Deborah Hart Yemm writes:

Stephen Mitchell and Byron Katie are a married couple.  Byron Katie uses snippets of verse from Stephen Mitchell's translation to illuminate her essays on each verse's topic.  Byron Katie's essays have been one of my more favorite aspects of studying the Tao Te Ching.

I'm not positive which book I had first but I suspect it was Stephen Mitchell's because I believe without looking it up that Dr Wayne Dyer used that book as one of his own 10 resources.  It may be the Byron Katie's book was being publicized about that same time; and so, I ordered it.  I was already familiar with her The Work by that time.

Stephen Mitchell's book is titled "tao te ching" - "A NEW ENGLISH VERSION".  At the back of his book is a Q & A conversation with him about it.  I'll share a few snippets with you.  He wrote his book between 1986-1987 and he says at that time, he had 7 yrs of heavy-duty Zen training behind him and another 6 or 7 yrs of informal practice.  He was actually married to a different women at that time, Vicki Chang, to whom he dedicates his book and he was "working" on an aversion to money.  Vicki had pointed out to him at that time, that an aversion to money is the flip side of greed (the same desire from a different direction).

During one particular period of 100 days of meditation between midnight and 3am (then normal life otherwise), the Yoda character from Star Wars came as a vivid manifestation.  3 times that happened.  Once the 100 days were over, he knew he would write a version of the Tao.  He thought he would title it "The Book of Force" and it would have notes by Yoda.  However, about half-way through the book George Lucas informed him that he did not want his character associated with any particular spiritual tradition.  At that point, he switched gears and used Tao instead of Force and Yoda's notes became his own and took on more of a Zen flavor.

Stephen Mitchell admits that he doesn't know a word of Chinese, yet he asserts that translation is simply the art of stepping out of the way with a certain transparence.  One wonders if it is a kind of channeling to him.  He admits to feeling an "umbilical connection" to Lao-tzu as he had actually discovered the Tao Te Ching BEFORE beginning Zen training (1973).  It took him 4 months to write his version of the Tao.  He describes the book he has written as the one that he always wanted to read.  He would go into a very still place, and the right words would arise by themselves.  He notes that by 1986, there were actually 102 translations of the Tao Te Ching into English alone.

What Mitchell tried to do with his own version was make the words more poetically sparkle.  He describes the language as having some of the dignity of formal verse, along with the spontaneity of colloquial English.  He notes that many translators are scholars or linguists but not clearly practitioners of the Tao.  He disagreed with the prevalence of "he" in translations and then learned that third-person singular pronouns in Chinese are gender-neutral.  He personally feels that of all the great spiritual texts, the Tao Te Ching is by far the most female, not only in spirit but also in language (deb's note - maybe that is why it so deeply appeals to me).  So, in his translation, he alternated between he and she from chapter (verse) to chapter (verse).

So, anyway, Mitchell admits that he is not really translating with his version and sometimes taking his own intuitive leap into the meaning that feels more "correct" to him personally.  That is why "translation" is not in his subtitle but "version".  He says that while he was often quite literal, he also paraphrased, expanded, contracted, interpreted, and did whatever it took to create a language that sounded "genuine" to his own inner ear.

"A Thousand Names For Joy" - "Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are" by Byron Katie (with Stephen Mitchell).  Her husband writes the Preface to her book.  He describes the essays as Bryon Katie's "response" to the Tao Te Ching.  He gives a bit of Byron Katie's well known experience with depression (and she elaborates on that in her essays as well).  He says "Katie doesn't know much about spiritual classics; in fact, before we met, she had never even heard of the Tao Te Ching."  He says, from Katie's point of view, Lao-tzu is a colleague.

Mitchell describes that when he met Bryon Katie he found in her a kind of transparence emanating from her openness of heart and her wisdom.  She knew nothing about Buddhism or Taoism or any other spiritual tradition for that matter.  He says wonderful insights would just pop out of her mouth, without any awareness on her part, that anyone (in a sutra or the Upanishad) had ever said something similar before.  So he began to read to her, from the great spiritual teachers (Lao-tzu, the Buddha, the Zen masters, Spinoza, etc).  He humorously shares that Katie would call these Stephen's "dead friends".

