A Sufi Commentary on the Tao Te Ching: The Way and Its Virtue
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Mohammad H. Faghfoory, Toshihiko Izutsu
This extraordinary book contains a full translation of the Tao Te Ching from Chinese, along with an extensive Sufi mystical commentary on each verse by the renowned scholar, Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who includes along with his own commentary, passages from the Diwan of Hafiz, Rumi’s Mathnawi, Sa’adi, Nizami, Farid Al-Din Attar, Shabastari, and Bayazid Bastami.
The Prophet, upon him be peace, said, “Seek knowledge, even unto China.”
In 1974, the oldest extant copy of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (6-4th century BCE) was unearthed at Xi’an along with the ceramic warriors guarding the tomb of the first Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang. In the 1970s, Professor Toshihiko Izutsu—the Japanese Islamicist, philosopher and linguist—collaborated in Tehran with Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr to translate this treasure into English. Dr. Nasr went on to put it into Persian adding a Sufi commentary which was recently published in Iran. This has now been translated into English with annotations by Mohammad H. Faghfoory.
The scholar recognized as the “Father of World Religions”, Huston Smith, refers to the Tao Te Ching as a “Testament to humanity’s at-home-ness in the universe, [which] can be read in half an hour or a lifetime….”
Imagine having a foundational world scripture like the Tao Te Ching explained by such a renowned Sufi scholar and internationally recognized spiritual authority as Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Passages whose subtleties are normally inaccessible to the Western mind become clear. Through Dr. Nasr’s insightful use of verses from such Persian luminaries as Rumi, Hafiz, and Attar, the reader is introduced to the “world” behind this world.
This book contains the first Sufi commentary, by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on a key non-Abrahamic sacred text (the foundational scripture of Taoism) that will be highly relevant to anyone interested in the spiritual universality shared by the world’s religions.
Dr. Nasr’s ability to present complex religious and spiritual concepts and terms in a simple and readable language makes this book an ideal textbook for any course on religions of the world, comparative religious studies, Sufism, or Taoism. In the recent years leading up to this publication, Dr. Nasr has been teaching this work at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Scholars in the fields of Islamic and Chinese studies, comparative religions, and Sufism will find that this volume expands their horizons. Lay readers will see it as enlightening; seekers of the truth will find it spiritually uplifting.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
The way of which one can speak as “way” is not the eternal Way (Tao)
The Name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth;
While the named is the mother of the Ten Thousand Things.
In the state of eternal Non-Being we see the invisible depth of the Tao;
While in the state of Being, we see the determinations of the Tao.
These two are originally the same;
But they are called differently as they reveal themselves.
In that particular dimension in which the two are the same, they are called mystery, the mystery of all mysteries,
the gateway of all subtle things.
In the first verse of this discourse, the transcendence of the Tao is emphasized, and it is established that anything that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. This is because by speaking of the Tao one has placed a delimitation (qayd) on that which is transcendent, infinite and beyond definition and description. Therefore, any name that we assign to It is not the eternal Name, because by giving a name to that Absolute Reality we in fact delimit It. In its supreme meaning, the Tao is the Divine Reality, which has no name nor description.
About the contributors:
Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu was a semi-legendary Chinese philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching, one of the foundational texts of Taoism, on which this new translation/commentary is based. Traditional accounts say he was born in the 6th-century BC state of Chu during China’s Spring and Autumn period (c. 770 – c. 481 BC). The Chinese text used for this translation was unearthed in Xi’an along with the famed ceramic warrior in 1974.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, is an international authority on Islamic philosophy, mysticism, art, and science as well as comparative religion and religion and ecology. He is the author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles and the subject of a number of books, edited collections, and articles. A small sample of his recent publications include The Garden of Truth: The vision and Promise of Sufism (2007), Islam’s Mystical Tradition (2007), Islam in the Modern World (2010), In Search of the Sacred (2010), and Metaphysical Penetrations (a translation of Mulla Sadra’s Kitab al-Masha’ir. (2014).
“The greatest honor the academic world grants to a living philosopher is the dedication of a volume of The Library of Living Philosophers to his work and thought; and the most prestigious recognition a thinker can receive in the field of natural theology is an invitation to deliver the annual Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. In the years 2000, the twenty-eighth volume of The Library of Living Philosophers was devoted to the philosophy of Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, placing him in the company of Einstein, Sartre, Russell, Whitehead, and other luminaries of twentieth-century intellectual life. Fourteen years previously, Dr. Nasr had delivered the Gifford Lectures, and the text of these lectures became his magnum opus, “Knowledge and the Sacred.”
Toshihiko Izutsu (Translator from the Chinese to English)
Toshihiko Izutsu (1914 –1993) was a Japanese scholar who specialized in Islamic studies and comparative religion. He took an interest in linguistics at a young age, and came to know more than thirty languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Hindustani, Russian, Greek, and Chinese. He is widely known for his translation of the Qurʾān into Japanese.
