Category: Wéi 為

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#3 Fú 夫 Wéi 為 Wú 無 zhì 治

governing—regulating by harnessing the river named Happy or speaking of turning yourself—

zhì

Last time we were looking at what the traditional version of breeding does to our old friend, fū, this particular grown man:

breeding—like a gentleman holding a fountain pen making something happen—

that is to say, this particular grown man with a hairpin and public courtesy name…

“firing arrows from the mouth—sure” as the sun, daily…

—now this is cooking!—

the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal—but not really the true inner flower of

daring—lightly hitting ears on both sides of the head—

efforting—like lifting up an elephant…

—yes, that too, vagina!

efforting—like lifting up an elephant…

nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope, never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being

efforting—like lifting up an elephant;

We left off with that evocative “efforting… Not-Being efforting.” Here’s what comes next:

after following this sacrificial blade-and-cauldron-like ritual example, standard, or regulation…

nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope, never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being…

the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal but not really the true inner flower of

“governing—regulating by harnessing the river named Happy or speaking of turning yourself.”

What we learn here is that in following that example of the grown man who doesn’t really dare efforting… efforting Not-Being efforting, then Not Being… not really governing.

Lâozî used this same “governing” character zhì (治) earlier in the chapter when telling us about how the sage governs. There we learned that because breeding civilians a certain way had a certain effect, “the sage has this governing” which Lâozî described in some detail for us.

~

Remember, the zhì (治) character shows water or a river in its left sub-component. The right sub-component is a pictogram incorporating a mouth below a very mysterious element, 厶. I mentioned before that this element variously been identified as a plow turning, a fetus finishing in the womb, or an abstract symbol for being selfish, but I decided to look into it a little more today. Its bronze inscription glyph looked like this:

It’s such a classic and evocative symbol in all of the oldest cultures. What does it “mean?”

The oldest etymology of Chinese characters was compiled in the Shuowen Jiezi during the Han dynasty. From what I can tell, a lot of etymology still references this work, though more recent discoveries about the oldest oracle bone scripts seem to have really cast doubt on its conclusions. The Shuowen Jiezi’s description of this mysterious triangle said that “in olden times, when Cangjie invented the system of writing, a self-encircling element was designated as the character for ‘private.'” They compared it to the symbol for ‘public’ which was 公, and it is possible to see the connection when looking at the modern characters.

But this is a good example of how the Shuowen Jiezi’s descriptions were flawed since its author(s) didn’t have access to the oldest scripts. It turns out that the bronze inscription for the “public” character looked like this:

And the even older oracle bone script like this:

You can see there’s no triangle. But by the time of Shuowen Jiezi, the 厶 character had evolved to look like this:

Now you can see how the Shuowen Jiezi authors thought it was related to the character yî (以) which we investigated in a previous post. I translated it as already… finishing it in the womb based on its typical translations and the original pictogram which is said to be either a snake or a fetus as it came from this bronze inscription:

And this original oracle bone script:

But neither of those resemble the triangle that was the original symbol for the 厶 we see in our character zhì (治). We still don’t know what the triangle symbol originally meant, though I think we are safe in saying it’s not necessarily the opposite of “public.”

We might learn more about the triangle by looking at how it was combined with the pictogram of grain to make the character sī (私), which some people believe meant a person’s private grain field. It now means self, private, personal. In Classical Chinese it meant I, me. In later times it morphed into not only self but even selfish as well as illegal, secret, stealthy. Most recently it’s the word that means to Private Message or Direct Message someone on the internet!

I’m going into this detail not only because I find it interesting but so you and I can remember how tricky it is to go with the modern or even sort-of-old meanings for the old glyphs of Lâozî’s time. If you’ve been following along, you’ll note that my previous posts and definitions of terms were more influenced by newer meanings that they are now. The more time I spend with the glyphs, the more I don’t trust the modern definitions or even the Shuowen Jiezi. So I will now be going back and changing any translations where I used the “selfish” or “private” connotations for these characters discussed here.

MEANWHILE what does the triangle mean?!

