Description
 
“Spiritual Food for Our Daily Lives”
 
A scripture for practical use that can nurture your working and family life.
May the Way of old Laozi become your Way, and may you become a seeker of the Way, a practitioner of the Way, and a master of Way, not only enriching your own life but also steering the world in the right directions.

We need the wisdom to reinterpret the Daodejing in a way that is suited to these times. I would like to offer such an interpreta\-tion, sharing its familiar wisdom with our political leaders, our educators, and our common people with shopping baskets in tow. It seems to me that we have long understood the dao (the Way) shared by Laozi as something too lofty, too much like a form of playing with ideas.
 
I believe that now is the time for us to draw the daode (the Way and its virtue) that Laozi described to us as part of the reali-ty closest to us, to devote our passion to living the nameless Way and the virtue of nonaction. It should not be the Daodejing as a pie-in-the-sky ideal but spiritual food in our daily lives. It should be a scripture for practical use that can nurture our working and family lives. For this purpose, I have strived to explain the Daode\-jing in such a way that its teaching can be easily applicable to our lives.
 
My earnest hope is that you read Daodejing over and over, and contemplate its meaning again and again so that the Way of old Laozi becomes your Way and you become a seeker of the Way, a practitioner of the Way, and a master of Way, not only enriching your own life but also steering the world toward right directions.
 
 
 
Contents
 
Preface Do You See? The Way Is Here   9
 
Lecture 
01. Truth, That Which Cannot Be Named   15
02. Become a Great Liberated Mind   23
03. How a Sage Conducts Politics   28
04. The Truth Has No Origin   33
05. The Creative Transformations of the Empty Way   37
06. The Truth Seems Existing yet Nonexistent   41
07. The Sage Achieves the Great Self   45
08. Let Us Go through Life like Water   49
09. Once You Have Achieved Merits, Step Back   52
10. Observe the Master   55
11. Beneficial Because It Is Empty   60
12. Spiritual Pleasure   63
13. Favor and Humiliation   66
14. The Truth Has No Face   70
15. People Who Possess the Truth   74
16. All Things Return to Their Roots   79
17. Politics of Faith   83
18. When Governance through Nonaction Fails   86
19. The Simplicity of Nature Itself   89
20. The Truth Is a Mother That Feeds All Things   92
21. How Did I Find the Truth?   97
22. That Which Is Bent Is Actually Whole   100
23. The Word That Carries the Way Is Natural   105
24. One Cannot Stand Long with Lifted Heels   108
25. The Truth That Contains All Things   111
26. Behave with Weight and Tranquility   115
27. The Person Who Works Truly Well   118
28. Guard with the Feminine   123
29. The World Is a Mysterious Vessel   127
30. Strong Things Wither Swiftly   130
31. A Weapon Is Never Auspicious   133
32. The Truth Cannot Be Treated as a Subject   136
33. If We Do Not Lose Sight of Our Place   139
34. The Truth Overflows in All Phenomena!   142
35. Songs and Music Make a Person Stop   145
36. The Truth Gives First   148
37. The Truth Is Simple   151
38. Great Grace Is Not Virtuous   154
39. The Truth Is One   159
40. Returning When Things Have Gone as Far as They Should   163
41. That Which Is Very Innocent Appears Cloudy   166
42. The Sequence of the Truth’s Transformations   170
43. Softness Governs Hardness   174
44. It Is Not Dangerous If We Know How to Stop   177
45. Great Eloquence Seems Inarticulate   179
46. True Satisfaction   182
47. Knowing the World without Venturing Out   185
48. To Reach 'No Mind'   189
49. When the Attached Mind Is Absent   192
50. People Who Die Badly   195
51. The Truth’s Profound Grace   198
52. Open and Close the Mind’s Gateway Properly   201
53. The Politics of Thieves   205
54. What Has Been Erected Well Will Not Be Uprooted   208
55. Live like a Newborn   212
56. The Person Who Truly Understands Does Not Speak   216
57. This Is How to Govern a Country   219
58. When Politics Is Magnanimous   222
59. Deep Roots and a Sturdy Stalk   225
60. Governing a Country Is like Cooking a Tiny Fish   228
61. The Great Country like the River’s Lower Course   231
62. Valuable Words Sell Quickly   234
63. Through the Spontaneity That Does without Doing   237
64. Sages Do Not Act out of Desire   241
65. The Person of Good Moral Practice   245
66. The Sage Does Not Burden Others   248
67. Laozi’s Three Jewels   251
68. Ability without Discord   255
69. An Age-Old Message to the Soldier   258
70. The Sage Dressed in Reeds and Holding Jade to His Breast   261
71. The Sage Never Sickens   264
72. Choosing the Real and Forsaking the False   266
73. The Net of Truth Is Loose, but One Cannot Escape It   269
74. The Truth Is What Punishes   272
75. The People Left Starving by Excessive Taxes   275
76. Softness Is the Essence of Life   278
77. Truth Is like Firing a Bow   281
78. The Great Leaders of the World   284
79. Great Grievances Remain Even after Reconciliation   287
80. The Ideal Country Is the Small Country   289
81. Trustworthy Words Bear Little Embellishment   292