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. In this new translation the ancient "Way of the Sages" is presented as a biocentric political ecology teaching that "great governance does not cut," but acts to protect human communities and the natural world from the "excess, extravagance and extremes" involved in quests for power, wealth and privilege. The accompanying commentary links each verse translation to the holistic understanding of the world-process (Dao) the ancient sages used to guide human activity toward simplicity and integration with nature, The importance of the Dao De Jing today is evident in the ancient sages' teaching that the Dao can be "lost" and its holistic paradigm replaced by egoistic designs for dominatiion that lead to ruin.