Tag: Lao Tze

Categories
#2 Dào Fú 夫 Fú 弗 Fū 夫

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

fū

Chapter 2 introduces another character that shows up in pivotal times throughout the Dào: (夫). The Western Zhou Bronze Inscription starts with an image of a man…

… and adds a hairpin (一):

I don’t know for sure if this image has to be male or if that’s just how it gets translated now. Women also wore hairpins, but maybe this image shows the pin men wore after their Guan Li naming ceremony when they officially became an adult man. Modern translations of this character when it’s pronounced fú are just that: male adult, man; husband; person; manual worker.

But there’s another pronunciation of this same character: fū. That’s how it’s usually been transcribed in the received versions of the Dào Dé Jīng. Its modern translations are as a generic personal pronoun—he, she, it, they—or a particular “demonstrative” pronoun like this, that, these, those. Translators of the Dào also interpret it variously as you, for, just, because, this very, the, ones, people, that is, and only. A lot of times it’s somehow combined with words like therefore, and, so or other introductory or transitional words or just dropped altogether and considered to be a meaningless particle. Perhaps, the translators think it’s been added for rhyme meter, and alliteration.

The thing is, its unique status as a particular character is lost when we do that. So, as you know, just in case it meant something to Lâozî, I give each character a unique translation that includes its pictogram image and can be used in every instance it occurs. For 夫, I have come up with:

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

Notice how it includes both of the key themes we saw in our summary of Chapter 1: hairstyles and naming types!

~

This particular grown man character is introduced to us in Chapter 2, just where we left off upon learning that when it comes to real work completing, the grounded sage, as one bearded, is absent as sticks that were tied together in a bundle to start a fire—’fff!’—not abiding or dwelling where birthed. Immediately after that line, Lâozî specifies:

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

essentially and only—like the heart of the ‘short-tailed bird’—

“absent as sticks that were tied together in a bundle to start a fire—’fff!’—not

abiding—dwelling where birthed…”

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

this means:

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

withdrawing like a person with a mouth or cave between their legs—leaving.

This is the particular format in which we most often see the 夫 character used: after a list describing various aspects of someone’s situation. After a list, Lâozî highlights one of the list’s conditions by repeating it and referring to this particular man to whom this applies. And then Lâozî reaches a conclusion about that particular man.

In this case, Lâozî says that the particular grown man who’s completely “not there” when it comes to abiding is “not really leaving.”

In other words, this guy who never stayed isn’t really going away. Makes sense. You could say this particular person already has left—like a bundle of twigs lit to start a fire, “Pfft!” It gets things going at the beginning, and then is gone. This character, rather poetically, is also pronounced fú but with a rising tone. Its pictogram shows two sticks tied together, which you can still see in the modern character: 弗. (An alternate explanation is that they are two bent arrows tied together to be straightened. Either way, its usage is dialectical and not commonly used now. It’s most often translated as “not,” but our friend bù is much more commonly used as that kind of negative particle.)

~

Have you ever felt like that bundle of twigs? You start the whole thing, and that’s your contribution. Maybe intentionally, that was your plan, or maybe the feeling of being “used up” came as a surprise to you. Maybe no one notices you’re not really there anymore. I can imagine this feeling bad—like “burnt out” or even taken for granted. But also I can see it being fine—like you’re a pivotal, essential “fire starter” and not part of the ongoing cooking or heating or whatever.

What’s the difference between these two versions? And more importantly: what do you do now? How we frame what happened—our mindset—is going to matter.

~

All this talk of leaving puts me in mind of the fact that, legendarily, the Dào Dé Jīng was imparted to a border guard as Lâozî departed from the country. Perhaps Lâozî is self-revealing something here. Perhaps Lâozî’s not really leaving—maybe because Lâozî wasn’t even still there to begin with.

As we go, let’s be on the lookout for more clues about Lâozî’s story and experience of it as well as maybe some insights on how we can frame our own experiences in not-really-leaving somewhere because we left long ago. Thank you for being here with me—please use the Contact form to send me your responses. See you next time!

