Category: Yî

Categories
#3 Hū 乎 Mín 民 Xī 兮 Yê 也 Yì Yî Zhê 者

—both armpits sweat this too!

Yì (亦)

When we left off last time, I provocatively left you with an excerpt from Chapter 3 in which Lâozî proclaims:

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!—

I didn’t even begin to address the meaning of that line because I figured you may have been as distracted as I was by the “exclamatory particle” at the end! Before you decide whether or not I was being dramatic, I wanted to tell you how I came up with these words and, while I’m at it, get into all of Lâozî’s different “interjections.”

So let’s start with the phrase that began this discussion. The thirteenth line of Chapter 3 ends with the character yê (也). Here’s the way this character was drawn in the Spring and Autumn Bronze Inscription script that Lâozî probably used:

This pictogram has been seen as female genitalia, an ancient funnel, a wash basin. Actually some linguists think it was an early version of another character, 匜, that means vessel and sounds kind of similar (yí). Its original Shang Oracle Bone Script character looked like this:

Um. I did not make this up or draw this and neither did the 6th grade boy down the street. Like most of the images I use here, it’s courtesy of the Richard Sears website that so graciously has put gazillions of bronze inscription, oracle, and seal characters’ images into the public domain from original sources. And I’m really starting to think some of these old characters are rather earthy indeed.

Back to our yê character. It’s what’s known as an “emphatic final particle.” Humans have always had these little words we use at the end of a sentence for emphasis, man! Those words just vary over location and time. Each new generation seems to like to use their own emphatic final particle, dude! Lâozî just happened to choose vagina, b$#@&! Sorry. I’m just pointing out that in modern times some of our emphatic final particles also are gender-specific and even crude. You can think of many more examples, I’m sure. Lâozî uses this one— yê—in four other locations throughout these 37 chapters of the Dào. I see no reason not to paint a picture of this character’s image just as accurately as I’ve been trying to do with the others. This character’s modern translations are also, too, as well; neither, either; indeed. Most Dào translators just leave it out, but why? It spices up and humanizes the text, for sure. My translation is:

—yes, that too, vagina!

~

Lâozî uses other emphatic particles as well. As we also saw above and even back in Chapter 1, Lâozî sometimes interjects in the middle of a sentence or list. For example, zhê (者) occurs—get this!—43 times in the first 37 chapters! Dào translators often ignore this as well, but I think it’s important to know what Lâozî thought was worthing emphasizing. Zhê is used to pause after a term and indicate that you’re about to define it. It can be translated as this. It’s hard to track down its etymology, but I’ve read that its pictogram was the original character either for boiling (煮) or for sugarcane (蔗). I originally included the sugarcane in my translation but later removed it simply because when I look at these two characters, the latter doesn’t look so much like the zhê character. Those four marks below both characters ( 灬)  show fire, like that under a cook pot, so I just made a judgement call that boiling is the common part of these definitions and translate it as:

—now this is cooking!

~

Lâozî also uses the exclamation xī or xí 30 times in the Dào. The modern character 兮 looks very much like the old Western Zhou Bronze Inscription:

Some etymologists say the bottom part of this character is a picture of a tree with a fork in it, 丂 (kâo):

The additional two upper marks are then thought to be fine branches, perhaps to conjure up the sound produced by wind blowing through the tree. In some places 兮 and the words descended from it are said to have meant breath, exhale, sigh, yell, call out, air, wind, or the howling sound of wind. But now they’re usually translated as particles like oh, in, at, on. This character’s usually just left out by Dào translators, though some (like Gia-fu Feng and Jane English) translate it as “Oh.” My version is:

Oh! A breath, like wind through tree branches!

Actually, yet another of Lâozî’s interjections is one of the words descended from that same wind-in-the-trees character. “Hū” even sounds like the very sound it describes and is drawn with a couple extra branches: 乎. Translators mostly seem to agree that Lâozî uses this as a “speculative” or “interrogative particle.” It basically turns a sentence into a question, you know? On many of the nine occasions it’s used in the first 37 chapters, translators turn it into can you, is it possible, how true is that, or what can __ do?” Of course, sometimes, they just leave it out. I incorporate the onomatopoeia as well as the questioning sense in my translation everywhere it appears:

~

—pah, can you?!

