When we attended our first English Tao Seminar, Tao Transmitting Master told us the significance of making a Sacred Vow. While we all had experience with vows through our various spiritual upbringings in the United States, we gained a deeper respect for the richness and sincerity of the Vow in Tao practice. Having recently read the “Introduction to Tao,” and finding it left a lot to be desired, one of the English speakers at the seminar made the vow to translate some of the Tao texts from Chinese to English. 

As so often happens in Tao, two weeks after the Vow was made, the individual was contacted by a Tao Transmitting Master to do a translation of a sacred text. How unexpected! That text was “Holy Teacher Tian Ren 101 Sayings”. There had been three teams that had begun the work of translating this important text, and had chosen to stop due to many difficulties. This Tao Transmitting Master felt that this time, the translation project would be completed. A new team was selected and we were ready to go.

We had a marvelous team! Two members were born in the United States, and the remainder had been born in Taiwan and moved to the U.S. All had been disciplined from youth to single minded devotion and concentration to a task, which made the team function in harmony. We were aware of the honor and the sacredness of the work with which we were entrusted. Yet we also shared a sense of wonder and a certain quality of playfulness. This allowed us to balance the seriousness of the work with the joy of the work. We all laughed over the same things, even through the language differences. We laughed at word mispronunciations and funny phrases in each other’s languages. Yet underneath the laughter was deep joy and reverence. 

We approached every word with the intention to dig down to the root of the word, to get to the essence of what Holy Teacher was communicating. We invested hours attempting to capture the best English version of a Chinese character, finally coming to a consensus. The next day we would pick it up and would again discuss it for hours. To some, this would have been tedious and dreary. To us, however, it was exhilarating and uplifting, fulfilling and transforming.  We felt like “word archeologists”, sifting through layers of spiritual dust to finally enter the realms of Tao, coming into contact with the Divine moment by moment. 

None of us had ever experienced anything like this project. We opened our hearts into this translation, and into Tao cultivation. We are humbled and grateful for the opportunity we have been granted. We present this version as a stepping stone on the path, praying that others will come along after us to further clarify Holy Teacher’s guidance.