Categories
#1 Ér Dào Fēi 非 Jiâo Míng Miào Tiān Wú 無 Yôu

By way of introduction… Chapter 1 summary

Here’s how I see it. Please consider it a light fanciful daydream if it offends your sense of the Dào Dé Jīng!

Setting the stage: conflict!

Yinxi the border guard recognizes Lâozî as he’s departing the country, allegedly fed up with politics in Zhou. He asks the renowned wiseman to leave behind some helpful words, presumably about his philosophy and the way to go about things. Lâozî says… well you might want to click here to read Chapter 1 and then pop right back. But basically Lâozî says…

The Way that I can describe to you as definitively The Way breaks the little wings off our traditional version of The Way.

Wow. What a great first sentence. It’s very overt and rather patronizingly graphic in setting up all sorts of conflict and questions… especially with those actual Western Zhou Bronze Inscription characters that Lâozî used! (Yes, I’m making lots of assumptions here, as do all translators. Mine are described here.)

What follows sets up some idiosyncratic themes for the whole book.

Hair

Somehow hairstyle figures prominently in this first sentence and the entire text! Here’s my full version of the first sentence:

The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all—about which you can purse your lips like a piece of cane and puff: “Yup, that’s it, definitely The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all—” is breaking the little wings off 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—or what we know as the timeless, whole-cloth ‘jin’ version of The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all.

So we have a roaming prophet-like chieftain with loose hair. And then we have a sort of opposite: the current tradition in which men wrap their hair in a top knot on their head and cover it with a cloth as part of their puberty ritual. We’ll encounter some other hair and headdress images later in the book, but that theme’s established right here in the initial line.

What’s in a name

Different types of names also figure prominently throughout this whole first chapter. I count four different namings.

1.Above we learned about how when boys turned to men in ancient China, they received a new formal name.

2. The next sentence talks about the childhood name the boys gave up, a name you can still use with intimates after you’re a grownup:

Its personal, childhood name—what it says to identify itself urself by moonlight—about which you can purse your lips like a piece of cane and puff: “Yup, that’s it, definitely personal, childhood naming—what you say to identify yourself by moonlight” is breaking the little wings off our traditional its personal, childhood name—what it says to identify itself urself by moonlight.

[Yes, I shortened 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—or what we know as the timeless, whole-cloth ‘jin’ version of (chàng) into “our traditional.” Yes, it’s both a big assumption on my part AND a useful space saver! That character’s described in detail here.]

So here’s yet another harsh difference between tradition and what Lâozi could say. This time it’s over personal naming in particular. Now we feel like names might be key in the conflict that’s been staged for us.

Lâozi goes on to differentiate two kinds of personal names: Being, its personal name, and Not-Being, its personal name. In this simple step, Lâozi introduces two of our most central and most baffling characters and puts them squarely into this naming conflict… but more on them later. Let’s see what other kinds of naming are discussed in the first chapter.

3. There’s also how things are spoken of altogether with one another—like all earthly, mortal, commonplace plates. Lâozi uses THAT title when talking about Being and Not-Being when they’re a yoked pair, just before they’re stepping out “of a cave” and into their two different, masked personal namings.

4. To really describe them altogether like that, Lâozi adds in yet another kind of naming: what it’s called when speaking from the gut—words, like slaves or criminals branded by a chisel emerging from a mouth.

Later in the book, we’ll see some significant permutations of these naming types, and we’ll really notice them too, since the basics are pointedly noted in the first chapter.

Being, Not-Being, their altogetherness, their differently masked names once they step out of the cave and get bearded, plus the crux of the mystery:

Most importantly, in this introductory chapter we meet and learn a little something about two of the book’s fundamental characters. The facts we get, in order of appearance:

