The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu

The Tao te Ching is one of the most frequently translated, widely read, and deeply cherished books in the world, a work many consider the wisest ever written. Whether Lao Tzu was ever a historical figure is doubtful; the evidence suggests otherwise. What is more likely is that the body of teachings now known as the Tao te Ching was developed over a period of two or three hundred years by five or six different sages, some almost assuredly women. Certainly the teaching here is the gentlest and most motherly of all the world’s great treatises on the art of living. In any case, this is, as the author writes in his introduction, “less a book than a living, breathing angel."