Tao Te Ching: The Way

This version of the Tao Te Ching is not a translation, but my personal attempt to come to terms with this perennial classic of religion and literature. Here is the text alone, without history and without comment. You can find history and comment elsewhere, and I hope you will. Much of what Lao Tzu says is addressed directly to people of power, but all of us, powerful or not, can learn from him or, rather, he can help us to unlearn what we think we know.

I have loved this book for many years, because it has challenged me, as a Christian, to think in new ways about God’s presence in the world as the abiding Holy Spirit. Lao Tzu wasn’t thinking about the Holy Spirit when he produced this masterpiece, but God has always been here in the world for all to see, and I think Lao Tzu saw him. In Christ, God humbled himself to become a human being, and this counterintuitive way—a profound humility at the center of human life—wouldn’t seem strange at all to Lao Tzu.

I can almost hear him now: “Be quiet! Just let them read it.”

So here it is.