The Eternal Tao Te Ching

From Benjamin Hoff, author of The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, which have sold millions of copies worldwide, comes The Eternal Tao Te Ching, a new translation of the Chinese philosophical classic, the Tao Te Ching.

The Eternal Tao Te Ching is the first translation to employ the meanings of the pre-writing brush characters in use 2,400 years ago, when the classic was written, rather than relying on the often-different meanings of the more modern brush characters, as other translations have done. Hoff points out in his chapter notes the many incidents of meddling and muddling that have been made over the centuries by scholars and copyists. He corrects these mistakes and removes such tampering from the text.

Hoff also makes the provocative claim—and demonstrates by revealing clues in the text—that the Tao Te Ching's author was a young nobleman hiding his identity, rather than the long-alleged author, the "Old Master" of legend, Lao-tzu. Hoff's chapter notes shed new light on the author's surprisingly modern viewpoint.

With a selection of lyrical colour landscape photographs by the author, this is a unique, and uniquely accessible, presentation of the Tao Te Ching.