Dao De Jing(The Book of Lao Zi)is widly read and celebrated as a Daoist classic. It is full of aphorisms that display the orginality of Lao Zi's wisdom and thought-way. Written in a poetic form and literally presented in 81 chapters, the texts as a whole turn out to be suggestive, implicit and somewhat obscure in meaning; hence they are often found inspiring to venture through with responses of appreciation, but not easy to digest the key arguments in question, especially ao in the case of general readers today. In order to facilitate a more fruitful reading of the classic, a new approach is therefore recommended with due consideration of the reading habit in general, thus bringing into being The Classic of the Dao: A New Investigation. This study project is noticeably characterized by a thematic rearrangement of the 81 chapters along with elaborate annotations and relevant commentary. They are offered as a result of contextual analysis and absorptive incorporation with some of the recent findings by Lao Zi scholars. All this intended to help one obtain certain insights into highlights of early Daoism as a philosophy. In addition to that, one may fell reasonably convenient and flexible to select according to one's own interest any of the themes or topics available in the table of contents concerned, and then focus on it for spiritual nourishment, for example. All in all, the work reveals a strong initiative to make Dao De Jing more accesible and intelligible to the readers of all kinds.
Table of Contents
Preface Lao Zi and His Doctrine of the Dao Part I TheDao as the Origin of All 1 The Essence of the Dao 2 The Features of the Dao 3 The Movement of the Dao 4 The Dao and the Myriad Things 5 The Dao of Heaven and the Dao of Man Part II De as the Manifestation of the Dao 6 From the Dao into De 7 The Qualities of De Part III The Human Condition in Perspective 8 0n Have-Substance and Have-No-Substance 9 0n Take-Action and Take-No-Action 10 0n Pleasure-Snobbery and Acquisitiveness 11 on the Hard and the Soft 12 0n the Beautiful and the Ugly 13 0n Beauty, Truth and Goodness 14 0n Modesty and Retreat 15 0n Knowledge and Wisdom 16 0n Fortune and Misfortune 17 0n Life and Death 18 0n the Merits of Contentment 19 0n the Possibilities of Achievement 20 On the Art of Leadership 21 On Warfare 22 On Peace 23 On Returning to Antiquity 24 On the Ideal Society Part IV The Daoist Path to Personal Cultivation 25 The Attitude to Dao-De 26 The Experience of Dao-De 27 The Praxis of Dao-De 28 The Attainment of Dao-De (1) Self-Purification and Deep Contemplation (2) Plainness and Simplicity (3) Vacuity and Tranquility (4) Tenderness and Non-Competition (5) Have-Less-Selfishness and Have-Few-Desires (6) Naturalness and Take-no-Action Appendix 1 The Dao De Jing of Lao Zi (Translation) Appendix 2 The Dao De Jing of Lao Zi (Original) Appendix 3 Toward the Dao of Human Existence Key References Glossary
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Incidentally, Wu （Being-without-form） and You （Being-within-form） are two aspects contained in the Dao. The former can be regarded as a substitute related to the moment when Heaven and Earth were in chaos prior to their separation, while the latter can be regarded as a substitute related to the fundamental source of the myriad things. From Lao Zi's point of view, the world is oneness or unity, emerging from the movement of the Dao. In terms of the world's formation, the ancients believed that the separation of Heaven and Earth took place first, and the emergence of the myriad things came second; just as it was said:"There were Heaven and Earth, then the myriad things commenced to be" （see "Yizhuan Xugua" [Prelude of the Trigrams,A Commentary on the Yi Jing or The Book of Changes]）. There-fore,
