chuangzu

I know Deng Ming Dao has written some fantastic books, and I read them all when I was younger; however, he is not a Taoist, he is a Buddhist, so I treat what he says about Taoism with reserve. I agree there's really no way we can tell at the moment exactly who will have the best take on the Tao Te Ching. Personally, I favour the Hendricks translation of the Guodian Chu slips. I think the more recent translations even the Mawangdui exhibit marked sections which differ in style and content and are more formulaic and aphoristic, less Taoist and more religious or even Buddhist, they may have been transcribed or rewritten but not original copies. I think the Guodian Chu Slips is probably close to an original until we find the next dug up in a tomb version from closer to the date. I dont think lineage is a Taoist concept so there's really no such thing as a lineage Taoist but in my own expereince people who live according to Taoist principles have practical feedback and experience about the Tao straight from the source, and anyone who has tried this will testify to it, and so they are probably likely to be the most trusted sources over academics and other armchair Taoists.

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I agree there are many problems with modern translations of the Tao Te Ching, one being the lack of punctuation found in ancient copies. Ironically, you have chosen the very chapter that appears to focus on writing or speaking about the Tao. However, in my humble opinion, we need to look at this factor also in the context of other issues to gain perspective. Can you read Shakespeare? Probably, it's only a few hundred years ago. Chaucer, fourteenth century ie six hundred or so years ago, now it's starting to get problematic. Beowulf, a thousand years back, is where most educated people will have to draw the line. Now, the Tao Te Ching was written over a thousand years before this, more than double the time span. There are no original copies available. The type of language is completely different to our modern English language, which is phonetic; this was closer to hieroglyphics, a pictographic language. In the oldest known version we have available, hidden in a tomb in 300 BC, there is no 'chapter one'. I am guessing chapter one is a kind of caveat or editor's preface added later on and saying, "Don't believe everything you read."