~

In the last third of the Dào, a completely different kind of exclamation’s introduced and used 7 times. Yì (亦) looked like this back in Lâozî’s time:

Yes, that’s a picture of a person with water falling from their armpits! It’s the original form of the modern character for armpit, but as time went on, this character itself came to mean also, too, likewise; only; already; and although. As far as I can tell, Dào translators completely ignore this word when it appears or at least they fold it into the sentence in such a way that I can’t pick it out. But I can’t ignore such an image, so I translate it as:

—both armpits sweat this too!

It adds a little excitement everywhere it appears, and I think Lâozî intended that! Why else draw someone sweating?

I think that’s it for interjections—phew! Next time we can get back to where we were in Chapter 3, learning about how the traditional version of breeding civilians is breeding this particular man: sure as the sun.

Thanks for being here, and please contact me using this form if you have any comments or questions. See you next time!

Categories
#3 Cháng Mín 民 Qí 其 Wú 無 Yî Yôu zhì 治

civilians—like the Mín people enslaved by blinding with a dagger—

Mín

An eye pierced by a dagger. That’s the pictogram for today’s word, 民, which is modernly translated as people, citizens, folk, popular, and civilian.

Wow. This is why the images within the characters matter to me. The above picture of an eye and dagger is what Lâozî most likely would have drawn while writing down the 37 chapters we now call The Dào. Eye-piercing was an historic method for enslaving people. I’ve read that this practice was associated with enslaving the Mín people, hence this word and their name. Words from the Mín dialect make their way into the Dào in several places that I’ll note as we go along. We saw our first one in the last post, and—possibly not coincidentally?— that word (shî) occurs directly before today’s word (Mín) the first four times we see either one used.

As you recall, Chapter 3 opens with a list of three attitudes to avoid. If you avoid these, then you have a populace that doesn’t do three corresponding bad things. –>Not really elevating the elite rich means people don’t really compete (like with two hands clawing over a plow). –>Not really treasuring hard-earned transformation of riches means people don’t really “effort” thievery. –>And not really seeing something as definitely wanting or missing means peoples’ hearts aren’t really in a confused anxiety where their tongues are like twisted threads with one remnant string hanging out.

But, to be specific, each of those three prohibitions is spelled out according to this formula:

Not really doing [fill in the blank]

is breeding (like a gentleman holding a fountain pen)

civilians (like the Mín people enslaved by blinding with a dagger)

who don’t really do [fill in the blank].

I found this to be a nice time to re-read our last post and really reflect on that image of a government official holding in his hand a “fountain pen” that resembles “a flagpole sticking out of a drum.” Remember too: this image possibly shows that tool superimposed over a mouth. And of course there was the charming information that its meaning—to make someone do something—means to f*@# in the Mín dialect. So is it just me or does it sound like “breeding civilians” is another way of saying f*@#-ing the lowly masses who were enslaved by blinding their eyes with a dagger.

Does my heart suddenly seem rather dark to you?! Okay before I get all carried away seeing something horrible where it doesn’t exist, let’s find out what happens in the rest of the chapter and how these two words (shî mín) are used there. After all, this chapter is actually the only place that this shî character’s used at all.

~

What immediately follows is another instance of Lâozî telling us the suns sees indeed that this means something about the grounded sage. In this case, that description of what breeds civilians to be a certain way means the grounded sage has a particular style for governing (zhì, 治).

If you look at this modern character for zhì, you see it has two sub-components. The left side evolved from the pictogram from water:

The right-hand sub-character (台), when it’s by itself, is pronounced yí in Mandarin and was the original form of the word for happy or pleased. It depicts a mouth (the square) below another character. Most often that arrangement of a mouth means speaking about though sometimes it actually does seem to carry the meaning of a mouth, a cave, or a similar type opening.

In this case the mouth is drawn below a character that’s sometimes thought to be a plow or a symbol for turned or revolving. More often, and more specifically, it’s thought to be a variation of yî (以) which we investigated in a previous post. There 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. Nowadays, when this character’s combined with the mouth character to make yí, it seems to refer to some aspect of talking about oneself. The result’s translated as I or me or sometimes as what. It no longer carries the original meaning of happy/pleased, harmony, or joy unless it’s combined with a character showing a heart to the left of it: 怡.

