Tao Te Ching, Chapter 36 (Stephen Mitchell Translation)

[Miles Archer]

Discovered this back in 1991. For me it was life-changing, game-changing, you-name-it-changing. I have three copies of the Tao sitting in a garage back in Nevada. For my money, Mitchell's translation has always been the best.

If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.

[kwassa]

1. I think we have this upstairs on the bookshelf.

My wife is a huge Stephen Mitchell fan.

[LostOne4Ever]

2. I have that version and the Ursula K. Le Guin version

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]I am pretty sure that Mitchell has received tons of criticism for taking rather extremely liberties with the translation. Supposedly, his version is an interpretation of other translations (which he admits in his forewords) and he doesn't even speak Chinese at all.

I believe the Le Guin version is closer to the actual text and there are passages that read very differently between the two books.

For instance, here is the same passage from her book:[/font]

The small dark light

[center]What seeks to shrink
must first have grown;
what seeks weakness
surely was strong.
What seeks its ruin
must first have risen;
what seeks to take
has surely given.

This is called the small dark light:
the soft, the weak prevail
over the hard, the strong.[/center]

There is a third stanza in all the texts:

[center]Fish should stay underwater:
the real means of rule
should be kept dark.[/center]

Or, more literally, "the Stat's sharp weapons ought not to be shown to the people." This Machiavellian truism seems such an anticlimax to the greater theme stated in the first verses that I treat it as an intrution, perhaps a commentator's practical example of "the small dark light."

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]I personally like Mitchell's version better, but that is probably because he is putting more of his own spin on it which sounds better to western readers.

Regardless, either version the Tao Te Ching is an very interesting book and well worth looking into by anyone interested in eastern philosophy and religion.

Edit: It should also be mentioned for those who don't like long reads that the Tao Te Ching is a very short book as well. Where some versions of the Bible are over 1000 pages long, the Tao Te Ching is barely even 100 pages long.

It can easily be read cover to cover in one day.

Edit2: A quick webcheck shows her version is just as inaccurate[/font]