New Lao Tzu
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A new interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, this book is a celebration of the Way of Harmony and Balance. Ray Grigg transforms what has been traditionally called the Tao Te Ching, what he calls the Lao Tzu, from the mysterious to the meaningful. He accomplishes this by abandoning the historical convention of a literal reading of the Chinese texts. The result is a poetic expression of ancient wisdom in a language that readers can approach directly. The wisdom of the Lao Tzu rests in its ability to tease confusion into insight that is beyond the confinement of intellectual understanding. Beautifully illustrated with ink drawings by Bill Gaetz, The New Lao Tzu demonstrates that living the wisdom of the Lao Tzu requires more instinct than reason, more intuition than argument.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Griff (Tao of Relationships; The Tao of Selling, etc.) here seeks to lay bare the ``essential'' wisdom of a classic Chinese text by eliminating linguistic and conceptual obstructions. The result is a kind of tenderized Tao Te Ching. Lexical problems and controversies surrounding the source materials of the Tao Te Ching, Griff asserts, make even the best of translations subjective interpretations, calling his new version ``...merely an outright declaration of the way the source material has always been treated.'' Based upon nine translations of the ancient text, Grigg's work is also a reflection of the eclecticism typical of Western dabblers in Eastern mysticism-a hodgepodge of loose interpretations and manipulated conventions. But part of the appeal of such a work, as here, is the ability to retain the enigmatic while rendering the text highly readable. Thus, while this is never billed as a scholarly work, readers will want to remain mindful that this rendering provides access not so much to the Tao Te Ching as to one individual's view of what constitutes contemporary ``essential'' wisdom and that that distinction is an important one.
