At last, English-language readers can experience the most influential book of Taoist tradition the way Chinese readers have for centuries. Richard John Lynn's translation includes the essential commentary of the third-century scholar Wang Bi, whose interpretations of this classic helped to define it as a philosophy of life and one of the most significant works in the East Asian tradition. The text consists of eighty-one short, aphoristic sections presenting a complete view of how the sage rules in accordance with the spontaneous ways of the natural world.