Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition

Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition

In a new approach to the Tao Te Ching, this acclaimed translator explores the full range of meaning for each Chinese character, allowing readers, in effect, to interpret the ancient wisdom book for themselves.

Not only is Ancient Chinese a challenge to translate, but it contains a minefield of arcane terms and expressions that often have no counterparts in English. So while the Tao Te Ching is one of the most widely read books in the world, it remains also one of the most misunderstood.

Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition helps to remedy this situation. In addition to his own masterful translation, Jonathan Star supplies the multiple meanings of each Chinese character. Readers can use Star's translation in the first half of the book, can create their own by using the multiple definitions in the second half, or can combine the two to discover the most profound.

Star's work elucidates how translators arrive at diffuse meanings, as well as how the ancient Chinese regarded different concepts and what they meant within the context of the Tao. The volume also includes useful commentary, a character dictionary, and other tools that illuminate the different meanings of the Tao. This definitive edition enables Westerners to comprehend the Tao more deeply than ever before.