The bestselling, widely acclaimed translation from Stephen Mitchell

Mitchell's rendition of the Tao Te Ching comes as close to being definitive for our time as any I can imagine. It embodies the virtues its translator credits to the Chinese original: a gemlike lucidity that is radiant with humor, grace, largeheartedness, and deep wisdom. -- Huston Smith, author of The Religions of Man

In eighty-one brief chapters, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao--the basic principle of the universe.

The Bhagavad Gita is universally acknowledged as one of the world's literary and spiritual masterpieces. It is the core text of the Hindu tradition and has been treasured by American writers from Emerson and Thoreau to T. S. Eliot, who called it the greatest philosophical poem after the Divine Comedy. There have been more than two hundred English translations of the Gita, including many competent literal versions, but not one of them is a superlative literary text in its own right.

Now all that has changed. Stephen Mitchell's Bhagavad Gita sings with the clarity, the vigor, and the intensity of the original Sanskrit. It will, as William Arrowsmith said of Mitchell's translation of The Sonnets to Orpheus, instantly make every other rendering obsolete.

Acclaimed by critics and scholars, Stephen Mitchell's version allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it is.

From Stephen Mitchell comes an anthology of poetry chosen from the world's great religious and literary traditions--the perfect companion to Mitchell's bestselling translation of Tao Te Ching

- The Upanishads - The Book of Psalms - Lao-tzu - The Bhagavad Gita - Chuang-tzu - The Odes of Solomon - Seng-ts'an - Han-shan - Li Po - Tu Fu - Layman P'ang - Kukai - Tung-shan - Symeon the New Theologian - Izumi Shikibu - Su Tung-p'o - Hildegard of Bingen - Francis of Assisi - Wu-men - Dõgen - Rumi - Mechthild of Magdeburg - Dante - Kabir Mirabai - William Shakespeare - George Herbert - Bunan - Gensei - Angelus Silesius - Thomas Traherne - Basho - William Blake - Ryõkan - Issa - Ghalib - Bibi Hayati - Wait Whitman - Emily Dickinson - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Uvavnuk - Anonymous Navaho - W. B. Yeats - Antonio Machado - Rainer Maria Rilke - Wallace Stevens - D.H. Lawrence - Robinson Jeffers

If Mr. Mitchell gives an eloquent account of the effects of Job's poetry in his introduction, in the translation itself he does even better: he makes those effects come alive. Writing with three insistent beats to the line, and hammering home a succession of boldly defined images, he achieves a rare degree of vehemence and concentration. -- John Cross, New York Times

The Book of Job pulses with moral energy, outrage, and spiritual insight; it is nothing less than human suffering and the transcendence of it.

Now, The Book of Job has been translated into English by the eminent translator and scholar Stephen Mitchell, whose versions of Rilke, Israeli poetry, and the Tao Te Ching have been widely praised. This is the first time ever that the Hebrew verse of Job has been translated into verse in any language, ancient or modern, and the result is a triumph.

A magnificent compilation of sacred writings from all traditions and the perfect companion to Stephen Mitchell's poetry collection, The Enlightened Heart, and the bestselling Tao Te Ching

A collection of prose--discourses, sermons, essays, and aphorisms--includes texts and authors such as the Hindu, Confucian, and Buddhist sciptures, Heraclitus and Plato, Chuang-tzu, Jesus, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Symeon the New Theologian, the Chinese Zen masters, and others.

The most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed the innovative The Second Book of the Tao. Drawn from the work of Lao-tzu's disciple Chuang- tzu and Confucius's grandson Tzu-ssu, The Second Book of the Tao collects the freshest, most profound teachings from these two great students of the Tao to offer Western readers a path into reality that has nothing to do with east or west, but everything to do with truth. With his own illuminating commentary alongside each adapta­tion, at once explicating and complementing the text, Mitchell makes the ancient teachings at once modern, relevant, and timeless.

Listen to a special podcast with Stephen Mitchell:

From the author of The Gospel According to Jesus comes a new adaptation of the psalms.

Leading biblical scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell translates fifty of the most powerful and popular bible psalms to create poems that recreate the music of the original Hebrew verse.

From Stephen Mitchell comes an interpretation of the Gospels that peels away the distortions regarding the character and teachings of Jesus that have accumulated over time

This translation of the life and teachings of Jesus creates an image of not only a great spiritual teacher, but of a real person. Eminent author and translator Stephen Mitchell's approach to the Gospels has been widely praised for its depth, clarity, and radiance. This is a stunning work for believers and non-believers alike.

I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth. -Anne Lamott

In The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced characters and a setting that reflects the culture of the time. Mitchell has suffused the birth of Jesus with a sense of beauty that will delight and astonish readers.

