Tao Te Ching, 道德經, is directly translated as "The Book of Virtues" or "The Scripture of Virtues". There are many misleading and false facts about what this book talks about. The most commonly seen translated versions are all vague, abstract, and it is not even talking about what the book is supposed to be talking about.

Tao Te Ching, as it is, is a book of virtues and the whole book is about virtues. It's not a "Book of Tao" or "Book of Taoism". The book basically talks about virtues of human, how to reach, how to learn, how to teach, how to cultivate and how to possess virtues. Virtues is not an easy topic and it is very heavily treasured by Chinese in the ancient China and that is why Tao Te Ching was treasured. It was not even a philosophy, it is a theory, or a guide book to virtues. If what you read before talks about "The Great Tao", you already got fooled by the falsely translated versions.

We teach the genuine Taoism in Tin Yat Lineage, and Tao Te Ching is one of the most common thing in the world now that people relate with Taoism and so we reveal the truth and facts of the book to our students. If you are willing to learn about the real facts about Tao Te Ching, we are more than happy to teach it to our ordained Taoist. Tin Yat Lineage possess the genuine and real Tao Te Ching because we are a true Taoism lineage with the wisdom and great Chinese knowledge background that allow us to understand the truth of the language.

Truth and Real History of Tao Te Ching

Let's put aisde our Tin Yat Lineage's exclusive findings and translations for now, maybe it is too overwhelm for you to accept the truth in the first page. Let's talk about some historical facts of Tao Te Ching. Do you know how it started?

Lao Tze 老子, born in 571 BC lunar Feburary 15th. His first name is "Yi 耳" and the last name is "Lee 李". Lao Tze is not his name, it is only what people called him. Lao "老" means old or elder and Tze "子" is just like a way to address to respected ones in the past like how we say Mister. So he is respected and people called him Mr. Elder.

The reason why he was called Mr. Elder was because he was born with white hair just like an elder and so people just call him that way. Chinese respect the elders in the past and so by calling him this name is not just a nickname but a name to show respect and honor as well.

Lao Tze worked as a librarian and he likes to read and write. Therefore during his leisure time, he wrote something for a friend "Wun Hei 尹喜".

Wun Hei worked for the king "Choh Hong Wong" 楚康王 of the Chow Dynasty 559 - 545 BC. He worked as an advicer for the king and he is heavily into the astronomy study, predictions and so on. After a while working under the king, the society went into Chaos and he was forced to leave his job and he even changed is his name to "Kwan Wun 關尹" and cultivates his own path, worked as the gatekeeper in another city. One day he sensed someone wise will come and so later Lao Tse rode an ox and arrived at the gate. They talked and exchanged ideas. Lao Tse later gave Wun Hei the pile of notes he compiled in the past and that is the draft of Tao Te Ching.

Don't forget that Wun Hei moved and change the job as a gatekeeper because the society was in chaos with lots of crimes and wars, therefore, he fall in love with the piece of "Book of Virtues" that Lao Tse gave him. He later handed over the pile of notes to the king of Chow Dynasty as an advice for him to resolve the situation with what's going on in the chaotic city. People basically lack the education of virtues and that is the main cause of crimes and civil wars. So the king organized the notes and published the masterpiece. The real Tao Te Ching was then born from the King's hand. The book later went very popular because it was distributed by the king, which is equivalent to our government today. Think about it, if the government want to put something into the education system, it will for sure be well known very fast. If you have something you want to let people know and learn, even it is a very good piece of knowledge, it will not be as well known as the Tao Te Ching because you do not have the hands of authority to make it popular. Without power, authority and marketing strategy, nothing can become popular.

Most people who study the history do not think logically and realistically. They think that the world is so ideal that when something is good then it will get popular. No, that's not how it works. Even in today's modern society, many genius and talented people are not well known because they are not marketed or promoted with the authority and power. Many bad ideas, crooked ideas or even false information can be popular and well known just because they have the money and authority in the society to do the job and market it out. That's how it was before too.

Where does the false Tao Te Ching starts?

During the East Han Dynasty, the religion of Taoism was officially formed by the first celestial master on planet earth Jeung Dao Ling (34-156 AD). He just looked heavy on virtues because in order to possess the real magic and magical power of Taoism, you must have strong virtues or else you will be doing bad things with it and create problems for the society. This is the same for Tin Yat Lineage too. So we must train our students to have strong and good virtues at all time as well.

Jeung Dao Ling established his temple and officially named the religion of Taoism. His foundation program was build with the textbook of Tao Te Ching, which was one of the popular books back then that talks about virtues. It make a lot of sense to have this book in the system, but then it is not what Taoism is about. It is only a book that teach the Taoist virtues so that their Taosim cultivation can go smoother, better and cleaner. That's all it is about. So the fact is, Tao Te Ching is not about Taoism, it is just about virtues.

The false translation of the book started very shortly after the lineage of Jeung Dao Ling dies out on the hands of their 4th generation because of corruption and they started to do many evil deeds because of policitical reasons. Therefore, virtues was lost and people use the book of Tao Te Ching as a "Book of Tao" instead. During that time, many sects arise and many scholars started to use the book as the "Book of Tao" or "Book of Taoism", twisting the facts and truth of the book. Later on, many sects were influenced by the different kings and queens of China. The crooked ones forced them to blend or convert to Buddhism or some other religion instead. So only the crooked one who agreed to work with the corruptment will survive till today. Quan Zhen Sect is one of the lineage that say they blend Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism into one. It is not pure Taoism anymore. The scary thing is, they are the one who promoted the Tao Te Ching so much as "The Book of Tao" and that is what most western scholars read now and do translations of it too!

The truth of Tao Te Ching was seldom known or heard. People later even got into new age and started to do more rediculous translation and brianwash the public with the vague, abstract and flase translation of the book. This is non-sense and ridiculous, but it got famous and well known in the west.

We Tin Yat Lineage do not tolerate our students to be washed by these false translation and so we offer the teaching of the genuine meaning of the book to all students now. We cannot stand our genuine Taoist students to not understand how important it is to know the truth of Tao Te Ching and not be misleaded by the false translations.

Tao Te Ching is "The Book of Virtues" and it is ONLY about virtues, not Taoism.

We are in Canada!