Tao Te Ching: The Way That Remains

The Tao Te Ching is not a single text, but a compilation shaped over centuries. This translation brings to life its earliest known form-based entirely on the Guodian bamboo slips (c. 300 BCE) and the Mawangdui silk manuscripts (c. 200 BCE)-and presents it in accessible contemporary English. While these manuscripts have been translated in academic contexts, this edition offers a rare synthesis: a modern rendering that remains faithful to the original structure, order, and vocabulary of the oldest surviving sources.

In The Tao Te Ching: The Way That Remains, Dr. Erik Gray provides a clear and carefully grounded English translation drawn exclusively from these pre-Imperial Chinese texts. Discovered in tombs at Guodian (Hubei province) and Mawangdui (Hunan province), these manuscripts predate the received version of the Tao Te Ching by several centuries and reflect an earlier stage in the development of Daoist philosophy.

This edition avoids later Han-era redactions and instead foregrounds the earliest expressions of the Tao as preserved in material evidence. Dr. Gray supplements the translation with commentary on textual variants, conceptual evolution, and the intellectual context of early Daoist thought. The result is a resource for scholars, students, and general readers seeking a historically anchored understanding of one of the world's most enduring philosophical texts.