  • Not-Being is shown by a pictogram of a mysterious, shaman-like dancer and is often taken to mean “null” or “nothingness.” Lâozi tell us its personal naming is the conception of Heaven-Earth (merged to be something like… the whole universe or “heaven and earth”).
  • Being is shown by a pictogram of a hand holding a piece of meat. Lâozi says its personal naming is the rearing, raising, or “suckling” of all the gazillion of material things in that universe, literally 10,000 Things—all matter external or cut off from you.
  • In the traditional version, Not-Being is “wanting.” It’s missing something that’s been eroded, and that is a mysterious feminine essence called miào.
  • In the traditional tradition, Being is “wanting.” It’s missing something that’s been eroded, and that is delineated surface—like a patrolled frontier border lightly hit with a sword tip from left to right (jiâo).
  • Whoa, though! Really they’re a matched pair and can be spoken of in this state where they’re altogether—as common as daily dishes—stepping out of their cave…
  • But. Once they step out, lots of “buts” apply. The first, main, and most unusual and specific “but” is a character that’s a pictogram of a beard (èr). The instant they step out, Lâozi starts describing them with a qualifier: and yet now, bearded…. Every time this èr character’s used, I can’t help but harken back to its intro here as a description of Not-Being and Being as they step out of the cave.
  • So they’re altogether stepping out of a cave and yet now, bearded…. they have differently masked personal names (presumably this refers back to the “Being” and “Not-Being” personal names described before).
  • What they’re called from the gut when they’re altogether has this hard-to-see darkness—the figure-eight structure of a skein of string-dyed-black (xuán). Based on how the text’s written, I think the entire set-up described beforehand—what I summarized in the above bullet points—constitutes that xuán. But I guess it could be something as yet unspecified, something that we discover later.
  • And here’s the kicker… that hidden structure has its own hard-to-see dark figure-eight structure of string-dyed-black.
  • And THIS, my friends, is the mysterious feminine essence’s double-winged gateway. Ending the first chapter here leaves us with miào feeling somehow central to the whole story.

What’s this have to do with our original conflict between The Way and our tradition?

I guess that’s the question Lâozî’s setting up for the suspenseful tale about to unfold to Yinxi, me, and you.

What stands out to you?

I’m going to give you some time to ponder this introduction and my question and send me your answers before I prejudice you with mine—because they’re doozies! And with that cliff-hanger… I thank you for being here with me and for sending me your comments. It means the world to me.

Categories
Cí 慈 Dào Qīn 親 Xīn 心 Xīn 心

heart

xīn

In honor of Saint Valentines Day and love of every kind, here’s a special post featuring, yes: love. We see three kinds of love as we go through the first 37 chapters (the “Dào part”) of the Dào Dé Jīng.

~

First, we’ll meet ài (愛). Its modern translation is, quite simply, to love. Specifically it’s to treasure, or be fond of and also can be an honorific for someone else’s daughter or an adjective like affectionate or beloved. I love this bronze inscription image from the Warring States period (it’s the closest I can find to what Lâozî might have drawn):

In the later Qin dynasty, a foot (夊) was added to the bottom of this character—you can see it if you study the modern character, 愛. It’s thought this was done to show that this character had to do with people. But the original character’s meaning was carried by the picture of a heart. Originally in Oracle Bone inscriptions it looked much (thrillingly much!) like the Valentine heart I hope you draw somewhere today:

Aw! We’ll see this character, xīn (心), on its own and as a sub-component in many places throughout the Dào. By Western Zhou times, the bronze inscription had morphed to what, honestly, looks a lot less like a heart to me (?!):

The upper sub-component of ài is considered to be the phonetic part that just gives the word its sound. It’s pronounced jì, and its original Oracle Bone Script character looked like this:

It shows a kneeling figure… but with those extra lines from the top of the head to the neck. This character means: when food becomes stuck in the throat. Oh my gosh. When it comes to the heart, we all know that feeling. That’s why I’ve translated ài to mean:

loving—your heart-core in your throat—

Lâozî uses this character in three places:

  • First, in terms of a leader loving the civilians.
  • Second, in terms of oneself, when really making an effort, loving Heaven-Below (usually assumed to mean this earthly world).
  • Third, in terms a “virtuous” person loving the “materials” they work with (AKA “not-really virtuous people!”)

Lots of food for thought in this character and how it’s used. I love the idea that Lâozî’s main characters get choked up over the world at large, the masses, the “non-virtuous.” Those mystics tend to do that, don’t they.

~

The next kind of love is a person, an intimate: qīn (親). In modern times, this character can mean any kind of bosom beloved including a close friend, parent, brother, sister, or other blood relative. It also can mean marriage, kissing, or being close to someone. Look at this gorgeous old character:

The character on the right’s considered the part that gives the word its meaning: it’s someone looking and seeing, a big old eye for their head.

