Daodejing

Eighty-one short verses, the most translated book after the Bible. It teaches by water and emptiness: the yielding wears down the hard; the wheel is useful for the hole at its hub; the way to act is not to force, and the way home is to return to the uncarved simplicity you began in.

The root text of the whole tradition — philosophy, religion and alchemy all read themselves back into it.