Let’s look at the whole right sub-component of zhì (治). Here the triangle character (厶) sits atop a mouth. Here’s what those original glyphs might have looked like together:

This was the original character for the word happy but then evolved into talking about oneself or I/me. (When that happened, the character for happy became 怡. You can see that they just put a picture of a person in front of the original character. This is such an interesting and typical kind of evolution in the language.)

Combined with its left hand component which was the picture of a river, a glyph version of zhì (治) would have looked like this:

I think it’s still difficult to say what the triangle alone meant, but putting the pieces altogether, here’s my translation of zhì:

governing—regulating by harnessing the river named Happy or speaking of turning yourself—

*I love this image as a representation of governing. It revolves around one’s self in the best way: Harness the River Happy! Turn yourself somehow and speak of that! No wonder Lâozî used this character to describe a sage’s governing. My favorite leaders have in fact acted in just this way. How can I implement this in my life? How can you?*

~

Back to the end of Chapter 3 where we saw Not-Being… not really truly governing like the sage.

If Not-Being were the negative particle “not,” then we’d have a double negative here: not not-really governing. That would mean that after following the example described in the previous post, there is this kind of governing happening. That feels so dang convoluted. But maybe Lâozî does indeed use all the “nots” to emphasize that all this is such a receptive and non-grinding way of going about things.

On the other hand… what if Not-Being is actually a person with non-person status—a non-being? Then the text would mean: after following this example, the Not-Being isn’t really governing.

What’s the correct interpretation? Well there’s no way to know of course. Each translator and each tradition has its own idea. It’s tempting to simplify things so I can land on an answer, but I try to withhold making conclusions until I’ve read the whole Dào. And… we have quite a long way to go! I know it’s frustrating, but for me that’s balanced by the thought experiments, take-aways, curious puzzles, and tiny hints we find in each character, line, section, and chapter. I hope you’re finding some satisfaction too, as well as some of that disorientation that must be part of Lâozî’s plan.

Next time, I’ll prepare a summary of Chapter 3 that hopefully will clarify things without getting rigid. Until then, please use the contact form to let me know your feedback. I love the comments I get, and if you haven’t sent one yet, now is a good time to start. Thank you for that and for being here.

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#3 Fú 夫 Wéi 為 Wú 無

Efforting… Not-Being efforting

wéi wú wéi

Before I got side-tracked by interjections—oh my!— we were finishing up Chapter 3. We had been looking at: 1. what it means to “breed civilians” in certain ways, 2. how the sage governs, 3. the implications of the traditional version of breeding civilians for Not-Being, and, 4. lastly, we were just at the part where we were learning what that traditional version of breeding does to our old friend, fū, this particular grown man:

breeding—like a gentleman holding a fountain pen making something happen—

that is to say, this particular grown man with a hairpin and public courtesy name…

“firing arrows from the mouth—sure” as the sun, daily…

—now this is cooking!—

the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal—but not really the true inner flower of

daring—lightly hitting ears on both sides of the head—

efforting—like lifting up an elephant…

—yes, that too, vagina!

efforting—like lifting up an elephant…

nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope, never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being

efforting—like lifting up an elephant;

after following this sacrificial blade-and-cauldron-like ritual example, standard, or regulation…

nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope, never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being…

the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal but not really the true inner flower of

“governing—regulating by harnessing the river named Happy or speaking of turning yourself.”

Let’s parse this out.

  • We see that the traditional version of breeding civilians is breeding this particular man one way: very sure.
  • And this very sure grown man is not really daring “efforting.” He isn’t really being brave enough to get himself to do that grinding approach to things. Is this foreshadowing that our hero isn’t rising to the occasion?

Lâozî has talked to us about this efforting (wéi) approach before. We first examined this character here, at the beginning of Chapter 2. We saw that an “efforting” of any particular kind of quality resulted in “lopping off and defining” a rather opposite quality in something before that thing was even born.

