I’m not sure how following the precepts in this book would work in most people’s lives, unlike, for example, applying a few Buddhist tenets. No wonder some famous Daoists were monks. Putting such ideas into practice, however, seems problematic. It is full of things such as, “He who speaks doesn’t know.” And “He who knows doesn’t speak.” You’ll be nodding your head at things like that, comparing them to your own life experience. Daoist philosophy (or Taoist, if you want to use the old spelling-but Daoist is how you pronounce it) is intriguing because it seems to rely on not taking action rather than on actually doing anything. Since the Teaching Company doesn’t have a course on this book as they do for the Analects, I’ll just have to rely more on my own first impressions. Compared to the Analects of Confucius, this is a shorter, easier read, but like that work, I’m sure it benefits from reading in multiple translations and from reading more about it-not just of it. There are also certain ideas that are repeated in nearly identical phrases in different parts of this very short work. Like the Analects of Confucius, there are passages that are corrupted and whose meaning is either unfathomable or in dispute. Instead, the contents of the Tao Te Ching seem to be a distillation and compilation of early Daoist thought. Lau points out in his highly readable introduction to this Penguin Classics edition, it is highly unlikely that Lao Tzu was an acutal person, despite stories of Confucius once going to see him.
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