The Second Book of the Tao is a gift to contemporary readers, granting us access to our own fundamental wisdom. Its wisdom provides a psychological and moral acuity as deep as the Tao Te Ching itself. The book introduces us to a cast of vivid characters, most of them humble artisans or servants, who show us what it means to be in harmony with the way things are. Mitchell’s renditions are radiantly lucid they dig out the vision that’s hiding beneath the words they grab the text by the scruff of the neck-by its heart, really-and let its essential meanings fall out. This book is a twenty-first-century form of ancient wisdom, bringing a new, homemade sequel to the Tao Te Ching into the modern world. Alongside each adaptation, Mitchell includes his own commentary, at once explicating and complementing the text. Mitchell has selected the freshest, clearest teachings from these two great students of the Tao and adapted them into versions that reveal the poetry, depth, and humor of the original texts with a thrilling new power. Drawn from the work of Lao-tzu’s disciple Chuang-tzu and Confucius’s grandson Tzussu, The Second Book of the Tao offers Western readers a path into reality that has nothing to do with Taoism or Buddhism or old or new alone, but everything to do with truth. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed the innovative The Second Book of the Tao. The most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Though unlikely to displace Stephen Mitchell's popular rendering of the Tao, this volume will delight spiritual seekers and devotees of Taoism, while also making a lovely gift.Enhanced by Stephen Mitchell’s illuminating commentary, the next volume of the classic manual on the art of living Hamill's poetry is complemented by Kazuaki Tanahashi's dramatic calligraphy, with 18 original representations of words or characters. The Tao-literally, "the way"-resists being nailed down or put in a box and mastered. To wit, this lovely meditation: "It's best to be like water, nurturing the ten thousand things without competing, flowing into places people scorn." And yet Hamill does not seek to drain the text of its mystery. Hamill has rendered the Tao Te Ching afresh his translation from the Chinese is achingly poetic. People should "cling to no treasures," but rather devote themselves to a pure disinterestedness, becoming most truly themselves when they achieve selflessness. Lao Tzu meditates on breath, enjoining the reader to practice breathing like a baby reflects on hsu, or emptiness juxtaposes heaven and earth and soberly reminds readers of their mortality. Lao Tzu's classic Chinese text from the sixth century BCE has much to teach us today.
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