Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tze, Reading 1

Boring Books for Bedtime Readings to Help You Sleep

Sharon Handy

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2019

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we fulfill a listener request, and relax to one of the world's earliest and most influential philosophical texts, the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tze. If you stay awake long enough, perhaps you'll figure out what it all means, but don't hurt yourself.

Music: "Exit Exit" by PCIII (freemusicarchive.org), licensed under CC BY

All Boring Books readings are taken from works in the public domain. If you'd like to suggest a copyright-free reading, catch us on Twitter @boringbookspod or on our Patreon at www.patreon.com/boringbookspod, where you can also kindly support this podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once. So lie back,
0:17.5	adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath and off we go.
0:25.0	This evening we're reading a classic of philosophy,
0:30.0	The Tao de Jing, or the Tao and its characteristics by Lausu, translated by James Legge.
0:40.3	Let's begin.
0:43.0	Part 1, the Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao.
0:50.0	The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
0:56.0	Conceived of as having no name, it is the originator of heaven and earth.
1:02.0	Conceived of as having a name, it is the mother of all things.
1:08.2	Always without desire we must be found. If its deep mystery we would sound. But if desire always within us be,
1:19.8	its outer fringe is all that we shall see. Under these two aspects, it is really the same, but as
1:29.4	development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the mystery.
1:38.0	Where the mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful. All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have the idea of what ugliness is. They all know the skill of the skillful, and in doing this they
1:58.6	have the idea of what the want of skill is. So it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to the
2:08.5	idea of the other, that difficulty and ease produce the one, the idea of the other, that length and
2:18.1	shortness fashion out the one, the figure of the other, that the ideas of height and lowness arise from the contrast
2:28.3	of the one with the other, that the musical notes and tones become harmonious through their relation of one with another,
2:37.0	and that being before and behind give the idea of one following another.
2:45.0	Therefore, the sage manages affairs without doing anything
2:50.0	and conveys his instructions without the use of speech.
2:55.0	All things spring up, and there is not one which declines to show itself.
3:01.0	They grow, and there is no claim made for their ownership. They go through
	...

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