Customer Reviews

The Sayings of Lao Tzu

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For starters, there was no person, Lao Tzu, no one knows how "his" name was spelled, nor can the experts agree on the correct title of "his" work. Is it Tao te Ching? Tao teh King? No one knows.

The Tao te Ching is a collection of aphorisms, little bits of wisdom collected by, arguably, many writers. The most popular and enduring translation is by Legge, though, truth be told, after 40 or so years of study, there is still a lot in his version that I just don't get.

And while I'm a serious student of Taoism, Giles is the book I recommend to my non-Taoist friends. Not that it's a shallow bit of fluff. It isn't. Some of Giles' translation is as obscure as it gets, but he's taken the time to group the material into categories. So there's a cohesiveness to the work. Unlike the original which jumps all over the place, a further indication of its many authors.

Finally, while his translation is not perfectly accurate in an academic sense, it retains a certain mystical quality, almost poetic, that direct translations often lose. Compared to Legge, reading Giles' Tao a pleasure not a chore.

Five stars for sure!