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Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu and Mitchell

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Profchan, May 2, 2007

Mitchell's book has a nice cover. I like the size. It's a good design. And that's about all the good things I see in it. The fact that it sells so well underscores the abysmally low level of Chinese knowledge in the U.S. and European countries.

The scholars who praise this version, like Huston Smith, are themselves not knowledgeable in Chinese, and are not really qualified to evaluate it. They do praise it lavishly not necessarily due to merit, but due to mutual back-scratching in the academic world - about which I am fully qualified to comment.

Some have called this "definitive" - but if you really know Chinese you will instantly see, from any chapter, that it is anything but. Each chapter (verse) in this book has about a dozen errors in the sense of omission of original concepts, additions of author's own ideas, and distortions and twists the original meaning into something that only superficially resembles the original Tao teachings.

Let's take a look at one example. Chapter 60 has this line: "You spoil it with too much poking." Well, this is something added by the author, not a translation, because the orignial says absolutely nothing about spoiling the fish or poking it.

The content is sparse. There's not much meat between the covers. The author uses a lot of New Age-isms and his personal philosophies to fill out the blanks where he does not understand the original.

Or look at chapter 64. Between the example about the tree and the journey of a thousand miles, the orignal says "a tower of nine levels starts as accumulated dirt." This line is completely missing, possibly because Mitchell does not understand the line.

Take the above mistakes and imagine them duplicated several times in every chapter, and you start to get the idea how inaccurate this translation is. I am not opposed to calling it "inspired by Lao Tzu" or "based on Lao Tzu" but to call it a translation of Lao Tzu is simply false advertising.

This book has a lot of momentum and is often recommended. I fully expect it will continue to be very, very popular. For those who are interested in more authenticity as opposed to this Americanized, watered-down stuff, my recommendation is to continue your investigation, and look at the other options available to you.

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