Tag: Not-Being

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#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.

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#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.

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#1 Dì Mén Tiān Xià

Heaven (that sky level above the human head)

tiān

You’ve seen the word Tiān many times—as part of the word Tiananmen, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, in Beijing. Actually, we’ll see all three components of that word in the Dào Dé Jīng, starting with today’s word: tiān. It’s the heaven part, and its modern character looks like this:

天

In the pictogram of the Warring States Chu Slip script—which is the era after Lâozî—as well as every script thereafter, this character’s shown by a picture of a person with a line over their head:

In the oldest known Chinese writing—the Oracle Bone script of the Shang dynasty, it also looked like that:

During the Zhou dynasty, this figure for sky was the word that became used to talk about the highest god which previously was called Shàngdì, meaning something like God of Shang. That’s why some people occasionally translate tiān as Lord, presumably depending on context. Why the change in the Shang dynasty? One thing I’ve learned is that often with each new emperor, words that sounded like the last emperor’s name were more or less banished! It really complicates etymology. Sometimes I try to make some big cosmic reason for a character turning into or being replaced by another character, and it turns out that no one was allowed to say the old name, for example “Shang,” lest the powers-that-be-think they’re not loyal. Obviously I am over-simplifying, Anyway, in Zhou times, this high god and/or the place it lived were called Sky, so that flavor often is captured by translating this word as heaven. “Heaven worship” is one name for this religion which was the state religion before the 20th century. Its philosophies are quite beautiful sounding:

“…it sees the world and the gods of its phenomena as an organic whole, or cosmos, which continuously emerges from a simple principle. This is expressed by the concept that “all things have one and the same principle” (wànwù yīlǐ 萬物一理).This principle is commonly referred to as Tiān 天, a concept generally translated as “Heaven”, referring to the northern culmen and starry vault of the skies and its natural laws which regulate earthly phenomena and generate beings as their progenitors.“

Yes, I just quoted Wikipedia! Sorry/not sorry because when you want to know just a little about something, it is just the way to get a taste.

I want you to see how, in Taoism, this word Tiān is a fundamental concept with all kinds of the cosmological implications we just tasted. But the question is, was Lâozî a Taoist?! If you think Lâozî founded Taoism, then that’s like asking if Christ was Christian (we can be sure Jesus wasn’t attached to later dogma in the Christian church since it didn’t exist yet, though people can and do argue as to which of those dogmas are exactly as he meant it to be). Whether or not you think you think Lâozî founded Taoism partially depends on if you think Lâozî lived in the 300’s or in the 500’s. Why does this matter to me right now? Because I’m trying to figure out if Lâozî used tiān as heaven or sky. Probably both, like current English speakers do with the word “heavens.” Its use as capital-H Heaven was clearly established during Lâozî’s time, and that’s probably why almost every translator calls this character heaven. This creates such a quandary for my picture-oriented translation method! Dang it. I’m going to change my translation AGAIN. And it’s going to be longer. Again:

Heaven (that sky level above the human head)

“Remember,” I keep telling myself, “we’re going for the complete picture, not the most succinct one.” And you know what? I think the complete picture ends up being super evocative and even lyrical.

~

Before we leave today’s word, I want you to know a little about all the ways Lâozî combined it with other characters in the Dào Dé Jīng to create distinct meanings.

