Tao Te Ching - your preferred translation?

Connor Lidell wrote: I would give my left arm to read the first biblical new testament manuscript in greek. O_O MMMM

I think I read that once... turns out Jesus's abilities might've been a bit exaggerated...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3rLof2cnzg

Stephen Mitchell
a new english version
1988

1

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the
manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

My working version for the past ten years (recommended by a native Mandarin-speaking colleague):

Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.

"Names can name no lasting name.

Nameless the origin of heaven and earth.
Naming: the mother of ten thousand things.

Empty of desire, perceive mystery.
Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.

These have the same source, but different names.
Call them both deep -
Deep and again deep:

The gateway to all mystery."

Stephen Mitchell is still probably my favorite, but I am loving having all these new versions to read!! :woohoo:

Not all translations are equal, and even though some are better than others, none is definitive.


All is translation.