The Original Wisdom of the DAO DE JING: A New Translation and Commentary

The Dao De Jing is a classic of ancient Chinese philosophy and one of the great wisdom texts of world literature. To recover its original meaning P. J. Laska sets aside the long commentarial tradition of paradox and mysticism and re-interprets the work as a coherent natural philosophy and holistic ecological teaching concerned with the "constancy" of the life community as a whole. In this new translation and commentary the ancient "Way of the Sages" is presented as biocentric political ecology teaching that "Great governance does not cut," but acts to protect the community of life from the "excess, extravagance and extremes" of accumulationist designs. The commentary on each translated verse is designed to convey the holistic understanding of the world-process that the ancient sages used to guide human designs toward simplicity and integration with nature and away from hierarchical instruments of domination.