Personal Library -- Laozi

Author: (Spring and Autumn Period) Li Ping Cui Zhongping (editors and annotators)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-07-01
Features: The ancients said, "Travel ten thousand miles and read ten thousand books." For modern people, traveling ten thousand miles is easy, but reading ten thousand books is difficult. The wheels of technology are sweeping the world at an astonishing speed. The modern people, busy in front of computers and all kinds of machines all day, have turned the Earth into a village with wires, optical cables, tracks, or air routes. With a click of the mouse, we can paste ourselves anywhere in the world. However, facing the vast civilization, without the foundation of reading ten thousand books, we not only frequently encounter the awkwardness of "meeting face to face but not recognizing each other," but we also keep accumulating the strangeness that comes from the bottom of our hearts. For this reason, we yearn for a deeper understanding, yearn for a connection of the soul; we yearn for a return to a way of traveling—before traveling ten thousand miles, put a few books in our spiritual backpack so that our steps and souls can go further. A spiritual journey does not require "writing poems in youth and studying until the hair turns white," nor does it require hanging the head on the beam, breaking through the wall to steal light, or having a red sleeve add fragrance while never putting the book down. A spiritual journey only requires reading a few classics in the leisure of life. Novels, essays, and poems can all be made into soup for the soul; buses, subways, and even the palms of our hands can be our desks. Therefore, we have tailored a "pocket library" for busy urban dwellers. Classics are the soul of the library; easy to absorb is the essence of the library; reading anytime, anywhere, and with any mindset is the purpose of the library. The selected titles in the library are all the timeless classics that have been refined after exposing themselves to the storms of different civilizations; the illustrations, carefully selected and painstakingly collected from hundreds of rare books and private collections, are a true restoration of the essence of the classics. The small format design makes it as clever as a wallet; the special printing process makes every book "filled with the fragrance of osmanthus." Classics are not afraid of time, but life cannot withstand the erosion of "the passage of time is like this." The charm of classics is better seen than heard. It is better to use them to mend the gaps in our time, to add value to the fragments of our days; it is better to use on-the-go reading anytime, anywhere, to gather wisdom piece by piece and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least travel expenses, to reach the furthest distance of life.
The entire Laozi is in the form of aphorisms. The currently circulated edition is divided into two parts, the upper and lower, with eighty-one chapters, totaling over five thousand words. The text is well-structured, with a natural rhythm and a majestic, possessing a strong sense of reading and beauty, which some people consider as the poetic and aesthetic essence of pre-Qin poetry, a monumental work. When Laozi explains philosophy, he embeds abstract principles in concrete images, making his reasoning profound yet accessible. Laozi was one of the early philosophers in world civilization history with dialectical thinking. For example, the famous phrase "misfortune may befall where fortune lies, and fortune may be hidden where misfortune lies," though extremely simple in wording, contains profound truths. It warns us not to overworry about the gains and losses of the moment in life but to take a long-term perspective and face life optimistically. The story of "The Old Man at the Border Losing a Horse" is another version of this same principle. Reading Laozi seems to reduce the pursuit of material gains, immersing oneself in a clear and poetic realm, and experiencing a transcendent spiritual state. All of these are what the chaotic and noisy society of today lacks. You can choose to make your life busy, but you can also choose to be quiet at a certain moment and listen to the teachings of the wise from the depths of history.