Mohammad H. Faghfoory (Translator from Persian to English)
Mohammad H. Faghfoory is professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University and the director of the MA Program in Islamic Studies. In addition to advising graduate students’ research and theses, he teaches courses on Qur’an and Hadith, Islamic Political Thought, Sufism, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Shi‘ite Islam, Islamic Art and Spirituality, Islam, and other related courses.
He received his Master’s degrees in history and Middle East studies from the University of Illinois, and a Master’s degree and a PhD in political science and Middle East studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has taught at the University of Tehran and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California-Los Angeles, Islamic Manuscripts Specialist at Princeton University, and at the Library of Congress, and adjunct professor of Middle East History at Mary-Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Dr. Faghfoory has written, translated, and edited twelve books, numerous book chapters, articles, and book reviews (see Publications section for details). He has lectured extensively in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, and participated in interfaith dialogue organized by American media.
Reviews
“Islam had been present in China for almost a thousand years before Muslim scholars, in the seventeenth century, began writing about their religion in Chinese. They used terminology drawn from “Neo-Confucianism,” which was the synthesis of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. They are known to have translated only four texts into Chinese, all of which were written in Persian by well-known Sufi teachers. Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
an internationally known philosopher deeply rooted in Persian Sufism, provides here a fluent new translation of the Daodejing with running Sufi commentary, demonstrating the deep kinship between Islamic and Chinese spirituality that is obvious to those familiar with both traditions.”
“This text and its Sufi commentary bring the reader into a meditative state of inner equilibrium; it brings on a state of stillness, even humility. It draws the reader back again and again to a sense of peace and a deeper understanding of Reality, approached simultaneously through the metaphysics of both East and West, to a recognition of shared eternal verities.
This book reads nearly like poetry – that evokes what cannot be put into words: e.g., “We and our beings are non-existent displaying existence. Thou art Absolute Being appearing in the guise of the perishable.”
“A Sufi Commentary on the Tao Te Ching, penned by the greatest living Muslim philosopher Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, enshrines nothing less than a fulfilment of the Prophetic command to “Seek knowledge, even in China.” We see in this work a first-rate exposition of traditional Chinese ontology, cosmology, and ethics through the lens of the commentator’s lifelong engagement with Sufi metaphysical prose and poetry and the traditions of the Far East. This book can also help reorient Islam’s dialogue with other religions, which is most often limited to hackneyed comparisons between Islam and Christianity. As Dr. Nasr shows so well, Taoism shares an unparalleled affinity with Islam, from its conception of nature to its understanding of Ultimate Reality. Most importantly, at a time when the world calls us in unprecedented fashion to the dissolution of our human nature, A Sufi Commentary on the Tao Te Ching invites us to rediscover ourselves through the aid of timeless wisdom. For, “When there is a storm outside, the sage goes inside and tends to his own garden.”
Modernity situates monotheism as oppositional to Taoism and other ancient revelations deemed Eastern or Indigenous. Professor Nasr undoes the dichotomy in his Persian Sufi Commentary on the Tao Te Ching. Born of his lifetime of love, contemplation, and integration of Lao Tzu’s text and its many translations, Nasr offers the world a guide for recalling the irrepressible truths of the Unifying Tao, the primordial Reality flowing under, over, around, and within what we think of as real.
The ancient, endless and ineffable Truth of the Tao, as transmitted prophetically by Lao Tzu two thousand years ago, and as given to us anew by Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, actualizes even as it transcends consciousness. Packaged like the parables of Isa ibn Mariam, the Tao de Ching’s verses stun with simplicity to carry myriad meanings, from spiritual to ethical, social to political, ecological to cosmological. Weaving Persian Sufi significance into lucid English prose, Nasr crafts his commentary to show the Tao Te Ching’s universal relevance as a divine revelation.
On a certain level, this book is everything right now—needed everywhere in a world deluded by false power, violence, and vanity. Realigning ourselves back to the Tao through wuwei, non-action, releases ego and returns the Heart to its native Peace, the Peace deeper than self.
What a treasure for Fons Vitae to publish this veritable Font of life-giving, soul-freeing, and heart-saving wisdom.
A Sufi Commentary on the Tao Te Ching: The Way and Its Virtue
This extraordinary book contains a full translation of the Tao Te Ching from Chinese, along with an extensive Sufi mystical commentary on each verse by the renowned scholar, Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who includes along with his own commentary, passages from the Diwan of Hafiz, Rumi’s Mathnawi, Sa’adi, Nizami, Farid Al-Din Attar, Shabastari, and Bayazid Bastami.
The Prophet, upon him be peace, said, “Seek knowledge, even unto China.”
In 1974, the oldest extant copy of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (6-4th century BCE) was unearthed at Xi’an along with the ceramic warriors guarding the tomb of the first Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang. In the 1970s, Professor Toshihiko Izutsu—the Japanese Islamicist, philosopher and linguist—collaborated in Tehran with Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr to translate this treasure into English. Dr. Nasr went on to put it into Persian adding a Sufi commentary which was recently published in Iran. This has now been translated into English with annotations by Mohammad H. Faghfoory.