The left character’s considered to be the phonetic part. Like the heart above, it’s pronounced xīn. Interesting, huh. But what it shows breaks one’s heart: it’s a picture of a chisel used to mark slaves and criminals. Etymologically, its oldest Proto-Sino-Tibetan root meant liver, heart, bile, bitter.

Since I like to include all aspects of a character, I translate it for myself as:

intimate — a loved one you see closely even in suffering like from that chisel used to mark slaves and criminals

Qīn appears twice in the Dáo. Once it refers to the second-best kind of leader—this beloved one. The other time, it’s when talking about the unfortunate consequences that follow when “the six intimates are not really harmonizing.” Very mysterious. We will delve into those implications later when we deal more fully with Chapters 17 and 18.

Until then, this character has a big effect one me because seeing one another, to me, is truly love. Actually seeing one another, wounds and all, and holding everything in safety and love is profound for both the seer and the seen. (The New Testament describes Jesus loving a particular individual only one time. It was the rich guy who had as much chance of getting to heaven as would a camel in sliding through the eye of a needle. Here’s what the Bible says about that: “Jesus, seeing him. loved him.” Seeing seem to be a lot of what love’s about.)

~

Lastly, we have cí (慈). This character shows two skeins of silk string dyed black atop a heart:

Modern translations are the kind of love or affection shown from someone older to someone younger, benevolent, and, in the more classic sense, the honorific for a mother. Throughout the Dào, I call it:

benevolent as doubly-profound parental love, mysterious as two loops of string dyed black over the heart-core

It’s also become the character for the Buddhist concept of maitrī: loving-kindness, good will, friendliness. That’s about right isn’t it. The best part of Valentine’s Day.

In my house, we celebrate this day of love with ALL heart-shaped and red foods. Mashed potatoes! Cake! Meatloaf for the non-vegetarians! This tradition started with my qīn college roommate, Polly—who died way too young of a BRCA-associated breast cancer—and the other beloveds we lived with (Nancy, Gwen, and Ann). Every Valentine’s Day since, I’ve delighted in that tradition, whether it was alone, with friends, with my little kids, with my grown kids, or with my honey. As a result, I’ve never once had those Valentine Day blues that the modern “romantic” take on this day causes in so many people. I hope you treat yourself with just this kind of cí today and every single day. Thanks for reading along here with me. I love you.

Categories
#2 Êr 耳 Bù 不 Shèng 聖

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

shèng

Last time, in the second half of Chapter 2, we met a new character: shèng, 聖.

This character’s sub-component 耳 (êr) is a pictogram of an ear and considered to be what gives the overall character its meaning. This character is also the second part of what’s widely believed to be Lâozî’s own personal childhood name, Lî Êr. Its bronze inscription glyph looks like this:

The other sub-component, 呈 (chéng), is considered to be the phonetic part that gives shèng its sound. Its glyph is in turn also a compound of two pictograms. The first is a mouth (口):

The second may be a carrying pole (壬) or, more likely, the symbol representing king (王, three lines that represent Heaven, Man, and Earth):

When you put those two together as the character chéng it looks like this:

In its modern form, chéng is translated as flat, submit, show, appear, petition, or memorial. Etymologists say this old glyph represents a man standing on the ground, speaking. It’s interesting to me that it’s like a king BUT ALSO listening and speaking. That’s an important distinction. You remember our main character, Dáo, The Way of the Loos-Haired Chieftain is ALSO listening and speaking BUT isn’t standing still. Rather that person is walking awhile and stopping awhile on a path. It feels to me as if the latter is more part of the world and regular life.

When you put all the components together for shèng, we get:

Modern meanings of this word are noble, holy, sacred, saint, sage, Confucius, master, professional, emperor, and king. Translators of the Dào most commonly use master or sage. My translation carries all that (with the exception of Confucius himself who is said to have been born the year Lâozî left the country and disappeared):

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

Many people think this character refers to Lâozî as well as other wise people who follow the Dào, but there are other places where Lâozî actually says “I.” Shèng appears 11 times in the Dào part of the Dào Dé Jīng (i.e., the first 37 chapters). In eight of the appearances it’s preceded by a phrase that carries a lofty, objective perspective (“the sun sees that this means…“). This all combines to make me wonder if the grounded sage is an image of a theoretical, idealized wise person and not Lâozî per se. For these reasons, I treat it as its own character.