When that same happy character was combined with the pictogram of water to form 治, the resulting meaning was often an ancient river name (pronounced either yí and chí). In modern usage, though, it’s pronounced zhî and translated as to govern, regulate, or administer. Historically it was used to describe a seat of local government. Dáo translators generally prefer the terms govern, governing, and government, but sometimes you’ll also see them translate it as rules or leads. Here’s how I translate it to include all the imagery:

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

I know it gets kind of wild when I translate this way, but I do so love the results. I love how it associates harnessing the River Happy with regulating or turning yourself around…. and with governing.

UPDATE: I look into this character a little more in a later post here.

~

So, to continue on, Lâozî says that in light of that list of what kinds of attitudes do or don’t breed what kinds of civilians, a sage’s governing looks like this:

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

this means…

the grounded sage—listening and speaking, standing connected to earth as well as the heavens,

that person

has this

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

~ emptying—like lifted land…

what it holds a basket of…

heart-core…

~ really filling—like a building with strings of solid cowry-like riches…

what it holds a basket of…

inside—the gut, the meat belly;

~ being as fragile as a matching pair of decorative bows or little wings…

what it holds a basket of…

having heart-core determination and aspiration

~ strengthening like an insect—turning yourself as a venomous snake-like bow…

what it holds a basket of…

that bony will that comes from a skeleton framework.

What “it” is referred to in the phrase “what it holds a basket of?” This character, qí (其) puzzles me. We first looked at this little connecting word back in one of our earliest posts. But when translating Chapter 3, I decided to go back and review all 61 times it occurs in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng and compare how it’s handled by different translators (especially Chinese translators). I ultimately decided it’s safe to say that this phrase doesn’t necessarily refer back to the word right in front of it. Rather it points the reader back to the most recent “subject.”

In other words, Lâozî probably isn’t saying that “emptying has heart-core.” More likely this phrase says that the sage’s governing empties the sage’s heart-core, fills the sage’s inside/gut, is fragile in the sage’s heart-core determination, and strengthens the sage’s bony will. However only Chia-Hsu Chen translates it this way.

Most translators say the sage’s govern empties the people’s hearts, fills their bellies, weakens their ambition, and strengthens their will. They think “it” refers back to Lâozî’s previous “paragraph.” Other translators leave out the whole question of whose basket is in question! They say the sage’s governing empties the heart, fills the belly, weakens ambition, strengthens will.

What bothers me is that these approaches aren’t consistent in how they decide what the connecting word qí is pointing to. And when you read the different options I pose here, this subtlety really makes a difference, doesn’t it? Maybe this is another example of Lâozî the poet being intentionally ambiguous. Maybe “it” could be any of those things. “It” could be the sage, the governing itself, the people, or it could even be the word right in front of “it.” Maybe it COULD mean “emptying has heart.” (I like that last version a lot. I translated it that way myself until I more thoroughly analyzed qí.)

So why do I belabor this?

Because it makes a difference on a very important point: does the sage’s way of governing have anything to do with making the civilians be a certain way? It’s easy to assume so. After all we usually do think of governing as controlling others. And in the first part of this chapter, we just saw some gentleman a fountain pen was making them do stuff. But it seems to me that the point of this next section here is that the sage doesn’t do that. Maybe the sage is just over here minding the sage’s own heart, gut, ambition, and will. The very particular way that Lâozî drew the “governing” character could support that—governing could be about turning yourself, harnessing your own Happy river.

Let’s see where else Lâozî goes with these topics in this chapter. It’s pretty interesting.

~

As you remember, in the very first sentence of Chapter 1, Lâozî set up a conflict between the definitive “kê” version of things and the cháng version—the ever-present traditional, timeless, constant version of things as symbolized by the head cloth that men donned upon becoming official adults. Now we learn more about the cháng (常) version. We’re going to learn about what happens with that traditional version of breeding civilians:

The ever-present square fabric which our grown men wrap around the ‘little bird’ top knots on their heads after receiving their public courtesy-names—what we know as the timeless, whole head-cloth ‘ji’ version of

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

civilians—like the Mín people enslaved by blinding with a dagger:

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

firing arrows from the mouth—sure;

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

wanting what’s been eroded from this ravine

We know two things about the traditional version of breeding civilians:

  • Not-Being… sure
  • Not-Being… wanting what’s missing

Does this mean the traditional version of breeding civilians breeds civilians that aren’t sure and aren’t wanting or missing anything? OR that in the traditional version of breeding civilians, someone who is a Not-Being is sure and is wanting something that’s missing? It’s our old familiar debate about the nature of the shamanic dancer Not-Being character, wú, and the meat-holding character we call Being, yôu. Are they people or are they negative and affirmative parties? Does it depend on context? Let’s keep reading with an open mind.

