Daode jing: A Contextual, Contemplative, and Annotated Bilingual Translation Hardcover – May 5, 2023

A contextual, contemplative, and annotated bilingual Chinese-English translation of the Dàodé jīng 道德經 rooted in historical retrieval and contemplative hermeneutics.The Lǎozǐ 老子 (Lǎo-tzǔ; Book of Venerable Masters), more often referred to with its honorific title of Dàodé jīng 道德經 (Tào-té chīng; Scripture on the Dao and Inner Power), is one of the most translated and most misunderstood Daoist classics. Although traditionally attributed to the legendary Lǎozǐ 老子 (Lǎo-tzǔ; “Master Lao”; trad. dat. 6th c. BCE) and thus presented as the Book of Master Lao, the work is actually a multivocal anthology consisting of historical and textual layers dating from the fourth to the second centuries BCE and containing teachings and practices associated with various anonymous elders of the inner cultivation lineages of classical Daoism. With this long-awaited annotated translation and ground-breaking interpretive study, one of our leading scholars of Daoism and translators of Daoist literature recovers the Dàodé jīng as a contemplative and mystical work, one in which inner cultivation and apophatic meditation form its core. In the process, this book returns the ancient classic to its rightful place as a key work of classical Daoism and as a foundational and central scripture of the Daoist tradition. Challenging and remedying received interpretive legacies and current trends of philosophical, popular, and spiritualist appropriation, Dàodé jīng: A Contextual, Contemplative, and Annotated Bilingual Translation focuses on the technical specifics of the work, including its unique language of Daoist cultivation and realization. Here is a translation that provides access to the classical Chinese Daoist source-text, with specific emphasis on its contextual and contemplative meaning. As an exercise in historical retrieval and contemplative hermeneutics, rooted in a Daoist scholar-practitioner approach, it helps readers reimagine both the Dàodé jīng and classical Daoism, and opens new vistas into some of the foundations of the Daoist tradition as a whole. A landmark in “Lǎozǐ Studies” and one of the most authoritative and comprehensive studies to date, the present work has the potential to transfigure received opinion and inspire new engagements with a text both too well and too little known. Read more