And later in Chapter 2 we looked at it again here because Lâozî used the phrase “Not-Being efforting.” It could simply mean “not efforting.” I also did wonder if “Not-Being efforting” resulted in a lopping off and defining of Being before it was even fully developed and born. Now, considering the weird things we keep seeing about Not-Being and Being, I wonder if this phrase was talking about a person who has an outsider status. Maybe it’s describing someone who was considered a “non-being” and was doing some efforting! Well, bear with me and let’s see what happens here in Chapter 3 when Lâozî brings that Not-Being character back into a discussion of efforting.

  • “Efforting… Not-Being efforting.” That is one whole line. Just those three words, all by themselves. Wow—okay I’m taking a breath! What’s this mean?
    • Maybe it’s a short list of two opposites, like we saw in the list in Chapter 2. It could be saying: “ok, so we have efforting and we have not-being efforting… now let’s talk about them both.”
    • Or maybe this line’s talking about when “hard work isn’t hard work.” Maybe it’s talking about when getting stuff done is somehow magically easy. “Doing not-doing.” That’s the usual interpretation, and it is a beautiful one that I love. But. If this is the correct interpretation, then our shamanic dancing character wú (Not-Being) is simply the negative particle “not.” That’s how most translators in fact translate this word—except in some cases when they don’t!
      • Sometimes the word’s just sitting by itself, and so they let it have a life of its own. That throws me and makes me wonder if wú is truly just a particle in other cases like this one. Furthermore, why use bù (“just the husk and not really”) as a negative particle sometimes and wú (the dancing Not-Being) other times? You remember I did delve into that question here. In short, p–type particles like bù originally seemed to modify actions beyond the control of living people, and the m–types like wú seemed to attach to actions over which people thought they had control. In the part of Chapter 3 I translated at the top of this post, would you say “daring” is something over which we have NO control, and “efforting” is something over which we DO have control? That’s hard for me to believe. That’s why I’m going to consider what it would mean if Not-Being were more than just “not.” What if Not-Being has full status as a character of its own..
    • Maybe the proper interpretation of this line is: “efforting… to be a Not-Being who is efforting:”
    • Or maybe: “an efforting that is… a Not-Being who is efforting:”

In any of these interpretations, the next line is super important because it’s going to modify this one and tell us something important about it. We’ll explore that next time.

Meanwhile… I hope you’ll play a little mind experiment and explore what it would feel like to you to be:

really muscularly trying… nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being really muscularly trying

Please use the contact form to let me know your feedback. I love the comments I get, and if you haven’t sent one yet, now is a good time to start. Thank you for that and for being here.

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#2 Fū 夫 qù 去 shì 恃 Wéi 為

In which Lâozî tells us a bit about the status quo: how public opinion shapes things unborn, a sage’s life, and this particular man… Chapter 2 summary

After setting up a conflict, introducing the main characters, and leaving us with a mystery in Chapter 1, Lâozî gets down to business. Chapter 2 opens with a description of how things are in the established world (Heaven-below).

