Table of Contents

Painting of Laozi — Tao Te Ching was written by Laozi circa 700 BC (pictured). Artwork is CC-BY 4.0 by artist and uploader Noasaurus

This English translation (©) is by Mr. Juho Kunsola and was translated over a time period from 2005 to 2016 using the 1925 Finnish translation by Mr. Pekka Ervast as the sole source. Mr. Ervast did his brilliant Finnish translation based on western sources.

What motivated me to do this work was that the English language versions of this world philosophical gem floating around the Internet seemed a bit dim to me when compared with Mr. Ervast’s translation.

Maximum fidelity to communicate the content unchanged has been my guideline in this work. If I find time I will iterate over the 81 chapters with help of autotranslators from Chinese, which was not a possibility for Mr. Ervast in the 1920’s when he did his work.

Before I began the translation task I contacted Ruusu-Ristin Kirjallisuusseura ry. to inquire about permission to do this translation work and they said “Ok, go ahead.”, so there should be no problem in publishing this translation as a book if I find a publisher.

#buythebook #ISBN 951-8995-01-X — #buythebook #ostakirja #ISBN 951-8995-01-X

The Finnish translation is available in

Hardcover: ISBN 951-8995-01-X, which is a look-alike reprint of the original book published by Mystica in 1925.
Digital: Tao Te King is available in digital from the Finnish language edition of Wikisource and is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 3.0) copyleft license.

Versions available on the Internet

In Chinese / 中文

‘老子 by Laozi‘ (PD), released in 2007 on Project Gutenberg
‘道德經 by Laozi‘ (PD), released in 2005 on Project Gutenberg

In English

‘THE TAO TEH KING, OR THE TAO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS by Lao-Tse‘ (1891)
(Public Domain, Life+100) translated by James Legge, a Scottish sinologist, missionary, and scholar in the 1800’s. This translation was originally published in Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 39 (1891) Also available on Wikisource. Also available as an audio book read by Eric S. Piotrowski at Project Gutenberg.
‘Translation:Tao Te Ching‘ by volunteer translators of Wikisource (2006-ongoing). Released under dual licensing: GFDL and CC BY-SA 2.0.
‘Dao De Jing by Lao Zi – A Minimalist Translation‘ translated by Bruce R. Linnell, PhD (©), released in 2015 at Project Gutenberg.

Français

‘Tao Te King, traduction de Stanislas Julien‘ (1842)
‘Le Tao de Laotseu (Traduction de Pouvoirville)‘ (1894)
‘Le Livre de la Voie et de la Ligne-droite‘ (1900) translation from Chinese by Alexandre Ular.
‘Lao-tseu traduit par Jules Besse‘ (1909).
‘Œuvre de Lao-tseu‘ (1913) translation by Léon Wieger.
‘Tao Te King par Lao-tseu‘ Audiolivre complet en français dans Wikimedia Commons. Text version not known as of now. Recorded and CC BY-SA-3.0 licensed in 2007 by Augustin Brunault for LitteratureAudio.com.

The Book of the Way of Virtue

Known by the names

Dàodéjīng (Pinyin romanization)

Tao Te King (Wade-Giles romanization)

道德经– (中文 / Chinese)

Tao Te Ching (Wikipedia)

Written by Laozi circa 700 BC

Chapter 1. Definition of Tao

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Yin and Yang symbol — The Ying and Yang symbol is ineligible for copyright so it was correctly placed under public domain by maker of this copy (Commons:User:Klem). These actually exist in the nature. You just need to pay close attention, know where to look for and get really lucky.

Chapter 2. Becoming perfect

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Chapter 3. Calming people

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Chapter 4. Innocent

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Chapter 5. The value of emptiness

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Chapter 6. The origin of beings

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Chapter 7. Concealing light

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Chapter 8. The inexpensive nature

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Chapter 9. Building equality

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Chapter 10. What is possible

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Chapter 11. Usefulness of emptiness

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Chapter 12. Closing doors

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Chapter 13. Stopping from falling to low places

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Chapter 14. Praising emptiness

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Chapter 15. Portraying virtue

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Chapter 16. Going home

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Chapter 17. Being natural

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Chapter 18. Mending

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Chapter 19. Returning to nature

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Chapter 20. Remaining distant

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Chapter 21. Empty spring

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Chapter 22. Lifting the little ones

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Chapter 23. Not joining

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Chapter 24. The honor that is not desirable

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Chapter 25. Grasping emptyness

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Chapter 26. Virtue of worthyness

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Chapter 27. Utility of skillfulness

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Chapter 28. Becoming a child

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Chapter 29. Inactioning

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Chapter 30. Removing self from battle

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Chapter 31. Ending war

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Chapter 32. Rational virtue

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Chapter 33. Distinguishing virtue

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Chapter 34. The perfect state

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Chapter 35. The virtue of benevolence

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Chapter 36. Concealed concent

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Chapter 37. Of governance

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Chapter 38. Of virtue

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Chapter 39. At the source of the spring

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Chapter 40. Declining work

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Chapter 41. The similar and the different

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Chapter 42. Changes in Tao

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Chapter 43. Unlimited utility

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Chapter 44. Staying silent

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Chapter 45. Boundless virtue

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Chapter 46. Limiting lust

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Chapter 47. Looking far

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Chapter 48. The trouble with knowledge

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Chapter 49. The virtue of concession

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Chapter 50. Life’s value

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Chapter 51. Recommending virtue

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Chapter 52. Returning to origin cause

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Chapter 53. Growing of clarity

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Chapter 54. The root and the branches

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Chapter 55. Marvelous harmony

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Chapter 56. Wondrous virtue

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Chapter 57. Right government

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Chapter 58. To allow others to heal themselves

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Chapter 59. Protecting Tao

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Chapter 60. Filling the throne

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Chapter 61. Virtue of humbleness

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Chapter 62. The practical Tao

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Chapter 63. Looking ahead

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Chapter 64. Caring for the lowly ones

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Chapter 65. The simple virtue

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Chapter 66. Placing yourself last

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Chapter 67. Three precious things

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Chapter 68. Imitating the heaven

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Chapter 69. Using the highly virtue

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Chapter 70. The difficulty of becoming known

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Chapter 71. The disease of ignorance

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Chapter 72. Loving yourself

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Chapter 73. Freedom of action

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Chapter 74. The mistake of governance

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Chapter 75. The evil of greed

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Chapter 76. The danger of power

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Chapter 77. The Heavenly Tao

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Chapter 78. Embracing the truth

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Chapter 79. Keeping promise

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Chapter 80. Standing alone

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Chapter 81. Proof of simplicity

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End of the Book of the Way of Virtue

Yin Yang taijitu (symbol) — Yin Yang Taijitu. 太極圖 – Diagram of the Ultimate Power. Uploaded by Klem. Copyright: PD-ancient.

English translations as individual chapters posted one-by-one as blog posts. Please be aware that I made minor error corrections and improvements when I posted these in side-by-side view on this page that have not been made to these individual posts:

Finnish original at Wikisource under copyleft license CC-BY-SA 3.0

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