How I Ended Up on a 40 Year Journey Translating the Tao te Ching

Have you ever wondered what is the most accurate translation of the Tao te Ching?

I did. I looked, searched explored, and inquired yet I never could find that one translation that really popped for me. Eventually, I had to create my own. more bout that in about two minutes.

My First Encounter with the Tao te Ching

The Tao te Ching, is one of the most influential books of philosophy and spirituality ever written.

I first encountered the work in my first years of apprenticeship with Vincent Collura, a shaman of Italian heritage and Roman Catholic upbringing who I met when I was hungry, raw, confused, lost, uninformed, and adrift in my youth.

Vincent opened the door to many things and in my fifteen years under his tutelage, I came to understand the importance of a life dedicated to inquiry and service.

In my five decades as a meditation student and mentor to others, and in my recent years serving as the senior teacher of the Wisdom Path Community, I have always been committed to sharing and “paying it forward”. In this long process, I read many different versions of the Tao te Ching, each version with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The title of the work “Tao te Ching” is generally translated to mean “The Book of the Way and Its Virtue”. However, according to R.B. Blakney’s translation, this is an awkward explanation of the “characters” and…