~

Lâozî introduces this ideal person in Chapter 2. Directly after giving us the list of paired opposites, Lâozî segues into a description of the sage during certain conditions:

  • As we saw last time, the first thing we learn about the grounded sage is that with respect to “staying,” the sage’s personal role has this Not-Being efforting. Here’s the rest of the list…
  • When it comes to being out in public moving, the grounded sage’s teaching has this: just the husk of, but not really, speaking.
  • When it comes to the Ten Thousand Things, the grounded sage’s getting up and going to work, and yet now, as one bearded, is just the husk of, but not really, falling into some empty-language style of governing.
  • When it comes to birthing, the grounded sage, as one bearded, is just the husk of, but not really, Being.
  • When it comes to real work completing—that final nail in the weapon on a pole—the grounded sage, as one bearded, is absent as sticks that were tied together in a bundle to start a fire—’fff!’—not abiding.

Very clear… and also puzzling of course. It feels straightforward that the sage teaches without too much speaking and that the sage works with all the many realities of the world without really falling into empty-worded governance. But then, when it gets to “birthing,” we float into that familiar uncertainty that comes with the characters Being and Not-Being. And THEN… then the sage is actually completely absent when it comes to work-completing. Perhaps the sage was “burnt up” in starting some metaphorical fire. What is going on here?

The sage, as well as Being and Not-Being, are prominent characters in the narrative arc of the Dào. For that reason, we’re going to pause here and devote the next post to the “birthing” that links these three characters. Hopefully more will be revealed to us.

~

Until then, what’s my takeaway?

I like to unravel the Dào for a couple reasons. One is to learn about Lâozî, and the other is to learn what ideas this book holds for my own life. Even without solving the whole mystery of the story or even deciding for sure on the meaning of any one character, I still get a lot out of any snippet… whether it be a word, line, or chapter. A big theme for me is allowing myself to rest in not being certain about things. That holds true in every post thus far as well as every aspect of my life. This character of the sage is already posing some useful and pleasant-feeling variations on that theme. Consider the pictures in that character: listening, as well as speaking, feet on the ground even as connected to the loftiness above us. Getting a visual image of that sensation makes me so grateful to Lâozî.

Thank you for being here! If you have any comments for me before next time, please use the contact form (click on the Contact tab). I love getting your notes.

Tinkered with on 2/16/20

Categories
#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!

Categories
#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

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 Wàn 萬 Wù 物

the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten-Thousand Things cut off from you—all external matter like cows etc.

wàn wù

You’ve heard of today’s characters if you’ve a passing familiarity with any Buddhist and Taoist writings or, for that matter, the works of various western artists from composer John Cage and novelist Maria Dermout to writer Cheryl Strayed whose memoir Wild describes Dermout’s novel The Ten Thousand Things in such a way that you have to pause on that page of Strayed’s book and order it at once.

Gasp. That was quite a sentence/paragraph. These words do that to me.

Today we’re looking at two characters because they’re very often—though not always—written together in the Dào Dé Jīng: wàn wù (萬 物). This combo’s most commonly interpreted as The Ten Thousand Things, in keeping with the usual English way of talking about that Buddhist and Taoist concept.

