This edition of the Tao Te Ching has 81 of Lao Tzu's poems side-by-side with 81 photos - a lavishly illustrated (in black-and-white) 25th Anniversary Edition. This edition of his classic poetry was recommended to me by Chinese friends as the best of many. (For books by Lao Tzu, click on his name.)

Lao Tzu (or Lao Tsu), an older contemporary of Confucius, was keeper of the imperial archives in the province of Hunan in the sixth century BC. All his life he taught that “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” (Tao can be thought of as “the Way” or Heaven or God.) Lao Tzu was persuaded to write down his teachings for posterity. He did do so in the only possible form to convey his insights – poetry.

The Tao Te Ching is short – 81 poems, totaling only about 5,000 words. But for 2,500 years these words have provided one of the major underlying influences in Chinese thought and culture. In various forms they appear often in proverbs and folklore of both Taoism (or Daoism)and Buddhism. Whereas Confucianism is concerned with day-to-day rules of conduct, Taoism is concerned with a more spiritual level of being. The poems in the Tao Te Ching are intended to open your mind to the mystical world of the Tao. I’ve read these poems many times, and will continue to do so. Few of them open your mind upon your first reading. I’ve been told that most of them require contemplation and/or mediation. However, several well-known religious writers (from many faith worldviews) refer to the Tao Te Ching in their writings. So I will continue to study these poems and the art work selected to help open one’s mind to the spiritual insights the poems point to. I think this will always be a “work in progress,” but such is the nature of spiritual writings – they serve us primarily as symbolic pointers towards the ineffable Tao.