  • tiān xià: During Lâozî’s lifetime, xià (下) was drawn as one line below another: It now means lower part, under, inferior, and below. I capture all that with my interpretation of it as down below (lower level). As we’ll see beginning in Chapter 2, this word is commonly combined with tiān to make Sky-Below or Heaven-Below. You can see why most translators interpret it as world, and, in different places, everyone, all in the world, etc. I of course let the lengthy combo of my own translations stand on its own, but I do hyphenate them since they’re so commonly combined into one entity: Heaven (that sky level above the human head)–down below (lower level). When you look at it like that, does it mean heaven when it occurs down below? Or does it mean some scope that encompasses both levels? We don’t have to decide. As usual, we can let the poet’s multi-layered meanings wash over us.
  • tiān mén: As you probably intuited at the beginning of this post, mén (門) translates as gate. The old glyph has barely changed: I love it when that’s the case. It is quite simply a drawing of a double-winged gateway, and that’s how I translate it. Combined with tiān, we get: Heaven (that sky level above the human head)–double-winged gateway. Usually other translators call it heaven’s gate, gates of heaven, or heavenly gate.
  • tiān dì: Right here in the first chapter we see one of the most common uses of tiān: it’s combination with dì (地). Lâozî most likely would have drawn dì like this: The left side of that character, by itself, looked like this: That’s a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel and means earth, soil, clay, dust. The right-hand side of dì is considered the phonetic side, though as is often the case, that seems like a stretch to me… this sub-component’s pronounced yê. How does that tell us how to pronounce dì? As usual, I suspect the so-called phonetic component also contributes to the meaning. There’s a lot going on in that right-side, and I’m still trying to figure out all the little sketches in there, but apparently in Lâozî’s era, it was drawn more simply, just with this:There’s been a difference of opinion on whether this was a pictogram of female genitalia, a washbasin or funnel, or a mouth with air coming down out of it. It’s translated as too, also, and as well or as neither/either in the case of negatively phrased sentences. In other words, it’s a sound you make to add emphasis. Where it occurs by itself in this book, I’ve naturally translated it as —yes, that too, vagina! Of course, you know by now that I’m not intentionally being provocative just on this character since I throw in the whole kitchen sink on every, character, yê?! And too, you may be seeing a trend where over time characters’ seem to have undergone some puritanical “cleanups,” at least in the English translations. We see that with English words too. Some still reference their very earthy origins and we don’t even notice it when we say them. For example. when things are messed up and you say there’s a “snafu,” you may not know that was a military acronym for “situation normal: all fucked up.” So for now we’ll assume all these missing references to women with breasts, nursing women, etc. are probably normal and not an effort to sanitize or gender-wash the Dào. Nonetheless it may feel profane to some that I’m reintroducing these old words and images into a sacred document. Please know, I truly don’t think of it that way as I consider none of this profane and furthermore consider it an honor to Lâozî to try getting close to the original writing as best we can. And of course, most importantly, nothing I or anyone can do is able to diminish the Dào or the Dào Dé Jīng. And with that big disclaimer… my translation of dì is Earth (this soil vagina). Altogether with tiān, we have: Heaven (that sky level above the human head)—Earth (this soil vagina). Or you can silently say in your mind Heaven-Earth or heaven and earth, as most translators do.

~

The sky just above your own head—the fresh air, the perfect oxygen level, the way it renews you not just to breathe it in but to look up at it. No matter your religion, it is heavenly. That, I think, is my favorite part of today’s word, of where I live, and of most days. I hope you have some time today to lift your eyes and breathe in this heaven that we have access to everyday. Thank you for using part of it to join me here.

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#1 Mû Shî Xuán

beginning in and by a woman

shî

Remember how, during my post about wú, I changed my own translation to include more of the actual picture shown in the script from Lâozî’s own time? I just did it again with today’s character, shî. Writing out my rationale to you is having a big effect on this project and shaping my perspective on translations I’d settled on over a year ago! So thank you for reading along and for your ideas and support. It’s results in a powerful alchemy.

So, back to today’s character. The modern version might look familiar to you:

始

The left hand component is the same kneeling woman (person with breasts) we saw in xuán, the mysterious feminine essence:

The right-hand component (台) is considered the phonetic part of the character, giving us a pronunciation cue—it’s pronounced yí which rhymes with the overall word’s sound. You can see it is itself a compound character. I find two different ways of looking at the top sub-subcharacter. On one hand, 厶 comes from an old pictogram that looks like this:

This character is from the Warring States (WS) era bronze inscription, so more than likely this came from just after Lâozî, but it’s the closest I can get for now. It’s considered to be a picture of revolving around oneself or self-circling and meant private.

Even though I would have tended to think that was the origin of this sub-sub-component, more sources say it’s the character 㠯, and that this is the phonetic clue for yí. Not much else besides the pronunciation seems very certain. The pictogram and meaning are mysterious. The Western Zhou Bronze Inscription character from Lâozî’s time looked like this:

Some say that’s a plough; others say its a turned version of the pictogram for a snake or a fetus. In modern times, its use is mainly in a different word also pronounced yî, 以, where it’s morphed into being written in the form of the left-hand component you see there. It’s meaning is by, according to, or by means of.

The lower sub-sub-component (口) is another one that’s familiar to you. It’s a mouth, which sometimes means mouth, sometimes indicates someone is “saying” the thing in whatever other picture it’s drawn next to, and sometimes refers to a hole in something (entrance, exit, mouth of a cave, etc.) :

Together, these two added up to a compound character 台 that was the original character meaning happy. In the 4th-3rd centuries BC it came to mean I or me. I can’t find an old image of this word, so I drew how it might have looked when Lâozî drew them together:

And when we put that with the kneeling woman in the left sub-component, it would look like this:

That’s the complete old glyph style drawing of today’s word, shî, usually translated as begin, start, beginning, starting, or initial. But… after I saw the etymology described as “beginning in and by a woman,” I decided to re-think those ordinary translations.

