Product ReviewsLao Tzu - Tao Te Ching : A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way by Úrsula K. Le Guin and Lao Tzú (1997, Hardcover)

Chinese and Feminist Expertise in Translation

This is a new English version by highly acclaimed feminist novelist Ursula Le Guin. Her collaborator, a professor in Chinese is J.P. Seaton. (It is not his text as the above eBay title would lead us to believe!) It was published by Shambhala in soft cover in Boston and London in 1998.

'The original "Tao Te Ching" was written about 2,500 year ago by a man who was called Lao Tzu who lived at the same time as Confucius'(paraphrasing from Le Guin's 1998 introduction).

The only way I know how to describe it best is to give you one page from it (my favorite):

"17

Acting Simply

True leaders
are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are the leaders
the people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them, those they despise.

To give no trust
is to get no trust.

When the work's does right,
with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it."

Then Le Guin leaves her annotations at the bottom of the page:

"This invisible leader, who gets things done in such a way that people think they did it all themselves, isn't one who manipulates others from behind the scenes; just the opposite. Again, it's a matter of 'doing without doing': uncompetitive, unworried, trustful accomplishment, power that is not force. An example or analogy might be a very good teacher, or the truest voice in a group ofo singers" (p 24).

Le Guin is as insightful and helpful in her analyses as always. In this interpretation of the Tao Te Ching Le Guin demonstrates her maturity~Read full review...