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.

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“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.” Sachiko Murata, Japanese scholar of comparative philosophy and mysticism and Professor of Religion and Asian studies at Stony Brook University, author of The First Islamic Classic in Chinese, and The Tao of Islam - William Chittick, author of The Self-Disclosure of God, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University

“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.” Virginia Gray Henry, Publisher, Fons Vitae

“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.” Mohammed Rustom, Professor of Islamic Thought and editor of A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy, Carleton University

"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." Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Provost Associate Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC

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