The scholar recognized as the “Father of World Religions”, Huston Smith, refers to the Tao Te Ching as a “Testament to humanity’s at-home-ness in the universe, [which] can be read in half an hour or a lifetime….”
Imagine having a foundational world scripture like the Tao Te Ching explained by such a renowned Sufi scholar and internationally recognized spiritual authority as Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Passages whose subtleties are normally inaccessible to the Western mind become clear. Through Dr. Nasr’s insightful use of verses from such Persian luminaries as Rumi, Hafiz, and Attar, the reader is introduced to the “world” behind this world.
Product Description
This book contains the first Sufi commentary, by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on a key non-Abrahamic sacred text (the foundational scripture of Taoism) that will be highly relevant to anyone interested in the spiritual universality shared by the world’s religions.
Dr. Nasr’s ability to present complex religious and spiritual concepts and terms in a simple and readable language makes this book an ideal textbook for any course on religions of the world, comparative religious studies, Sufism, or Taoism. In the recent years leading up to this publication, Dr. Nasr has been teaching this work at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Scholars in the fields of Islamic and Chinese studies, comparative religions, and Sufism will find that this volume expands their horizons. Lay readers will see it as enlightening; seekers of the truth will find it spiritually uplifting.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
The way of which one can speak as “way” is not the eternal Way (Tao)
The Name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth;
While the named is the mother of the Ten Thousand Things.
In the state of eternal Non-Being we see the invisible depth of the Tao;
While in the state of Being, we see the determinations of the Tao.
These two are originally the same;
But they are called differently as they reveal themselves.
In that particular dimension in which the two are the same, they are called mystery, the mystery of all mysteries,
the gateway of all subtle things.
In the first verse of this discourse, the transcendence of the Tao is emphasized, and it is established that anything that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. This is because by speaking of the Tao one has placed a delimitation (qayd) on that which is transcendent, infinite and beyond definition and description. Therefore, any name that we assign to It is not the eternal Name, because by giving a name to that Absolute Reality we in fact delimit It. In its supreme meaning, the Tao is the Divine Reality, which has no name nor description.
About the contributors:
Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu was a semi-legendary Chinese philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching, one of the foundational texts of Taoism, on which this new translation/commentary is based. Traditional accounts say he was born in the 6th-century BC state of Chu during China’s Spring and Autumn period (c. 770 – c. 481 BC). The Chinese text used for this translation was unearthed in Xi’an along with the famed ceramic warrior in 1974.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, is an international authority on Islamic philosophy, mysticism, art, and science as well as comparative religion and religion and ecology. He is the author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles and the subject of a number of books, edited collections, and articles. A small sample of his recent publications include The Garden of Truth: The vision and Promise of Sufism (2007), Islam’s Mystical Tradition (2007), Islam in the Modern World (2010), In Search of the Sacred (2010), and Metaphysical Penetrations (a translation of Mulla Sadra’s Kitab al-Masha’ir. (2014).
“The greatest honor the academic world grants to a living philosopher is the dedication of a volume of The Library of Living Philosophers to his work and thought; and the most prestigious recognition a thinker can receive in the field of natural theology is an invitation to deliver the annual Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. In the years 2000, the twenty-eighth volume of The Library of Living Philosophers was devoted to the philosophy of Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, placing him in the company of Einstein, Sartre, Russell, Whitehead, and other luminaries of twentieth-century intellectual life. Fourteen years previously, Dr. Nasr had delivered the Gifford Lectures, and the text of these lectures became his magnum opus, “Knowledge and the Sacred.”
Toshihiko Izutsu (Translator from the Chinese to English)
Toshihiko Izutsu (1914 –1993) was a Japanese scholar who specialized in Islamic studies and comparative religion. He took an interest in linguistics at a young age, and came to know more than thirty languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Hindustani, Russian, Greek, and Chinese. He is widely known for his translation of the Qurʾān into Japanese.
Mohammad H. Faghfoory (Translator from Persian to English)
Mohammad H. Faghfoory is professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University and the director of the MA Program in Islamic Studies. In addition to advising graduate students’ research and theses, he teaches courses on Qur’an and Hadith, Islamic Political Thought, Sufism, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Shi‘ite Islam, Islamic Art and Spirituality, Islam, and other related courses.
He received his Master’s degrees in history and Middle East studies from the University of Illinois, and a Master’s degree and a PhD in political science and Middle East studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has taught at the University of Tehran and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California-Los Angeles, Islamic Manuscripts Specialist at Princeton University, and at the Library of Congress, and adjunct professor of Middle East History at Mary-Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Dr. Faghfoory has written, translated, and edited twelve books, numerous book chapters, articles, and book reviews (see Publications section for details). He has lectured extensively in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, and participated in interfaith dialogue organized by American media.
Reviews
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