is a Library Essential!

The best Tao te Ching translation and reading out there. Have listened to this book 20+ times. Highly recommended!

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A thinker from beginning to end

So many have included they disliked the ending but truly the ending has a greater meaning and is important that it is there as a reminder in how it all fits together ( yin/yang) when you find judgment is needed than know that is where you need to grow. Love and wisdom to all

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Basic no interpretation modern English translation

This is the first version I have read/listened to. I like how it’s basically just a translation of the source material without interpretation but it’s translated into a very understandable modern English. I would recommend this version to anyone wanting to learn about the Dao/Tao.

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    5 out of 5 stars

profound impact on my life.

These words of inspiration can open the door of understanding. Meditative. Insightful and satisfying for the soul seekers.


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so wonderful. . . the ad at the end, unneeded.

so wonderful. . . the ad at the end, unneeded. Enjoy Stephen Mitchell's distillation of the way.

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