When we do so, we see in the very next sentence Lâozî tells us a third thing about the traditional version of breeding, and this is for sure about this particular man with a hairpin and public courtesy name (fú). We met this character in Chapter 2. There we learned he was absent and therefore not really leaving. Here we learn that he’s a person who, in the traditional version of breeding, is sure:

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!

~

All right, all right. Before I continue, I want to address the elephant in the room—and no, I don’t mean the actual elephant we once again see inside the image for “efforting!” I mean that last exclamation and its reference to female genitalia. Is this gratuitous sensationalism on my part? You tell me. I will give you the facts… in our next post. Because this one’s getting soooo long, and I want to tell you about all of Lâozî’s colorful interjections at one time.

Until next time, be sure to use the contact form to send me your questions and comments. Thank you for being here!

Categories
#2 Bù 不 Mêi Shàn Sī Wú 無 Yì Yî Yôu

thus cleverly lopping off a basket of and thereby defining something already… finishing it in the womb

sī yî

Lâozi starts Chapter 2 talking to us about how people here on earth talk about beauty:

“Heaven-down below (lower level) public opinion—that clear, plain back and forth between people: firing arrows from the mouth sure of admired beauty—picture someone wearing a ram’s horn headdress…”

Mêi (美), “beauty,” is a picture of just what I’ve described: someone wearing a ram’s horn headdress. Then Lâozi describes this approach to beauty with a particular character, saying it results in:

“efforting—like lifting up an elephant—beauty

Oh, Wéi (為). I love this word, it’s pivotal in the rest of the Dào (occurring in 51 crucial spots, in these first 37 chapters), AND it took me awhile to land on this translation of “efforting.” It will have its own blog post very soon!

Meanwhile… Lâozî tells us that effortfully defining beauty in this strong-arming way has a side effect. It is:

“thus cleverly lopping off a basket of, and thereby defining, a disdained ‘ugliness’—an inferior-hearted evil right outside, touching the house—already… finishing it in the womb.”

Lâozî seems to be saying that when we work hard to forcefully set some very certain kind of beauty, we are insinuating that everything else is ‘not beauty.’ Or is Lâozî saying that approaching beauty in that way is itself ugly? Probably it’s both and either, as is so often the case in good poetry.

~

Sī (斯) shows a basket on the left and an axe on the right:

Writing this for you, I realized that I didn’t have the basket in my old translation in the first post, so I’ve revised it as you see here:

thus cleverly lopping off a basket of and thereby defining…

This symbol was used to depict a traditional unit of weight (about 1/2 kg or a “catty” which is a little more than one pound), but also means axe, and keen or shrewd. This chapter is the only place this word’s used in the Dào.

~

Yî (已) now means stop, finish, already, or have done [something]. In the Dâo, translators call it as arisen, become, stopping in time, be done, get it, succeed, attained success, and achieve results. Often it’s hard to tell for sure how they translate this word because it gets buried as some simple word like is. In fact, this word seems to occur in especially convoluted obscure sentences, and as you’ve seen, that’s saying something when it comes to this document!

The first etymological reference I read said yî comes from the symbol for fetus or snake (pronounced sì and now meaning snake and written as 巳):

So my translation combined that with the abstract meanings:

already… finishing it in the womb

But since then I’ve seen others say this version of yî absolutely should not be confused with that symbol. Nor, they added, should it be confused with this other old symbol that looked similar and is pronounced jî (己). This image is considered to be a silk cord used to bind things; it now means see, oneself, personal, or private. Those words combined with the suggestive images of a fetus put me in mind of an umbilical cord:

I’m not sure why our yî (已) should never be associated with these other two similar sounding and looking images nor why there’s no alternative interpretation for our image’s origins. It’s confusing. My first thought was that I could see why a person wouldn’t want to think a fetus is the original symbol for “stop, finish, already, or have done something” as it could put us in mind of sad and oft-hidden events like miscarriage or abortion. But then again it doesn’t necessarily have to mean those things either. It could also represent the later evolutions of this word: achieved, results etc. It does show something that developed inside, privately. All these layers filter together in that evocative uncertain way we are getting used to Lâozî creating in us, so I will leave it at that.