  • Here in Lâozî’s world we have public opinion being very sure of certain things. And this kind of “firing arrows from the mouth” has defining effects on what’s not yet even born:
    • First, the public is very opinionated about a particular kind of admired beauty.
      • Lâozî tells us that this has an “efforting” of beauty. It lops off or defines the opposite—a disdained ugliness—already… finishing it in the womb. This is the first of 51 times we see this efforting character (wéi).
    • Then public opinion is firing those certainty-arrows regarding a particular kind of traditional virtue.
      • Lâozî tells us this has an efforting of virtue. It lops off or defines the opposite—a husk but not really the true inner flower of virtue—already… finishing it in the womb.
  • There are consequences of this public opinion/efforting. It means other, opposite-sounding pairs are mutually occurring/doing things together:
    • Being and Not-Being are mutually birthing a bud sprouting from the ground;
    • solid and changeable: mutually completing that final nail in a weapon on a pole;
    • lengthy and short: mutually shaping within a hair’s breadth;
    • high level buildings in the suburbs and a lower level: mutually leaning toward one another, head askew, as if an arrow’s between them;
    • one tone from a moth and many sounds from hitting chimes: mutually harmonizing as a harmonica;
    • forward in the front lines of battle—where a foot gets cut off as punishment—and behind—what remains afterward when stepping slowly, only the left leg leading the way, leaving only the tiniest silk thread footprints as descendants: mutually accompanying one another, walking single file near soil mountains, stopping awhile along the road.
  • What a fascinating series of images, especially when read in sequence like that—it seems to paint its own story in some gauzy fashion. Then Lâozî tells us that the sun sees this list/story means some things about the grounded sage. (Throughout the 37 chapters of the Dào, whenever Lâozî says the sun’s seeing something, it sets up an objective big-picture “view from 30,000 feet.” Likewise, when Lâozî tells us about a grounded sage, it seems to be about an idealized wise person. In fact, these two phrases occur together eight of the eleven times that the sage is mentioned.) Specifically, we learn that the above list/story means six remarkable things about the sage:
    • RE dwelling, the sage’s personal role would be:
      • Not-Being efforting (as we discussed here). The pictograms for the word that means “dwelling” show someone staying at home at the tea table, chaste and unmarried, following something slowly from behind with tiger fur.
    • RE practicing/moving on a public road, the sage’s teaching would be:
      • just a husk of but not really speaking.
    • RE the Ten Thousand Things… getting up and going to work here:
      • “and yet now, bearded,” just a husk of but not really falling into some hollow-words style of governing that’s like a hand from above wielding that chisel used to mark slaves and criminals.
    • RE birthing:
      • “and yet now, bearded,” just a husk of but not really flesh-and-blood, meat-holding Being (as we discussed here);
    • RE efforting:
      • “and yet now, bearded,” just a husk of but not really expecting that will be holding one’s heart-core like one’s mother (shì).
    • RE real work completing that final nail in the weapon on a pole:
      • “and yet now, bearded,” not abiding (in fact, absent as sticks that were tied together to start a fire—pfft!).
  • And here Lâozî jumps in to interject extra detail. Lâozî repeats the last point to tell us something more about, that is to say, this particular grown man with a hairpin and public courtesy name (fū) who’s absent as sticks that were tied together to start a fire, not abiding:
    • the sun sees this particular non-abiding man is not really leaving, not really withdrawing like someone with a mouth or cave between their legs (qù 去). Here’s what that bronze inscription character looked like:

What a description of a life! That last big list began and ended with “efforting.” We learned that a sage’s personal role in dwelling is a Not-Being efforting. And by the end we learned that a sage might “effort” but isn’t really expecting anything personally of-the-heart to come from it (shì).This is important to remember since “efforting” comes up over and over again throughout the rest of the book.

The character shì (恃) combines the image of a heart with that of a temple or monastery. In Classical Chinese it meant mother, and now usually translates as rely on, presume upon, trust to. Dào translators call it take credit for, presumption, expect/expectations, lay claim to, claiming victory, claim as one’s own, claim possession, possessing, depend on, and return to. It’s like something has a hold on you, for better or worse. My translation, which I use in all three places where this character appears in the Dào, is:

expecting that will be holding one’s heart-core like one’s mother

~

I’m intrigued by what we’ve learned in Chapter 2 regarding: public opinion’s effect on what’s gestating, how that causes different pairs of “opposites” to mutually manifest, what Lâozî thinks that means for a sage’s life, and what happens in one particular man’s life who lives like that.

Actually, by “intrigued,” I mean that I have a lot of questions! Why does the sage “effort” at all? And why not expect a heart-level dependability from it? What can the sage—or we—trust will hold one’s heart’s claim? What’s the opposite of efforting? These are the answers I’m keeping my eyes open for as we move forward.

~

Does the final part of the chapter, describing the particular grown man’s experience, speak to these questions? Then the answer might be: do real work finishing things, but do it like a fire-starter… which means you won’t dwell there, and therefore you won’t ever really withdraw.