In fact, fittingly, this is the very first, the beginning etymological reference I noticed on Hilmar Alquiros’ website. It’s what started this project of mine. I was quite taken with its beauty and amount and quality of interesting information. To keep the original feel, I decided conception was a better translation, and you saw me use that in my initial translation of Chapter 1 in my very first post.

The thing is, typing all this to you, I remember that when I decided on that word, I was still trying very hard to come up with simple, preferably one-word translations to make it easier to read and in keeping with the one-word nature of each character in the Tao Te Ching. Heck they are all one syllable!! But in the last year and a half, I’ve evolved more and more to believing it’s valuable to include as much information as I can to give the reader—be it me or you—regarding the experience of the old glyph as LâoZî may have drawn it.

For that reason, I’m now going with the translation I first saw:

beginning in and by a woman

One thing immediately reinforced my belief that this way of interpreting the characters is valuable: the recurrence throughout Chapter 1 of this kneeling person with breasts.

~

Remember the context of this character in Chapter 1: it’s when Lâozî’s telling us that “Not-Being, its name is Sky-Earth’s beginning in and by a woman.” I’m going to get into how in the world we can interpret this phrasing, probably the day after tomorrow. But meanwhile, just note that in the very next pair of lines, we learn that “Being, its name is The TenThousand Things’ suckling.” Of course suckling was the term I decided to use back in my one-word translation days. Let’s look at it again.

The actual word, mû (母), looked like this:

Yup, the kneeling person’s breasts now have distinct nipples a lá a nursing woman, female, older woman relative, or mother. Most translators use that last word. I want to keep the word “woman” so we can “see” it shares a sub-component with shî, so I’m modifying my original translation to this:

suckling from a woman

And then a few lines later, and in the very last line also, we see our kneeling woman in the form of xuán, the mysterious feminine essence—a few drops of that womanly essence:

All these female-specific words do notably contrast with that male-specific image in the word cháng, 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 ‘ji’ version of… things and, for that matter, in the word ér, and yet—now bearded. It remains to be seen what we can make of these gender-specific terms. Other characters (the dancer in wú, the loose-haired chieftain in dào, the person being named in míng) have no specific gender, nor do most terms and pronouns in Chinese.

I had considered wrapping up Chapter 1 today, but I felt negligent not talking to you about these other concepts and so instead dove into these words, and thank goodness since it led me to some worthwhile tinkering. I best not move on without delving into a few more. Tomorrow I think we’ll get into Heaven… or at least the sky and its heavenly implications. I’ll see you then. Thanks for visiting here again and following this translation’s evolution. I look forward to your comments!

Tinkered with 3/10/20

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#1 Zhī

this has

zhī

This pictogram of a foot used to mean the beginning place. For awhile I translated its very common modern character, 之, as steps off from here for… although the more modern definitions are this, to go, and to sprout. (That makes me wonder if this isn’t a drawing of a plant?!)

But I would say that Dào translators most often interpret it as the possessive particle—it’s placed between two words to indicate that the following word is possessed by the previous word. Here’s an example albeit one mixing Chinese and English words: “cat zhī hat” would mean the hat belongs to the cat: the cat‘s hat.

To make their translations flowing, translators use pretty much every variation of this word. I really want to follow my rule of using the same translation every where for any given term, so I translate it as:

this has

Even though it’s shorter than my more complete, pictogram-oriented first-draft above, it’s still awkward. So, as I describe in the Rules and Exceptions tab, I sometimes use ‘s. I may change this in the future, but my effort steps off from here for… now. 🙂

Today’s post is short and sweet because tomorrow’s is on the cosmic side and may even wrap up this encompassing summary that Lâozî’s given us in the first chapter! We shall see. But for sure you’re going to find out that any internal logic in Chapter 1 hinges on our ability to use today’s word, zhī, with clarity.

Meanwhile, thank you for popping in here, being open to this new way of looking at The Way, and keeping me company. I’m enjoying the comments you’re sending to me. Keep ’em coming!

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#1 Ér

and yet now, bearded—

ér

A beard. That’s the pictogram for ér in the old Western Zhou Bronze Inscription script that Lâozî seems likely to have used— and the modern character looks almost exactly the same:

而

Modern translations include and, and also, and yet, whereas, while, nevertheless, and from___to___, however the most common interpretation is but. “Literary” (which often means “older”) use includes you and your, but (ha!) Dào translators most often stick with some variation of but.