~

So to review: Lâozi used today’s two words sī and yî together in a particular construction to say that when public opinion’s firing arrows sure of a particular beauty, it by default “lops off” and thus defines the opposite “already, finishing it in the womb.” Next, Lâozi uses this same construction to tell us what happens when public opinion’s firing arrows sure of traditional virtue (shàn, 善). The old bronze inscription version of this character shows a sacrificial offering of a goat together with a mouth emanating words that are branded by a chisel, in the same way that slaves or criminals were marked. This image gives me the feeling that Lâozi didn’t admire this kind of virtue. I wonder if the beautiful person wearing the ram’s horn headdress carries that same tone of hypocrisy for Lâozi. Anyway, being sure of this kind of virtue has the same hard-core effect of efforting, in this second case it’s efforting traditional virtue…

“…thus cleverly lopping off a basket of, and thereby defining, the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal—but not really the true inner flower of traditional virtue already… finishing it in the womb.”

Being certain of that particular kind of virtue means everything else is automatically, privately, successfully defined as “not really virtuous.”

~

Here Lâozî uses one very specific way of saying “not____.” Bù (不) shows us what biologists call a sepal—that little husk around the outside of a flower. The Bronze Inscription character shows those dried up little petals hanging off below a bloom:

The sepal starts out looking like a bud’s outermost petals, but ends up peeling back and drying up once the true blossom is open. This husk is made up off former “guard petals”—it played a crucial role!—but it’s not really the true flower of the thing we’re talking about.

We talked about different negative particles in this post. As with this sepal husk, most of the negative particles’ images show something where outer appearance doesn’t match reality. Èr uses the beard image for but now or and yet. Yì uses a masked person for the word different:

Other images in Chapter 1 also showed us hidden or obscured versions reality. The pictogram for mìng (personal naming) shows a mouth speaking under the cover of night by moonlight. Chàng (the ever-present, constant, timeless version of something) shows the jìn head-cloth covering the hair of an adult man. Xuàn—the very structure of the miáo stuff that is the conception of Heaven-and-Earth—is a hard-to-see darkness… a figure-eight of string dyed black. And of course wù gives us a Not-Being—a mysterious dancer swinging tails from each wrist—as a symbol of something so different than normal reality that we don’t even know what to call it other than just “not.” Lâozî is a true poet, weaving an entire spell for us using even the smallest words as part of the overall tone.

~

So what does Lâozî do in Chapter 2 after setting up this construction for us in which public opinion’s sure-fire efforting a set definition of anything cuts off and defines its opposite? The next long and quite famous part of Chapter 2 begins by saying:

“anciently, for ten generations, this therefore lightly hits and leaves a mark of reason…”

What follows is a list of opposites that define each other, presumably, based on Lâozî’s set-up, because of public opinion’s strong-arming, effortful certainty of one of the pair of traits:

  • Not-Being vs Being
  • solidly hard vs changeable
  • lengthy vs short
  • high above vs down below
  • one tone vs many sounds
  • forward vs behind

Ahem: did you notice that Not-Being and Being are set out on their own here and not used as positive or negative particles simply modifying other words?! It’s as we suspected. They are almost beyond adjective, adverb, or status. As one reader put it: “ohhhh… the characters ARE characters!” And being effortfully certain about one gives birth to the other.

What does this mean? We’ll see in the second half of Chapter 2. Meanwhile, you can read the full text of that chapter here and ponder it. Please use the comment icon at the top of this post or the comment form to send me your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and questions—I love receiving them and they impact me and this project.

