Cultivating Stillness

A friend of a friend recommended this updated translation and commentary on an old Taoist text several years ago.  Since it was on the shelf and I've been on a Taoism kick, I finally got around to trying it out.  I didn't read the whole works because it quickly became clear that I didn't have the background to understand it.  Everything useful (to me) was contained in the translator's introduction.  The book is composed of an original text attributed to Lao Tzu (though probably written a few hundred years after this already semi-legendary figure's death) and an accompanying commentary written some thousand years later by another Taoist sage.  The original text is cut from the same vaguely suggestive poetic cloth as the Tao te ching.  Actually, it's probably not even as clear as the classic.  As a result the commentary is ridiculous from a literary perspective.  There simply isn't enough information in every 3 lines of the original to adequately inform 5 pages of commentary.  It's clear that the later commentary is operating from within a fully developed Taoist system that he projects back on the original and pretends to elaborate from it.  The introduction provides a little bit of information about this system of "internal alchemy".  Whether fortunately or not, this is really just enough for the casual reader to see that the system is complicated and requires years of tutelage under a master to even begin to appreciate.  In essence, it's designed to be a meditation manual written in code to prevent it from falling into the hands of some dunce like myself.  And it worked.