The Tao Te Ching is surely the most terse and economical of the world's great religious texts. In a series of short, profound chapters, it elucidates the idea of the Tao, or the Way--an idea that in its ethical, practical and spiritual dimensions has become essential to the life of China's enormously powerful civilization. In the process of this elucidation, its author Laotzu both clarifies and deepens those central religious mysteries around which our life on earth revolves.