Thank you for joining me here today! I apologize for the little lapse that just happened in my posting. I really got off track trying to make a video summarizing all of Chapter 1 for you! Every one of the many many attempts I’ve made has been too clunky, long, simplistic, awkward, or otherwise difficult. My conclusion is that it’s not yet time for that to happen. I so wanted a tidy package for you, but it’s too early. I will continue coming up with a nice verbal way to deliver this information to you, but, meanwhile, I’m going to carry on with flowing the written translation process to you in as organic a way as possible. It means you will be floating in uncertainty longer… and I think Lâozî and other sages would approve. As I’m typing this, my daughter texted me a quote from Dolly Parton:

“There are just some things in life you don’t explaint it, you just live it, and know it, and be it.”

Categories
#1 Guān Qí 其 Yî Yù

wanting (what’s been eroded from this ravine)

yù

Things go better when we don’t confuse “desire” and “want”—whether in translation OR in our own lives.

  • “Desire” is when something pulls you; you feel it. It moves you. In English, we describe the most essential such experience as our “heart’s desire.” Perhaps it IS always our heart pulling us when we feel that inexplicable longing to do something… to go somewhere, make something, or talk to someone. Whatever the action, like a river pulled by the invisible force of gravity toward its sea, desire always leads us into some movement, into falling into what pulls us… into the very next step.
  • “Wanting” is when something’s missing and/or you think it is—it indicates a lack of something. This is a more unsettling feeling, not particularly an energizing feeling, but still a part of our human life and nothing to be ashamed of.

Both situations will occur in a human life, but how we feel is different as is our typical behavior and also… what would be most helpful.

Our word-of-the-day yù (欲) gets translated as both desire and want—often by the same translator. It’s also called wish which is something else altogether since it pulls in a wistful sort of request for supernatural help.

So, which of these options best represents yù? Let’s look at what the old scripts of Lâozî’s times show us in their pictograms.

You can see right away that we’re dealing with a compound character. The left sub-component is considered the phonetic one that tells the reader how to pronounce the word, and I guess gû does indeed rhyme with yù. Gû‘s modern character is 谷, and the Western Zhou Bronze (WZB) inscription looked like this:

I’m relieved this looks so much like the left-hand side of the very first character I showed you above because that one’s written in the Warring States (WS) Chu Slip script that came just after Lâozî (check out the Dates, Dynasties and Their Scripts tab to follow that timeline). You know I prefer the Western Zhou Bronze inscriptions, but I couldn’t find any such version of the whole compound character. The similarity between the two scripts in this sub-component gives me confidence that the WS script is a good approximation of how Lâozî may have written this character. It depicts a stream running between two mountains and is translated as valley, gorge, ravine.

The right-hand sub-component, qiàn (欠) translates as to lack, be deficient, yawn. Depending on which linguist you listen to, it shows either a knife (⺈) or a mouth:

atop a person (人).

I have almost always lived in landscapes where ravines are commonplace—playing in them as a child, hiking them as an adult, and surveying and analyzing their dimensions and changes as a stream restoration hydrologist. What I’ve experienced is that a yawning, slashed, eroded gully has way more in common with what’s “wanting” than with “desire” or “wish.” Nonetheless, “desire” is so ubiquitous in others’ translations that I tried to incorporate it along with the pictogram in my own initial translation: desiring what’s wanting—what’s been eroded from this ravine…

~

Let’s try out my translation to see if Chapter 1‘s structure and content sheds any light on the subject. Both times our word yû occurs, it’s followed by these words:

this means:

keeping watch from the temple tower for

what it holds a basket of…

Here’s a quick breakdown of those characters:

~ yî, 以: This is a very common word in the Dào Dé Jīng. Its left component carries the meaning but remains a mystery. In the WZB it looked like this:

Some say it’s a plough; others say its a turned version of the symbol for a snake or a fetus. The right-hand component of the current character 以 wasn’t added until modern times. It’s a person, and in Western Zhou Bronze Inscription that looks like this:

We’ll see this character a lot as we go forward. The word yî is translated as by, by means of, according to, so, so as to, in order to, therefore and other connecting, almost causal or at least logically-linking transitional words. I fiddled with a lot of ways to make it work in all 46 contexts where it occurs in the first 37 chapters and came up with: this means… I don’t like that I haven’t included the pictogram itself, but the options are too different for me to decide on one yet. That could change in future posts as we learn about the sub-component’s use in other words and get a feel for it.