But, let’s face it, the old Lâozî-era image for that “withdrawing” character (qù 去) is very odd. Did you think I was just going to glide over that picture?! When I see a drawing of a man over a mouth-like opening and the dictionary definition withdraw, I think of a man just finishing or maybe interrupting sex. I can’t figure out if this is obvious or just reveals that I have the sophistication of a junior-high boy. But then some etymologists have described the image as “a man with a hole in his crotch.” Now that, to me, sounds like a woman passing/identifying as a man. And it makes me wonder. It makes me look back at everything we’ve read so far with a completely different question: was Lâozî a woman? When it occurred to me, I decided to keep this question in my mind as I went forward with the translation, and at the same time not be attached to it. We will delve into this more—much more. Meanwhile, other linguists have thought it could be a representation of a man’s anus and therefore mean “getting rid of” like “waste” (AKA pooping). Or others believe it might be related to a different Chinese character that shows a mouth next to a person (rather than below) and means “open one’s mouth,” possibly referring to the custom of saying goodbye when you leave some place. I also looked at other definitions of this word to see if we could get more clues. One is to play a part or character, to act. Another is last or past. A recently coined meaning for the word is what the hell, damn, fuck. Honestly, I couldn’t agree more! It’s baffling. And it kind of changes everything.

Maybe as we leave Chapter 2 we’re about to find out more about what it looks like to be as absent as the twigs that started a fire… not dwelling. And therefore not really withdrawing/leaving/passing/play-acting/past.

Once again, I ask: why the obscurity? Is it just too hard to clearly describe because it has to do with that ease-y extraordinary way of being that can best be described as the absence of so many of our typical hard-and-fast things and behaviors—an absence of the grind and the surface matters? Or is all this code for something else? Maybe both?! I vote for both.

Thanks for joining me here again. Next up: Chapter 3, where we learn a little more about this world of Lâozî’s before stuff starts to change pretty quickly in Chapter 4! Meanwhile, thanks for your questions, ideas, and comments. Please keep them coming. You can use the contact form to reach me anytime. See you next week!

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#2 Chù 處 Wéi 為 Wú 無 Yôu

Not-Being efforting

wú wéi

“Not-Being efforting.” This phrase is in some ways the most obscure phrase in the Dào Dé Jīng. I posit it’s also the clearest.

We first encounter this phrase in the second half of Chapter 2 where, just a paragraph beforehand, Lâozî painstakingly lays out two examples illustrating the essential nature of “efforting.” As we saw in our last post:

When public opinion defines something with great certainty, that constitutes a forceful “efforting” of that thing. Such “efforting” results in cutting off and defining the very opposite of that original something before it’s actually developed in its own right.

Lâozî then lists a series of opposite conditions linked to one another in mutual interaction (like a seen tree and the eye seeing it… both are required for the interaction to happen):

The first such pair of opposites listed is Not-Being vs Being. Lâozî says they are mutually birthing.

Because of Lâozî’s careful set-up, I think it’s safe and indeed important to assume that this linking of opposites happens because of someone “efforting” one of the pair. I think we can conclude that the mutual birthing of Not-Being and Being has its roots in these two options:

  • Not-Being is efforting and therefore peremptorily defining Being, and/or
  • Being is efforting and therefore peremptorily defining Not-Being.

Let’s look at this in the context in which it’s first used. If you read the second half of Chapter 2, you see a list of things that a grounded sage person does in certain circumstances. Here’s the first such situation:

The sun—walking across the sundial a while, stopping a while—sees indeed

this means:

the grounded sage—speaking and listening with both feet on the ground,

this person…

staying-remaining at home at the tea table, chaste and unmarried, following something slowly from behind with tiger fur-

nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope, never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being

efforting—like holding up an elephant…

has this

personal, manual role—what one does with a weapon, a flag, or a pen;

So first we are going to learn about what the grounded sage does when they are chù (處) or staying. It’s usually translated as remains, but the Western Zhou Bronze Inscription character is, as usual, a lot more evocative and complex than that:

The top component (虍) shows tiger fur:

which is usually considered the phonetic sub-component (hū). Below that there are two semantic components considered to give the word its meaning. First is:

which shows two legs followed by something from behind and in modern times (夂) is translated to mean exactly that. Also shown is:

which shows a stool, and again the modern translation (几) matches the old pictogram.

