This is one of the rarest yet most accessible of the Chinese wisdom texts, and a companion to Tao Te Ching. Most likely written in the middle of the first millennium BCE, it survived through oral transmission. It takes the form of 81 dialogues between the sage Lao Tzu and an unnamed prince of China.
Lao Tzu, the legendary author of the Tao Te Ching, is also credited with the authorship of the Hua Hu Ching, which embodies some of his later teachings. During a time of political turmoil in the fourteenth century, all copies of this work were banned and ordered to be burned. Thus, few if any complete and accurate manuscripts exist today. Fortunately, the complete teachings of the Hua Hu Ching have been preserved through the oral transmission of generation after generation of Taoist masters to their disciples. In this book, Master Ni, heir to that orally transmitted wisdom, offers a superlative rendering of this reassured teaching.