~ guān, 觀: In this compound character, the left side shows a heron. Its old WZB form is beautiful:

The right-hand component means watchtower, platform, or temple—it was drawn as an eye over a pair of legs:

This compound word now means observe, watch, see. I translate it as: keeping watch from the temple tower for…

~ qí, 其: Here’s yet another seemingly inconsequential word that’s translated many ways, usually something like its or has but also he, she, it, they, one, his, hers, theirs, that, those, probably, perhaps, therein… You know I do not like the predicament this creates, consistency-wise! The WZB inscriptions shows a basket on a stand:

After another chunk of time fiddling around for something that can work anywhere, I just went pretty much only with the image, as I think it says it all: what it holds a basket of… So does that mean “what the basket is made of” or “what’s inside the basket?” Hmmm. Either way, and with that double possibility, I think it’s in keeping with all the translation choices in the list you just read.

Look here at how all these words work together:

desiring what’s wanting—what’s been eroded from this ravine…
this means:
keeping watch from the temple tower for
what it holds a basket of…

It looks like Lâozî just straight-out gave us a clear way to interpret our word-of-the-day: when someone “wants” something, that’s saying they are looking for their own stuff. They feel like some of what their life holds—contains or is made of—is lacking, like the soil that was washed away to make a ravine. And when that happens to us humans, we very much do “want for” whatever basic ingredient we feel is missing—we maintain a sort of vigilance and sense of lack. Lâozî’s words definitely make yù sound like it’s more about what’s missing than about being pulled toward a heart’s desire or making a wish.

That decides it. I’m changing my translation. Mixing this word up with desire is unnecessary and misleading. We don’t want to mislead ourselves into thinking that any further information Lâozî gives us about wanting is pertinent to desire. Bonus: my new translation’s simpler, and it still can be used as either a verb or a noun:

wanting (what’s been eroded from this ravine)

~

So what else does Lâozî teach us about wanting here? You’ll remember that just before this section, Chapter 1 introduced us to two seemingly opposite or complementary characters Not-Being and Being. Specifically, in this first use of them, Lâozî linked them up with míng (personal childhood name) to explain that “Not-Being míng” and “Being míng” are each the origin of something… something unique for each one.

Names as an origin? That puts me very much in mind of quantum physics as well as the thought-provoking psychologic, neurolinguistic, and anthropological research indicating that if we can’t name something, we can’t really develop our perception or understanding of that thing. And as we learned in a previous post, both approaches to naming are the origin of cool stuff: Not-Being, its name is Sky-Earth’s beginning like conception in and by a woman; Being, its name is all the manifest stuff’s nourishment like being suckled by a woman.Very cool. But there’s more.

Lâozî says there’s something that’s followed logically for many generations…

Here’s where learn about exactly what might be “wanting” in two different aspects of experience. Before getting specific, Lâozî specifies that we’re now talking about the timeless, constant, ever-present version of it all—as represented by the traditional “you’re-officially-an-adult” males’ head-cloth.

Then, Lâozî tells us what “wanting” means for 1) the timeless mens’ head-cloth version of “Not-Being” wanting and 2) the timeless mens’ head-cloth version of “Being” wanting. Here’s my summary, in table form:

STATE, QUALITY, ASPECT, OR PERSONA:

Not-Being—————-> ————————–

Being———————> —————————

This “personal naming” is the origin of:

Sky-Earth’s beginning, like in and by woman

10,000-external things’ suckling, like being fed by a woman

In “timeless/head- cloth way,” wanting /looking for:

mysterious feminine essence

delineated surface

This makes sense. If “Being, its name,” at the most intimately known level, nourishes and rears the myriad of manifested things out in the world, then it follows that “Being wanting” also would have to do with this concrete kind of stuff. We know when something’s wanting, it will involve looking for the stuff IT HOLDS or IS MADE OF, and in this case, Lâozî says that’s going to be a clearly-marked outward surface. As you remember from when we broke down that word in a previous post, this is a feature that was defined by drawing a sword tip left to right. In mathematics/geometry/physics, such a lined-out surface is a plane—a 2-dimensional feature. The surface is what we see of the universe—of what exists. It’s obviously an important, vital part of our lives. In fact, it’s usually what we pay attention to. Lâozî says that in the eternally constant grown-man-head-cloth version of Being wanting, what we’re missing and keeping an eye out for is that surface plane. This seems correct and like the useful thing to do.