Often Katie would agree with what he read to her and sometimes, she would say "That's true, as far as it goes, but it's a little 'off'." and tell him how she'd say it.  Eventually, of course, he read to her his version of the Tao Te Ching and wrote down her responses.  These became the raw material for her book.  Along the way, sometimes he would ask her to refine or expand upon something.  And he admits that sometimes she seemed to have no reference for a question he'd ask and he felt like he was asking a fish what it's like to live in water.  She was delighted to learn the meaning of Tao "The Way" but balked when he described it as "ultimate reality".  She said "I don't understand concepts like 'ultimate'.  For me, reality is simple.  There's nothing behind it or above it, and it holds no secrets. ... When you argue with it, you lose."

In Katie's perspective, "...once your mind becomes clear, life begins to live itself through you, effortlessly, with the joy and kindness that Lao-tzu points us toward.  Though reality itself is unnamable, Katie says, there are a thousand names for joy, because nothing is separate, and joy, deep down, is what we all are."  He tells us that Katie's book is much more than another commentary on the Tao Te Ching.  It is a glimpse into the depths of being, and into the life of a woman who for twenty years had been living what Lao-tzu wrote".  He says that "The profound, lighthearted wisdom that it embodies is not theoretical; it is absolutely authentic."  I suppose that is why I appreciate Katie's perspective as I study each verse of the Tao.

Deborah Hart Yemm wites:

Sharing Jeanne Marie's video here as well, since Stephen Mitchell is one of the authors we study here.

Deborah Hart Yemm writes on August 31, 2015 at 9:04am

It was a shock for me to see that Dr Wayne Dyer passed away on Sat, Aug 29th, 2015.

I really didn't follow him closely as a "teacher" but he was my first stepping stone into the Tao Te Ching and became the foundational book for the study guide here.

I was shocked by his passing partly because at the end of July, I received a "personal" mass mailing purportedly from him (of course, I knew it wasn't THAT personal) inviting me to Celebrate Your Life in early November in Phoenix AZ where he was expected to be the General Session Keynote Lecturer to begin the Saturday workshops.  Certainly this must have them in a bit of a tizzy.  Though I note that their mother passed away only weeks before the June 2009 conference in Chicago that I attended and the daughters therefore had the most wonderful support for their early grieving in all those spiritualized persons presenting there.  The mother's energy was definitely strong throughout the conference that year.  So I'm certain having that experience under their belts the sisters will find their way through this one but the loss is bound to feel quite personal to them. 

In a video posted at the Mishka Productions Celebrate Your Life page, Dyer notes he has been doing Celebrate Your Life conferences in Arizona for 8 years, reaching back into the days when Ariel (the mom of the daughters who continue the business) was still involved.

It is said that Dyer was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012.  I heard Dyer also not too long ago in the Hay House World Summit recordings.  I know that he had overcome adversity in his early life. 

Dyer was featured on the cover of the Science of Mind magazine in July 2014 with the publication of his book "I Can See Clearly Now".  It was a departure from his usual "self-help" books.  He described it as a retrospective on what he considers the "turning points" of his own life upon a spiritual path.

Dyer felt that he was following a "blueprint" - a clear guideline as to what he was here on the planet to do.  He describes his own life purpose as being to "teach self-reliance and a positive loving approach to large numbers of people all over the globe".

His view on personal expression was described this way - "At the same moment that you're a protagonist in your own life and you're making choices, you're also the Spirit carrier or the extra in a much larger drama".

Dyer's advice when struggling to find clear direction in times of challenge is simple: Stop struggling !

"You know that the hills and valleys in our life are all part of what it takes to fulfill whatever dharma that we signed up for.  It's basically a question of alignment.  Whenever I find myself in one of those places of being confused or not knowing quite what it's all about, those are generally moments in which I am denying what is taking place or wishing that something else were happening.  Or I'm in a state of frustration over this valley that has now just shown up when I thought I was just going to stay on the hill for the rest of my life.  Those are the waves that make up life, they have an apex and they have a nadir."

There was also this in that article - Dyer calls "the downness" a key part of our journey.  He identifies 3 ways to reach enlightenment - [1] Through suffering, [2] Through being in the moment and [3] Through intuition.

I know of Dyer that he was a very giving person and very generous.  He was always giving away books to people.  Dyer’s attitude on life seems to mirror my own – he says of his daily routine . . .  “The first thing that I do when I wake up in the morning is say, ‘Thank you; thank you for this day.’  Then, my question is, ‘How may I serve ?  Who can I help today ?’  As you live from that perspective, you realize you are globally making a difference and you are individually making a difference, and that all of us are here just to love and stay aligned with our source of being.”

RIP Dr Wayne Dyer.  He was 75 at the time of his passing.