Tao Te Ching

Laozi

Stop swimming against the current. Eighty-one short chapters, almost poems, on yielding, simplicity and the natural course of things.

Reading: 9 chapters
Format: Text + tutor
Price: $4.99

Read chapter 1 free

Checking your access…

AI tutor grounded in the text. Quotes and interpretations are shown separately.

About the book

A work to return to, not to consume.

The Tao Te Ching is eighty-one very short chapters, almost poems, about the Tao, the natural course of things, and how to live in keeping with it. It proposes the opposite of what we usually do when we are tense: yield in time instead of forcing, value the emptiness that makes a vessel useful, do your work and withdraw without clinging, be content with enough, attend to the difficult while it is still easy. Its favorite image is water, which benefits all things without striving and takes the low place no one wants. It speaks to the individual as much as to whoever governs, through paradoxes that ask to be read slowly. This edition follows James Legge's English translation (1891), grouped into nine reading chapters.

The Sun, your reading tutor

Answers from this edition and says when it interprets beyond a quote.

The highest excellence is like (that of) water.

Laozi · — Chapter 1

See it in context →

Inside the book

Chapters

01
Chapters I - IX5 min read
Free →
02
Chapters X - XVIII6 min read
Included
03
Chapters XIX - XXVII6 min read
Included
04
Chapters XXVIII - XXXVI5 min read
Included
05
Chapters XXXVII - XLV5 min read
Included
06
Chapters XLVI - LIV5 min read
Included
07
Chapters LV - LXIII6 min read
Included
08
Chapters LXIV - LXXII6 min read
Included
09
Chapters LXXIII - LXXXI5 min read
Included

The author

Laozi

Tradition attributes the Tao Te Ching to Laozi, a Chinese sage said to have lived in the 6th century BCE and worked in the Zhou court archives. His life is more legend than record, and many scholars see the book as a later compilation. James Legge (1815–1897), a Scottish missionary and the first professor of Chinese at Oxford, published the English translation this edition follows in 1891.

Questions

Is it a religious book?

It is the foundation of Taoism, but it is also read as practical philosophy. You do not need to adopt any belief to benefit from it.

Am I really talking with Laozi?

No. The conversation is an AI recreation* inspired by the text: it is not Laozi and it can be wrong. Use it to think the book through, not as the author's own word.

How much does it cost?

The book costs US$4.99, or it comes included in ChaTutor Plus. You can read the opening of chapter 1 without signing up. A free account unlocks the whole chapter, the tutor and a full book free every week.

Is the book complete?

Yes: the complete text, chapter by chapter, in English and Spanish.

* AI recreation. Not the author; it may contain errors.