But. But… how do you get but from a beard? My guess is that with a beard, something indeed has changed from __ to ___. Even so, the first version of the thing is still there. And yet it also has this different quality now, at this time. Whereas and while there’s a smooth face underneath, nevertheless there’s definitely this hair on top.

(Some linguists say this pictogram depicts roots. Interestingly, I can see how that would carry some of those same implications: a very new different surface thing is co-existing with some previous something that’s still there, underneath. But the trend with the most reputable sources seems to be beard, so that’s what I’m using here.)

I loved looking into this word because it made me consider the subtle meanings and differences of all the little connecting words we use to show there’s a change from the preceding word/phrase to the following word/phrase. As far as I can tell (and remember, I don’t speak Chinese), ér seems to capture most of the aspects of but, possibly with an emphasis on while and whereas. So I wanted my translation to capture, in particular, the classic linking and juxtaposition of two things that are different plus the time change (now), the continuity (and, yet), and of course the original pictogram:

and yet now, bearded—

What do you think? Would it be better as simply “but” or maybe… “but, as if bearded?” Something else? Let me know your ideas and reactions by clicking on the comment counter in this post’s header or using the form in the Contact tab. I love my translation BUT also remain open! (Ha!)

Thanks for joining me here. I will see you tomorrow to look at an even tinier character with potentially even more impact on the Dâo‘s logic. (Ha again!)

UPDATE: in this later post, you’ll see where I changed ny translation of this term after digging deeper and discovering that its “literary” translation is you or your.

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#1 Míng Wèi 謂

what it’s called—from the gut

wèi

“What’s in a name?” Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t Lâozî’s most pressing question in Chapter 1 of the Dáo Dé Jíng. Consider the different kinds of naming presented in this first chapter:

  • public courtesy-names: Inside the cháng character, we learned that when young men go through a ritual to become a grown man, they get a formal adult name as well as a jīn head cloth to cover their topknot. Women also received courtesy-names.
  • its personal, childhood name—what it whispers to identify itself by moonlight: This kind of name, míng (名), is what we in the U.S. would call your “given” name. It’s what everyone calls you when you’re a kid. In ancient China, after you received your adult, public courtesy-name, only your intimates would still call you by your childhood name and usually only in private. In the Western Zhou Bronze (WZB) script that I think Lâozî used, this beautiful character, was depicted by a pictogram of a moon:
  • what it’s called—from the gut: Lastly, there’s today’s word-of-the day: wèi. Modern definitions are to say, tell, or call. In the Dào, it’s usually translated as name but also as called, means, says or, is. For this reason, the reader usually can’t tell when Lâozî uses wèi and especially can’t tell if Lâozî was writing wèi or míng. But I think the two have different significances. The modern way of writing wèi is this compound character:

謂

This is another case in which I can’t find an image of the compound character in WZB Inscription script, though I can find images from that era of each of the sub-components. Of course, I like to imagine Lâozî mashing things up to invent these words, but I must confess I haven’t done enough research to know if these words appeared in documents earlier than the Dáo Dé Jíng, so this is just fancy for now.

The left sub-component in today’s character is considered to be a person speaking with their mouth. The pictogram looks like a person coming up out of a mouth): The right sub-component is itself another compound character meaning gizzard of a fowl or stomach and inexplicably, at least to me, depicted by a drawing of a field above a moon: This right-hand component also is pronounced wèi. For that reason, it’s considered to be a phonetic component that tells the reader how to pronounce the overall compound character. As you remember and will see again below, I like to include the phonetic part in my translation. You will notice however that I decided to stick with the established meaning—gizzard or stomach—and not specifically call out the sub-sub-characters because that starts to gets a little complicated even for me! I’m hoping this sub-character simply meant stomach to Lâozî, but who knows; maybe in the future I’ll explore the field/moon symbols.

So now you can see how I combined these components to hand-draw a WZB version of the compound character:

Initially, as you saw in this blog’s first post, I translated this as what it’s really called—from the gut. Because I thought the tendency of translators to stray into very confident, emphatic words—like is and means—combined with that “gut” image to make this form of naming seem more objectively true. I now think I may have gotten a little carried away (!) and have removed the word really. Now I’m using:

what it’s called—from the gut

But still, I do feel this kind of name’s somehow higher level than the very personal míng. Not better, just more universal.

What do you think? And what do you make of these three different kinds of naming all showing up in Chapter 1? Maybe it’s too early to tell, but somehow I don’t think there’s a lot of accidental coincidence in the way Lâozî puts characters together in a word, line, chapter, or book. Click on the comment icon in the header or use the comment form tab to let me know your questions, ideas, concerns, feelings, or experience with naming, here or in your own world.