The modern translation of the overall character chù, however, includes not just stay, remain, reside, live, and dwell, but also “staying at home, not assuming a government position or not married.” It also includes virginity and chastity as well as manage, deal with, punish, discipline, and get along with. This reads to me like a laundry list of what it meant to be an unmarried woman in most parts of the world in “the old days!” At any rate, as you can see above, I included all these elements in as neutral a way as possible.

And what does a grounded sage do when staying—remaining at home at the tea table, chaste and unmarried, following something slowly from behind with tiger fur? Well, then their personal role is Not-Being efforting.

And that, we suspect, means it lops off and defines Being (yôu 有).

Fascinating. We’ll delve more into the grounded sage next time, as we continue to feel our way into what it means that their role when “staying” is cleverly lopping off a basket of and therefore defining Being.

Thank you for joining me here again. I hope you’ll re-read Chapter 2 again and enjoy letting all these ideas percolate in your unconscious as well as conscious mind. Meanwhile please use the contact form to send me your comments, ideas. and questions. Until next time!

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#2 Gōng 功 Lì 力 Qín 勤 Wéi 為 Xuán Yòng

efforting—like lifting an elephant—

wéi

I love the modern character, 為, and the old compound character of wéi is equally descriptive:

When you pull it apart you see it shows a hand (albeit upside down as if doing biceps crunches)…

…lifting up an elephant:

Wéi‘s modern meaning is to do or to make. It can also mean govern, construct, transform or turn something into, act as, be, and more. Dào translators call it so many different things: act/action, act upon, improve, try to change, do what you want with, tamper with, grab after, contrive, do work, make, achieve things, accomplish tasks, perform deeds, strive for, interfere, guided by, play the role of, merge, join together, fuse, capable of doing, can be, set, become, the nouns form, model, or action, and quite often simply, has, is, be or do. I would say they’re all trying to capture this sense of a human applying a hardcore sort of force to something big, heavy, or significant in nature in order to get something done. My translation is:

efforting—like lifting an elephant

~

Wéi figures prominently into a couple of my favorite chapters where Lâozî explains the way of the world by comparing it to what it’s not. For example, in Chapter 11, Lâozî specifies that wéi is what we do to clay or wood when we are efforting those physical things into the shape of a pot or a living space. And then Lâozî contrasts this efforting with Not-Being’s yòng (用):

doing truly useful work—like a water bucket—by means of carrying capacity

I found a Spring and Autumn Bronze Inscription image for this character which always makes me happy since that’s the script I believe to be the closest to Lâozî’s own hand (as described in the tab Dates, dynasties, their scripts, and my preferences). It’s a pictogram of a water bucket:

What a perfect illustration of how negative, receptive space is useful. Modern translations of the character are use, employ, operate; utility, usefulness, use [nouns]; to eat or to drink [in an honorific way]; expenses, outlay; with, by, using. Dáo translators most commonly call it useful, usefulness, and use. You can see this is a classic example of how one word can be noun, verb, or adjective in Chinese thus setting up the potential translation inconsistencies I like to avoid by using gerunds (“___ing”). In a few places, translators also call it potential, put into practice, draw upon, plus other non-related things that infer actions based on the nouns in the sentence.

In Chapter 6, yòng is part of a paradox describing our old friend, xuán, the hard-to-see darkness of a figure-eight of string dyed black. That short chapter concludes its description of xuán by saying:

Doing of truly useful work—like a water bucket—by means of carrying capacity (yòng)

has this…

the husk of the initial protective bud casing, but not really the true inner flower, of

exerting with force—with the strength of an arm, a bladed tool, or a plough on the soil (qín).

