Jane English, born 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, is a photographer, artist, and author who holds a doctorate in particle physics and is also a licensed hot-air balloon pilot and amateur radio emergency communications volunteer. She has lived in California and Colorado, and currently resides in Vermont.
She is best known as co-creator of bestselling translations of the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi Inner Chapters, featuring her photography and design accompanying translation and calligraphy by Gia-Fu Feng, in the books Lao Tsu / Tao Te Ching, first published in 1972, and Chuang Tsu / Inner Chapters, first published in 1974, which she republished in several editions including gender-neutral versions in 2011 and 2014.
English has continued to create and publish books, wall calendars, notecards, art and more, exploring nature and consciousness through Eastern and indigenous thought, art, and traditions. Chungliang Al Huang has collaborated with her on several projects.
Early life Jane English was born in 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in a small New England town, in a colonial house built in 1765. Her grandfather was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her father was an electrical engineer, and her mother was a homemaker and avid gardener. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Mount Holyoke College in 1964, and began pursuing photography while at the graduate school of the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she completed a Ph.D. in particle physics in 1970.
In photography she followed in the footsteps of her grandfather, Walter H. James (1873-1965), her grandmother Ida Rachel Butterfield James (1875-1966), and her great-aunt Lucy Ardena Butterfield (1871-1955). Their black-and-white photographs of New England towns, landscapes, and farm scenes were on the walls of her childhood home. Their negatives are now in the collection of the University of New Hampshire library, and with her brother Ben English, Jr., she edited a two-volume collection of their photos and journals, Our Mountain Trips, Part 1: 1899–1908, published in 2005, and Our Mountain Trips, Part 2: 1909–1926, published in 2007.
In graduate school a boyfriend introduced her to darkroom techniques at the student union, and together they exhibited their photographs and sold prints at art shows. She chose to work in black-and-white images for many years. She later wrote that photography was a welcome alternative to her experiences in graduate physics departments and laboratories, where she was the only woman at the time. While in graduate school she also explored the works of Alan Watts and did an encounter group weekend, and sought answers to her questions about quantum physics and consciousness.
After completing her Ph.D. in 1970, she accepted a six-month postdoctoral appointment with the University of Wisconsin, working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory particle accelerator at the suggestion of a supportive professor who believed the Berkeley area was the right place to explore other paths. Six months later she declined an offer from Rutgers University for another postdoctoral position, preferring to stay in California and leave physics to focus on photography and further explore alternatives at the Stillpoint intentional community.
Stillpoint While working at Lawrence Lab she had been invited by her housemate and "landlady" to visit "a meditation place in Los Gatos". That turned out to be Stillpoint, an intentional community in the Santa Cruz Mountains where she met Gia-Fu Feng. Feng founded Stillpoint in 1966 as an unconventional Taoist meditation center and clothing-optional commune, where he led personal growth and community planning sessions using techniques based on Gestalt therapy and encounter groups.
Originally from China, Feng was the first tai chi teacher at Esalen Institute, a friend of Alan Watts, and author of a book on tai chi and the I Ching. He was 23 years her senior but, as she later wrote, they immediately felt a special connection. During graduate school she had been through two live-in relationships with fellow physicists, in which she felt like "an anomaly: a colleague, yet also a part of the group of girlfriends and wives", but this would be something completely different.
Two months later, after turning down the Rutgers offer, she moved to Stillpoint with a plan to focus on her photography while also exploring all that Stillpoint had to offer. She set up a darkroom in the lower level under the deck of the main house. A relationship with Feng developed, and he enjoyed accompanying her on hikes as she photographed natural scenes. They began sharing a cabin, where she organized his chaotic paperwork which he very much appreciated. They also shared a sense of propriety and doing things right. Within the year they declared their bond in an informal outdoor ritual at Yosemite National Park, and were married by Alan Watts in an impromptu ceremony during a gathering at his home in Marin on Christmas Day 1970.
She became co-director of Stillpoint, and in January 1971 they also began their collaboration on the first of two bestselling books. Feng had decided to translate the Tao Te Ching by Laozi (Lao Tsu) for discussion at the Stillpoint daily meetings. There his drafts were contemplated and polished by Jane and other Stillpointers, for whom those sessions were much like an ongoing seminar in ancient Chinese philosophy, and it soon became clear this would be his next publication. That work continued as the community migrated from California to Vermont and then Colorado.
Lao Tsu and Chuang Tsu When asked why their Lao Tsu / Tao Te Ching became so successful, Jane English replied, "It's an illustrated version. The even more ancient language of the natural world balances the words."