In this version, we see the world through the eyes of a Whitmanesque ox and a visionary donkey, starry-eyed shepherds and Zen-like wise men, each of them providing a unique perspective on a scene that is, in Western culture, the central symbol for good tidings of great joy. Rather than superimposing later Christian concepts onto the Annunciation and Nativity scenes, he imagines Mary and Joseph experiencing the angelic message as a young Jewish woman and man living in the year 4 bce might have experienced it, with terror, dismay, and ultimate acceptance. In this context, their yes becomes an act of great moral courage.

Readers of every background will be enchanted by this startlingly beautiful reimagining of the Christmas tale.

Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha statue, blows smoke in its face, and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do? This is a problem that Zen Master Seung Sahn is fond of posing to his American students who attend his Zen centers. Dropping Ashes on the Buddha is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny living record of the dialogue between Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and his American students. Consisting of dialogues, stories, formal Zen interviews, Dharma speeches, and letters using the Zen Master's actual words in spontaneous, living interaction with his students, this book is a fresh presentation of the Zen teaching method of instant dialogue between Master and student which, through the use of astonishment and paradox, leads to an understanding of ultimate reality.

The hardcover publication of the Odyssey received glowing reviews: The New York Times praised Mitchell's fresh, elegant diction and the care he lavishes on meter, [which] brought me closer to the transfigurative experience Keats describes on reading Chapman's Homer; Booklist, in a starred review, said that Mitchell retells the first, still greatest adventure story in Western literature with clarity, sweep, and force; and John Banville, author of The Sea, called this translation a masterpiece.

The Odyssey is the original hero's journey, an epic voyage into the unknown, and has inspired other creative work for millennia. With its consummately modern hero, full of guile and wit, always prepared to reinvent himself in order to realize his heart's desire--to return to his home and family after ten years of war--the Odyssey now speaks to us again across 2,600 years.

In words of great poetic power, this translation brings Odysseus and his adventures to life as never before. Stephen Mitchell's language keeps the diction close to spoken English, yet its rhythms recreate the oceanic surge of the ancient Greek. Full of imagination and light, beauty and humor, this Odyssey carries you along in a fast stream of action and imagery. Just as Mitchell re-energised the Iliad for a new generation (The Sunday Telegraph), his Odyssey is the noblest, clearest, and most captivating rendition of one of the defining masterpieces of Western literature.

Beowulf tells the story of a Scandinavian hero who defeats three evil creatures--a huge, cannibalistic ogre named Grendel, Grendel's monstrous mother, and a dragon--and then dies, mortally wounded during his last encounter. If the definition of a superhero is someone who uses his special powers to fight evil, then Beowulf is our first English superhero story, and arguably our best. It is also a deeply pious poem, so bold in its reverence for a virtuous pagan past that it teeters on the edge of heresy. From beginning to end, we feel we are in the hands of a master storyteller.

Stephen Mitchell's marvelously clear and vivid rendering re-creates the robust masculine music of the original. It both hews closely to the meaning of the Old English and captures its wild energy and vitality, not just as a deep work of literature but also as a rousing entertainment that can still stir our feelings and rivet our attention today, after more than a thousand years. This new translation--spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry--makes a masterpiece accessible to everyone.

A unique and special kind of masterpiece. --John Banville

In the tradition of The Alchemist--a fable about the soul's journey to hope, healing, and forgiveness

Now available in paperback

In The Way of Forgiveness, the distinguished writer and translator Stephen Mitchell provides a stirring account of the power and wisdom of forgiveness.

Based on the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers--a beautiful, brilliant, arrogant young man is sold into slavery but eventually rises to become viceroy of Egypt--The Way of Forgiveness is a riveting expansion, lush with vivid characters and a captivating sense of place. What's new here is the lyrical, witty, vivid prose, informed by a wisdom that brings fresh insight to this foundational legend of betrayal and all-embracing forgiveness.

Mitchell's retelling interweaves the narrative with brief meditations that, with their Zen surprises, expand and illuminate the main themes. The engrossing tale that he has created will capture the hearts and minds of modern readers and show them that this ancient story can still challenge, delight, and astonish.

The Way of Forgiveness is the paperback edition of Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness.

In his many years of teaching throughout the world, the Korean-born Zen Master Seung Sahn has become known for his ability to cut to the heart of Buddhist teaching in a way that is strikingly clear, yet free of esoteric and academic language. In this book, based largely on his talks, he presents the basic teachings of Buddhism and Zen in a way that is wonderfully accessible for beginners--yet so rich with stories, insights, and personal experiences that long-time meditation students will also find it a source of inspiration and a resource for study.

This study is based on fieldwork carried out during the 1990s in southwest Turkey in the modern vilayets of Burdur and Antalya, and it focuses on the settlements associated with a Roman mansio located in the D seme Bogazi, the pass that linked Pisidia with the coastal region of Pamphylia. The course of the road and the structures that emerged along it were defined not by the evolution of Pisidia's Hellenized indigenous culture but by the priorities of Roman rule, especially during late antiquity. Furthermore, the study of the road where the mansio was located raises fundamental questions about the role played by this mountain pass in the movement of people and animals between the lowlands and highlands of South-west Anatolia.