Laozi

Laozi, the Old Master, is by tradition an older contemporary of Confucius who kept the archives of Zhou and, leaving China in disgust through the western pass, wrote down his teaching at the gatekeeper’s request; he may not have existed, and the Tao Te Ching attributed to him took shape between the sixth and third centuries BCE. Its eighty-one short chapters teach the Way that cannot be spoken, the virtue of yielding, water and the uncarved block, and the ruler who governs by doing nothing. It is the founding text of Taoism, the most translated book after the Bible, and the lists read it beside the Analects as its opposite.