My Translations of the Dao De Jing

I am currently going through Dao De Jing from Lao Tzu. I am a firm believer that Eastern philosophy is amazing and I think personally we can all benefit from its deep well of wisdom and knowledge. I have been interested in the Dao since I was young. And recently, I have decided to learn it. I figure a good place to start is to translate Lao Tzu's words from Mandarin to English. I actually can't find a translation which speaks to me the way Dao De Jing in Mandarin does. The one translation which I found most beautiful was Ursula Le Guin's version as well as Ken Liu's version. But even these versions seem to occasionaly miss the mark for me. So I would love here to not only translate but also to invoke the feeling - making the Eastern philosophy more accessible to people who speak English.

It is important to note that there are two sections in the Dao De Jing. The first section is the "Dao" which roughly can be thought of as the Way or the Path. Lao Tsu believes that Dao is something that cannot really be named as it is not something that can be captured but it captures the law of nature itself. The second section is the "De" which can be roughly translated as our virtue or morality. The two together is one of the law of nature (the path) and how to walk this path.

Chapters of Dao

Note: The individual chapters have been split into separate blog posts. This page serves as an index to the project.