According to legend, Lao Tzu left China at the age of eighty, saddened that men would not follow the path to natural goodness. At the border with Tibet, a guard asked him to record his teachings and the Tao Te Ching is what he wrote down before leaving. Lao Tzu's spirituality describes the cosmos as a harmonious and generative organism, and it shows how humans are an integral part of that cosmos.

David Hintons superb translation is inviting and immensely readable.