Journey to the East

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This review is from: Journey to the East (Paperback)

I have read the Vietnamese version (Hanh Trinh Ve Phuong Dong) several times and, being able to read English as well, I always want to have a copy of the original English version of Baird Spalding, but despite my intensive search during the last 20 years, I could not find one. It is really a dream comes true for me to have a copy of " Journey to the East ", re-translated by Bien Giang and Poven Leace. I congratulate them for an extremely difficult task. There are so many Vietnamese words and expressions in sino-Vietnamese which are very difficult to understand even for Vietnamese, yet they manage to find the English equivalents. In fact there are difficult expressions such as "Dong thanh tuong ung, dong khi tuong cau" which I didn't understand until I read "Great minds think alike or birds of a feather flock together". Besides the great spiritual value, the translation is written with an English style which is so close and so true to the original Vietnamese text that I can use "Journey to the East" as a textbook to learn English by comparing it with the Vietnamese version. The greatest advantage of this English version is that it enables non-Vietnamese speakers to read and absorb the wonderful philosophy of the original author, be it Nguyen Phong or Spalding. I have read some controversy on this matter but to me, it is not important who wrote it so long as it is good in helping people follow or return to the right path to live a good and peaceful life.
In the present world where most people run after wealth and materials, books of high spiritual values like " Journey to the East " should be translated into many languages and disseminated around the world.