The Timeless Wisdom of Tao Te Ching — Embrace the Mystery of Life
Verse 1 —The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
If the government ordered me to make a bonfire and burn every book I own except for one — I’d keep Tao Ta Ching.
This 2,400-year-old book is new. It’s the classic manual on the art of living — suitable for a Chou Dynasty farmer or a Wall Street trader.
Tao Te Ching has been translated more than any book except the bible.
Traditionally attributed to Lao-tzu, a Chinese philosopher thought to have been a contemporary of Confucius, Tao Te Ching is the essential text of Taoism, one of the three great religions of ancient China: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
A Book on Living in the Flow of Life
Lao-tzu’s central figure is a man or woman whose life is in perfect harmony with the way things are . . . The master has mastered nature; not in the sense of conquering it, but of becoming it. In surrendering to the Tao, in giving up all concepts, judgements, and desires, her mind has grown naturally compassionate . . . Until finally she is able to say, in all humility, “I am the Tao, the Truth, the Life.”
— Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching, Foreward