When you try to find the origin of the phrase, all roads lead back to the Dào Dé Jīng. Did Lâozî invent this way of describing the many things and events manifest in the world? Some people mention the I Ching in connection with this phrase. I haven’t studied that book nor even read any of it versions or commentaries, but I can see that neither wàn nor wù appear in the 64 hexagrams that make up its divination system. Did the Buddha coin this phrase? Wait, who came first anyway, the Buddha or Lâozî? Short answer: no-one knows for sure. Because no-one knows anything much for certain about either one’s life, especially regarding dates. Some people think Lâozî became the Buddha’s teacher after leaving China. Heck, here’s a fantastical and beautiful image of “Confucius handing over Gautama Buddha to Laozi:”

Awww… So sweet. Ok, yeah. that probably didn’t happen, but we can’t really know for sure. Remember, some scholars think Lâozî lived two hundred years later than I’m assuming, in the 300’s BC. (Confession: looking at that lovely painting I do get a little nervous about these old wise men alone with this baby. Philosophical wisdom aside, I hope Lâozî knows how to change diapers and properly burp, never mind feed, an infant! I know that’s irrationally sexist of me—after all my husband knew more about that stuff than I when we brought little baby Caitlin home from the hospital. Thank goodness. But still. Anyway, I guess the painting is symbolic as baby Buddha looks already old also!))

ANYWAY. Whether or not Lâozî invented the phrase—and you know that’s always my preferred assumption!—this Ten Thousand Things phrase does appear in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng 11 times.

~

The first character, wàn (萬), is a pictogram of a scorpion:

Scary, huh. I think I see the stinger! This character became the name of a particular ritual dance in ancient China which some people, since then anyway, have called sorcery. Linguists think that usage stems from China’s oldest “Proto-Sin-Tibetan” roots since there are related words in Tibetan word (for “medicine” or “she-demons worshipped by common folk”) and Burmese (for “utter mystic words to heal or ward off evil.” This whole line of meaning makes me think about our animal-tail-waving dancer in the Not-Being character! Ultimately, wàn has come to a modern connotation of myriad, a great number; innumerable,  numerous; very, extremely, absolutely; and, specifically, ten thousand.

I don’t know how a picture of a scorpion, or a ritual dance for that matter, came to depict “myriad.” I’ve read—and been influenced by—people who thought it had to do with how insects swarm. Alas, as I stop to think about, I remember that scorpions aren’t insects. Nor do they swarm except in video games—at least not according to anything I’ve read or experienced myself. Wandering the desert as kids, my brother and I did meet and play around with a lot of scorpions, but they were always traveling solo. And I’m pretty sure that if scorpions did swarm, the internet would be full of terrifying photos! BUT I could be wrong. I did use the word “swarm” in my initial translation, as you saw in this blog’s first post. I wanted to keep some obscure reference to the pictogram. Now I lean toward not being obscure myself since Lâozî has that covered! I’m into just naming the images straight out even if it feels harder to understand. I trust that whatever ancient things are supposed to be conjured up will be. Even if they’re from a culture different than our own, they’re still part of the human experience and we will feel something. Who am I to say we shouldn’t see what Lâozî presented? So my translation is:

the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten Thousand

Lâozî uses this word 12 times in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng. In only of those times it does NOT appear with today’s second word, wù.

~

Wù (物) is a compound character:

On the left is a cow, ox, or buffalo (niú, 牛). That is still the modern meaning of this sub-component character, though it can sometimes be used to say pig-headed, stubborn, powerful. It’s considered the semantic part that gives the word wù its meaning.

The phonetic part of this compound character—the drawing on the right that gives the word its sound, wù —is a picture of a knife with blood on it. Yup. On its own it’s been used as a negative particle since the Oracle Bone days. Remember we discussed several such negating words meaning “not, no,” etc.. in the post on Not-Being.

Together, these two components make a character that today means thing, matter; all of the outside world, excluding oneself; substance, content. In physics, wù is used for the term “matter.”

Side-note: wù is in fact part of the word for physics itself, wùlǐ (物理). The other component, lî is a picture of polishing jade and means tidying up or put things in order. That word’s not in the Dào text.

Our full character wù appears 23 times in the first 37 chapters—11 of those times with wàn. I translate it as:

Things cut off from you—all external matter like cows etc.

~

And that brings me to my new translation of the two words together. Mainly, I think it’s key to remember that neither alone carries the full meaning of The Ten-Thousand Things. (I rather sloppily included Things in the first word in my own initial translation!)

Ten-Thousand is wàn, and Things is wù. Most Dào Dé Jīng translators don’t use that phrase though for the two together though and instead go with: all creatures, all things, or all particular things. Since I also want to include the pictures and all old ways of describing them, I stick with:

the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten-Thousand Things—all external matter cut off from you—like cows etc.