And Lâozî also reminds us of another part of our experience: something more mysterious and hard to describe or touch. It’s not concrete, and indeed Lâozî describes it as an absence. “Not-Being, its name” gives us the very beginning, the Source, or what some call the Divine, Sky-Earth, heaven. And when considering this “Not-Being” in terms of “wanting,” Lâozî says the stuff missing is mysterious feminine essence. That’s what it holds a basket of.

~

Wait. How can Not-Being Wanting be missing anything at all?

Here’s where we get a clear notion that Not-Being Wanting isn’t the same as not wanting. If it were simply “not wanting,” then that might be pleasant (or even noble in the eyes of a puritanical interpretation that confuses wanting with desire and desire with lust or greed). But nothing would be missing. And yet here we are with something missing, albeit a non-concrete mysterious essence of a something.

What exactly is this “Not-Being?” And if it’s something other than a simple modifier meaning “not,” then what does that tell us about its complement, “Being?” Is that something other than just a confirmation that something’s happening?

Review the tortuous logic I took you through in this post! Now you’re seeing why I did it this way for myself originally and why I laid it out for you here. I wanted us to follow exactly what we’ve read thus far about the nature of these Being and Not-Being characters. The structure I outlined in the table above is exactly how it’s laid out in Chapter 1… and it’s exactly parallel for Being and Not-Being. I’m pretty sure it drives us to the conclusion that Not-Being is as much of a something as Being.

Of course I don’t have an answer for you as to what these two terms mean. They’ve been the source of discussions about the Dào since… ever since this text was written as far as I can tell. But somehow I felt relief in clarifying for myself and you that they indeed are not simple little modifiers. There is something going on here. It’s baffling and disorienting. And that’s perfect.

Let me skip ahead for a minute to Chapter 3. There Lâozî comes right out and describes the Sage’s strategy in dealing with civilians — in “governing” them or rather, in the literal old images I prefer, “harnessing the river happy!” A fundamental step in the strategy is to create confusion—”Not-Being sure.” Ha! I would say Lâozî’s succeeding at that with this entire book! At least thus far. In the end of Chapter 3, and increasingly clearly all throughout the rest of the book, Lâozî shows us how this strategy leads to a deep rightness.

We have to unlearn some things to learn other new things. We have to get baffled to crack open enough to take in something bigger than we previously held, to increase our capacity. So I’m going to keep trying to suspend you and me in uncertainty. We can do it. We can tolerate it. We can even enjoy it. We’re built for this.

~

Whatever they are, the egalitarian structure of this chapter indicates that the not-so-visible “Not-Being” name/wanting is equally as important as the concrete “Being” version of those things. Lâozî even clarifies that these two parts are “a matched pair, like a harness of oxen yokes” presumably pulling things along nicely and evenly when they’re both involved.

Moving along forward… that’s where your life is happening. The Dào has a lot to tell us about living with and from and for the heart—that’s the stuff of desire and movement. Lâozî devotes the entire second half of the Dâo Dé Jīng specifically to that straight heart path (AKA the Dé or Te), and there’s lots of information on it coming up in this first half also. Until then, when you feel your heart pulling you somewhere, take a step.

But today’s word is about the inevitable times when we feel ourselves not moved to move but like we’re sitting up on a watchtower, staring out over a valley because we feel we’re lacking somehow. Thats part of being human. And then it is fine to keep a watch for what’s missing. It helps to know what you’re looking for though. Sometimes it will indeed be the surface stuff—specifically it will look like a boundary, a line drawn with the tip of your sword. That’s true whether you consider yourself a sword-bearing frontiersman on patrol (remember that was part of the original image) or not. And sometimes it will be a mysterious feminine mist of an essence—that’s true whether you’re a man or woman. When your wanting isn’t very definable—you can’t figure out what or how to draw a boundary or address the surface or even see it and so you keep watching and waiting and watching—then feel around for an essence and breathe it in. We’ll get more specific instructions as we work through the book, but honestly it just comes back to that.

Thank you for joining me in floating in—heck, diving into—Not-Being sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.