Here at the frontier, the leaves fall like rain. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are still two cups at my table.


Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

~ Wu-men ~


Friday, August 10, 2007

Notable Dao De Jing Translation


Maybe it's the baby duck syndrome, but the first translation of the Dao De Jing that I was exposed to when I was a teenager, has always been my favorite. It's the translation by Gia Fu Feng, illustrated by photographs by Jane English. It can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-25th-Anniversary-Lao-Tsu/dp/0679776192/ref=sr_1_1/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186777149&sr=8-1

While looking something else up, I stumbled across a reference to the book, and decided to look up Gia Fu Feng and Jane English. They were a married couple. She provided the photographs, and he provided the translations.

There's a pretty lengthy article about Gia Fu Feng. He was quite an interesting guy, who was right in the thick of it, brining the East to the West in the 60's and 70's. You can find it by clicking on the title of this post. The calligraphy at the top of this article was done by him.

1 comment:

Zen said...

I love that version, I've had mine for many years