Goose bumps. We see you, Lâozî.

Thank you for checking in here today, friends. And for messaging me your responses and support. See you tomorrow.

Categories
#1 Xuán

mysterious figure-eight of string dyed black

xuán

Perhaps it’s wrong for a translator to have favorites… but xuán (玄) makes me swoon. Look at the Western Zhou Bronze Inscription above. Think about the idea that Lâozî probably wrote it just like that! It’s soooooooo evocative. Even six centuries later, the Small Seal Script detailed in the Shuowen Jiezi drew it pretty similarly:

We talked about this character a little in the post about the mysterious feminine essence—and indeed those two characters occur together again in Chapter 15. You can see how they definitely share an invisible cosmic nature. As you recall, the modern definitions of xuán are deep, profound, and mysterious. I would say translators of the Dào do most commonly use mysterious, mysteriously. or mystery, but they also famously and commonly translate xuán as darkness, primal, inner, hidden, supreme, and profound depending on the context. Ahem. Notice how I’m not giving a sermon about how much I dislike inconsistencies of this sort? I call that progress!

What doubly intrigued me about this character the first time I delved into its roots was the description of this glyph as “a string, dyed black.” And then of course I was taken with the string’s figure-eight shape. I immediately thought of the infinity symbol, and my first translation quite romantically included that image. To be fair, I didn’t think it was right to call it a figure-eight since Arabic numerals weren’t introduced to China until sometime between 1271 and 1368 AD—way after Lâozî’s time. But upon further research, I can’t find reliable evidence that the sideways eight was a symbol for infinity in ancient China either. So how can I describe the shape AND, for that matter, why did Lâozî use it?

I think the answer’s held within that first etymological description I read: a string dyed black. How could anyone ascertain those specific details from that image: string, dyed?

If you’re jumping up and down, waving your hand, and shouting “I know, I know!” then you’ve probably done some embroidery, knitting, spinning, or dying of fibers. You might say it looks like a skein. Or technically speaking, a “hank,” though the terms are often interchanged.

A pleasant side trip into the world of fibers:

A hank is a pretty long length of yarn or string arranged into one big open loop like this:

In order to handle a hank during the dying process, the loop needs to be stabilized. And you do that by securing it with figure-eight pieces of thread! Click here for a link to a charming 2-3/4-minute video that shows you how to do that with yarn. A hank with some figure-eights tied in place looks like this (well not really but you get the idea, especially if you watch the video):

Once the fibers are dyed, it’s easier to handle, transport, and store a hank if you twist and fold it into a sturdy coil. Click here for a link showing a quick way to make a coil. The end result does look sort of like several figure-eights attached to each other end-to-end (I hope you’ll look at the video as my sketches aren’t great!):

Why am I getting into all this besides the fact that it’s always super interesting to voyage into a sub-world of skill and knowledge? Because I’m trying to understand the concept and pictogram of figure-eight of string dyed black. So far we haven’t seen anything exactly like the xuán character, though the figure-eight ties are obviously ringing a bell.

A few definitions:

  • In theory, a coil is still a hank, and
  • a “skein” is technically 1/16th of a hank. But many people nowadays call the coil arrangement a skein, especially for
  • “string, twine, rope, cord, or yarn” which are defined as several strands or threads of fiber twisted together.
  • A “strand or thread” is technically one individual piece of long, thin fiber.
  • Except for “embroidery thread.” These individual strands are so fine that they’re commonly twisted together for ease of sale. We rather mistakenly but commonly call the result “thread,” though it’s technically string. Embroidery thread—be it wool, cotton, or silk, as was likely the case in Lâozî’s world—comes arranged in a very particular shape, also called a “skein.”

I hope you’ve seen these colorful little embroidery skeins and are getting excited thinking about it because… THEY DO kind of resemble figure-eights. And silk embroidery thread—which still almost always originates in China—exactly does because it has only one paper band squeezing in the center of a loop-shaped hank.

Now, here’s what I’m thinking. What if the technique for stabilizing hanks of fiber for dying is similar the world over and for generations past, including in ancient China? And what if they didn’t use paper bands to hold together embroidery thread skeins but rather… the same figure-eight tie they used during dying processes?

