This is the best book I have ever read.
Cleary's translation is extremely readable - his ordering is somewhat unorthodox but I don't understand what the details of that are.
As for the text itself, nothing has ever struck me so deeply. I have read the Analects before, but I did not fully appreciate it. I think everyone should study this book carefully and live their life by it. I am not going to say anything else about it because it is very short and the master speaks for himself.
Interesting! I read the Tao Te Ching a while back, and I found it quite interesting, but more difficult to extract meaning from, since it's a collection of aphoristic little poems. I'll check this out, thanks for the recommendation!
ReplyDeleteThe daodejing is more concerned with metaphysics, the Analects is at heart an ethical text. Both are fantastic. The daodejing is much harder to understand without a professor.
ReplyDeletealso, I should not that
ReplyDeleteIn ancient chinese philosophy, meaning extracts YOU.
This all sounds good to me! The book has just come in at the library, so I should soon be reading it...
ReplyDelete