So here yòng‘s contrasted with yet another type of “doing,” qín (勤). In fact, with Lâozî’s use of bù, we get the specific sense that yòng may look like this other kind of work and be related to it in some way, especially at the beginning, but it’s not really that at all. Qín translates in modern times to industrious, diligent, and attentive, but traditionally it specifically meant laboring. This compound character’s right-hand component, lì (力), is considered to be the semantic part that imparts meaning. In Bronze Inscription script it looked like this:

This is considered to be either an image of an arm bending out from the body (those bicep crunches again) or a plough. It means physical strength. In physics, it’s the technical term for Force where it has the particular meaning of a quantity calculated by multiplying mass times acceleration. This sub-component shows up in a lot of words and also occurs on its own as a character once in the Dào in Chapter 33 where I translate it as:

forceful—strong like an arm, a bladed tool, or a plough

The left sub-component of qín is considered to be the phonetic part that tells us how to pronounce the word. It is indeed pronounced qín, and on its own now means clay. The etymology of this word thus far eludes me… I will keep after it. However, until then, you can see I incorporated its meaning into my translation of qín as is my want:

exerting with force—with the strength of an arm, a bladed tool, or a plough on the soil

This character looks very much like one we will see in our next post about the latter half of Chapter 2, gōng (功). Just looking at gōng‘s modern character, you recognize the strong-arm/plough sub-component on the right meaning force. The left sub-component, its phonetic element gông (工), is a bladed tool:

On its own, gông has the modern meaning of labour or work, laborer or worker, industry. When combined with the strong-arm/plough character, it’s taken on the meaning of achievement. And it’s used in physics as the technical term for Work, calculated as Force times distance. In other words, work is done when a force accelerates a mass through a distance. A force on its own isn’t “going anywhere.” Only when it exerts that effort to move something somewhere is it officially Work. I translate this character as:

really working—laboring with the force from a bladed tool, one’s arm, or a plough—

~

As you can tell, I’m gathering a list of the various and subtly different ways Lâozî talks about “doing stuff.” Partly I’m super interested in this because my original career was an engineer (!), and so not only am I used to being precise about these words but also I love considering the physics of the Dào Dé Jīng. In fact, that was one of the original three motivators for this whole Dào project. So here’s what we have so far under the category of “ways to do things”:

  • wéi, 為: efforting like lifting an elephant (occurs 51 times in the first 37 chapters of the Dào)
  • yòng, 用: doing truly useful work—like a water bucket—by means of carrying capacity (occurs 11 times, 4 of those are in Chapter 11)
  • qín, 勤: exerting with force—with the strength of an arm, a bladed tool, or a plough on the soil (occurs only once, in Chapter 6)
  • gōng, 功: real work—laboring with the force from a bladed tool, one’s arm, or a plough— (occurs in 6 spots in 6 different chapters)
  • lì, 力: forceful—strong like an arm, a bladed tool, or a plough (1 occurence)

Sometimes, I’m pretty sure a particular one of these characters is used for a poetic reason like rhyme and alliteration. But also, in general, you’ll see as we work our way through the book that yòng, the negative-space “bucket” way of doing things, mostly is associated with Non-Being, The Way of the loose-haired chieftain (Dào), and the grounded sage that Lâozî so often describes for us. The other four more effortful ways of doing things mostly are associated with Being, The Ten Thousand Things, a grown man, civilians, “one’s pregnant self” (traditionally translated as oneself), traditional virtue, and other such concrete players. That said, there will be exceptions to this rule, and it is there that we may gain the most insight into what’s really going on in Lâozî’s schema.

But I say we trust Lâozî to lead us into and through all this in the natural layout of the book, so for now we are firmly in Chapter 2. As we saw in the last post, that’s where Lâozî told us that public opinion firing arrows of certainty about a particular admired “beauty” or traditional “virtue” is really an “efforting” of those traits. It’s like lifting an elephant… i.e., not easy. And not only can we viscerally feel that’s hard and hard to sustain, but also this approach lops off and defines the opposites of those traits before they’re even fully born. With this introduction to “wéi,” it’s safe to say that whenever we see that word from here on out, we’ll remember these consequences that Lâozî’s laid out for us. And furthermore we’ll be noticing and remembering that there is more than one way to go about doing things in the world. We can be feeling which ways seem more appealing and effective. We can be thinking about how we want to feel when we do stuff.

Thank you for joining me here today. Next time, we’ll see what the rest of Chapter 2 has to hold for us. Until then, please keep sending me your comments—they’re super helpful to me.

most recently tinkered with on 2/16/20: modified gōng definition