I decided to try that out. With black thread. Here’s my result:

So cool, right?! But very hard to see… ohhhhhhhh. Have you ever worked with black thread? It IS hard to see. When you want stitching to be visible, you use light thread. I start to understand the translations like darkness and mystery.

Meanwhile, I re-arranged light, flashes, and background so you can see this little skein more clearly:

So cool. Still hard to see the center though (we hear you, Lâozî!). More light, bigger, closer…

It’s a figure-eight all right. And see the figure-eight string tie holding the figure-eight string into its characteristic shape?! What a lovely character and metaphor, thought Lâozî.

Back to translating

And even though Lâozî didn’t use the word “eight,” I’m going to modify my translation to insert this picture into a modern reader’s mind exactly as it’s shown in the pictogram:

mysterious figure-eight of string dyed black

We’re not going to wrap up Chapter 1 today since I got a little carried away with the thread experiment—yes, in order to be transparent I must report that some threads and part of my sanity were injured in the making of this blog….

Plus it will be nice for us all to have a day or two to let this thread image knock around in your unconscious with what we have read so far. Tomorrow, we’ll clean up a few words in Chapter 1, and then on Wednesday… put it altogether. Or as you and I like to say: .

Thank you so much for joining me today for what’s definitely the most exciting blogging day yet, for me anyway. I look forward to your comments!

Categories
#1 Tóng

spoken of altogether with one another—like all mortal, earthly commonplace plates—

tóng

Every and any commonplace plate you see,

… is an example of ordinary things being altogether in this worldly, earthly, mortal existence. At least that’s the sentiment I construct when I string together one sentence that includes all the different definitions (in italics) of the sub-component 凡 (fán). And I love that sentiment. One of the most special thing about the fact that we’re all ordinary mortal humans is how we’re all in this together—you can find us in every household all over the world.

As you can see, in today’s word tóng (同), that common flat dish is drawn above an image we’ve seen before, a mouth:

From our first post’s version of Chapter 1, you’ll remember that I thought the plate and mouth symbolized “altogetherness” because they’re so commonly found together. At least around my mouth! So I originally translated this word as altogether with one another—as together as a commonplace plate with a mouth. But being around these characters more, I’ve learned that while sometimes a mouth does indeed depict a mouth, at other times it means a hole, an entrance, or an exit (like the mouth of a cave) or maybe the fact that something is coming out of a mouth, i.e., someone is saying it. We have the same use of this word in English. (“‘Oh no,’ she mouthed.” Or “I was mouthing off again.”)

So… once again… I’ve refined my translation:

spoken of altogether with one another—like all mortal, earthly commonplace plates—

And once again, the translation most true to the image AND the abstractions is also the most lyrical (despite or maybe because of being additionally complex).

The modern definitions of tóng are: same, identical, together, with each other, with, and, and as well as. Although this word appears in only three of the first 37 chapters (the Dào part) of the Dào Dé Jīng, it’s hard to say exactly how others translate it in these places. Probably because tóng occurs in some of the most confusing lines and they’re trying to make it more succinct and understandable, translators often lump things together and interpret these lines in a readable way rather than directly translate them such that you can put your finger on each word. Furthermore, without exception, each translator I’ve seen varies this word quite a bit within the Dáo Dè Jīng depending on if they think it’s being used as an adjective or a verb. That said, the most common translations I can make out are: same, both, unites, assimilates, merge, accords with, follows, at one with, and in accord with.

Now…. right or wrong of me, you know what I’m about to say: I get downright disgruntled when I can’t tell when/where the same particular word is being used! Happily, my translation seems to work everywhere, which means you and I can read along feeling… gruntled?! Granted, we also will be a little bewildered. But we know Lâozî likes us like that…for now anyway.

Thank you so much for joining me here again today and for your messages of support and interest. Together, we’ve dived deep—methodically, objectively, literally, and pictorially—into the majority of Chapter 1’s words! We’re getting close to stepping back from our cracked open neutral bewilderment and taking a look at what happens when we put it altogether. See you tomorrow.