By May of 1971 a core group of about 15 members of the Stillpoint community had moved to Calais, Vermont, where work continued on the Tao Te Ching. On a long hike that summer, English and Feng decided to include her black-and-white nature photographs and his calligraphy of the original Chinese text with each chapter of the translation. They agreed to combine the calligraphy and photos in the style of traditional Chinese paintings, something she had envisioned long before she met him. He wrote the calligraphy directly on her photos, while she did the page design and prepared a mock-up for presentation to publishers.
They completed the book by the fall of 1971, and stopped in New York to meet with publishers while on their way to the Stillpoint community's next destination in Colorado. By a twist of fate they were referred to editor Toinette Lippe at Alfred A. Knopf, who saw the potential of the book and was to become a longtime collaborator. Lippe threw herself into detailed polishing of the translation, working with Feng by mail, and carefully shepherded English's design through publication under the Vintage Books imprint. Meanwhile, as the Stillpointers wintered in Mineral Hot Springs, Colorado, English shot a roll of film in the nearby Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve from which she later selected twelve photos for their next book, a translation of the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tsu) Inner Chapters.
Lao Tsu / Tao Te Ching was published in 1972 and Chuang Tsu / Inner Chapters in 1974.. In New York the prominent Willard Gallery exhibited photos and calligraphy from the first book. The national Time magazine described it as "the Tao Te Ching gussied up with photographs", but as Lippe later wrote "until it was 'gussied up with photographs,' the Tao Te Ching had been around for 2,500 years and Time magazine hadn't bothered to review it." Indeed, another review suggested that "while the real Tao cannot be told, perhaps it can be photographed." When Chuang Tsu / Inner Chapters was released, a newspaper reviewer found the photographs "nothing short of superb – serene in composition and sensitively executed".
When they negotiated the contract for the first book, Feng initially wanted it to be under his name only, with her receiving just a one-time fee for use of the photos. She insisted on being compensated and credited equally. This was not an easy position for a woman to take at the time, especially given their difference in age and status, but eventually he agreed. She was right to hold her ground, as over one million copies of Lao Tsu / Tao Te Ching would be sold as of the 25th anniversary edition, making it the bestselling translation of that book, and Chuang Tsu / Inner Chapters would also become the bestselling translation of that book, selling more than 150,000 copies as of the release of the 35th anniversary edition.
Traveling teachers "The farther you go, the less you know" - Lao Tsu / Tao Te Ching
Later in 1972 the Stillpoint group settled in Manitou Springs near the foot of Pike's Peak, renting until 1973 when English and Feng used their royalty advance as part of a downpayment on a large house there. The community grew and thrived in and around that home until 1977, when it moved to a bucolic rural area near Wetmore, Colorado.
The popularity of their books resulted in many opportunities for English and Feng. They were invited to Thomas Jefferson College in Michigan for the spring 1973 semester, and to Colorado College for two semesters in fall 1973 and spring 1974, where English taught popular courses on Chinese philosophy and modern physics, with Feng as guest lecturer. He also taught tai chi at Thomas Jefferson, and they led tai chi classes together at Colorado College.
Feng began leading workshops and longer retreats called "Tai Chi Camps" organized by his students around the United States, where he taught tai chi, qigong, acupressure, Chinese healing, Chinese calligraphy, and I Ching, and led group therapy sessions, often with assistance from English. Invitations from overseas multiplied as the books were translated into other languages, leading to camps in several European countries plus Australia and New Zealand. English joined Feng for part of his first trip to Europe in 1974, where they led workshops in France, Scotland, and England.
On the way there English stopped in London to meet with their British publisher, Oliver Caldecott of Wildwood House, who asked her to join him in meeting with fellow physicist Fritjof Capra and to help evaluate Capra's manuscript of The Tao of Physics, which had been turned down by twelve other publishers. English found that Capra was writing about issues that had puzzled her in graduate school and that she had explored while teaching courses on physics and Chinese philosophy, and strongly encouraged Caldecott to publish the book. It was a success, was picked up by Shambhala Publications in the United States, and went on to achieve worldwide acclaim.
Esalen, Fysiks, and other quests Esalen and Green Gulch Farm In the summer of 1974 Feng and English were invited to visit friends and teach for a month at Esalen Institute. At the end of that month they separated due to ongoing tensions between them, and Feng returned to Stillpoint alone. Under state common law they remained legally married. In 2020 when an interviewer asked about her "ex-husband", English explained the correct term since Feng's death in 1985 was in fact "late husband".
English stayed on at Esalen for almost a year, training in Gestalt therapy with Dick Price and tai chi with Chungliang Al Huang, as well as Rolfing, chanting, dreamwork, guided imagery, and "various other body/mind/spirit practices". She described it as moving on "from experimental physics to experiential study of consciousness". That same year she was also invited to speak as a physicist on the topic of "energy" at a UC Santa Cruz conference. She took it as an opportunity to look at the roots of the concept and realized "it was just that, a concept, albeit a useful concept."