Many thanks for joining me here—we’re close to the point where we can step back and look at Chapter 1 as a whole with all new eyes as to how the pictures there work together to… make a story… or lead us into the rest of the book.. or whatever it is we find they do! See you next time.

PS: Check out the new Dates, Dynasties, and Their Scripts tab if you’d like a simple timeline where you can see how everything dovetails together.

Last tinkered with 3/10/20.

Categories
#1 Wú 毋 Yôu

flesh-and-blood meat-holding-Being

yôu1

What you see above is a hand () holding a piece of meat (). The modern character 有 means to have, possess, or there are.

Yôu occurs 42 times in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng. (Remember, I’m looking at those chapters first because together they constitute the “Dào part” of Lâozî’s classic text.) Quite often, especially when it’s sort of the subject of a sentence, translators call it Being. But many times they also use it as what I would call an “affirmation particle.” For example, when yoû is in front of a word like “name,” they translate this combination as “is named” or “with a name” or some such equivalent to “being named.”

Yôu plays a big role in Chapter 1 where Lâozî sets it up in juxtaposition to our old friend wú (無), no way—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—no, never, nothing, nowhere, nohow Not-Being.

Being and Not-Being. These are either really big cosmic ideas OR simple things you can put in front of other words to indicate that other word’s either happening or not happening. Or both. Most translators use them both ways, depending on the context. Of course that means we can’t tell when these words are being used, and of course I’m not having any of that.

So, here’s my all-inclusive solution:

flesh-and-blood meat-holding-Being

Much shorter than my usual, yes?! And I’m very pleased with it because I think it gives the reader a sense of the human holding that meat. It’s very incarnate, all the way around. Very real and solid unlike our mysterious dancing not-being. Being and Not-Being. Can you picture them— and . After spending so much time with those two characters, at times I think of them like two different “characters”, that is people, personas, or ways of inhabiting the world. Re-reading Chapter 1 yet again with those images is, once again and in a different way, rather dreamy.

That’s a lot to chew on for one day. I’ll meet you back here tomorrow. Meanwhile, let me know how you experience this. I finally figured out that you can access the comment form by clicking on the “comment counter” up in the heading this post! So please send me your notes there, or use the contact form if you prefer a more private exchange. Thank you for joining me once again.

PS I’ve updated the Pinyin tab with notes about the vowel marks that indicate the tone sounds of words (… and it explains which one of those marks I make incorrectly and why).

Categories
#1 Cháng

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 ‘jīn’ version of

cháng

Here we have a compound character. What do you get when you combine cháng (尚), a character that meant to revere:

… with a character that depicts jīn (常), the square head cloth that males wore over their hair buns once they achieved full adult status?

Jīn’s own etymological evolution includes the word diào (吊) which uses a pictogram of a “small bird with a dangling tail” to describe the top knot. This bird and a couple others are sub-components in lots of words, as you’ll see in the future. But in the Western Zhou Bronze Inscription of Lâozî’s time, jīn looked like this:

Lâozî combined these two sub-components into a word, also pronounced cháng, that’s written in modern script like this:

常

The two sub-characters shown above are in the Western Zhou Bronze Inscription script that I think were most like the script Lâozî would’ve used. But I can’t find an image from those times of the compound character, so… yes, I drew one. That’s what you see at the top of this post!

There are many such cases in the Dào where I can’t find a WZB version of a compound word that Lâozî used. (Of course, you can see how this plays into my theory that our brilliant Lâozî made up all these words a lá Shakespeare!) Hopefully I’ll either find these WZB hybrids somewhere on the internet or figure out how to draw them in a clean digital way at some point soon. Of course I must say that all such efforts are simply my best estimate as to how the two components were combined, based on looking at the modern character. Here’s a peek into my process:

It’s super fun. If you turn your hand to this and come up with something cool, please send it to me.

Meanwhile, what meaning do you imagine when we combine these two sub-characters? The first sub-component here, also called cháng, is considered to be the “phonetic” component that simply gives the compound character its sound. The real meaning—the “semantic” part—is considered to be the bottom component. Modern definitions include: normal,  general, common, constant, and invariable. Indeed, the jīn head cloth was worn by every grown man, so it was a common, constant part of daily life and probably seemed like it had been forever.

Some Dào Dé Jīng translators, like Yi Wu, translate cháng to the simple word constant. But others, including Chen, Feng and English, John C.H. Wu, and Mitchell, think Lâozî meant something even more cosmic. They translate this character in Chapter 1 as eternal. But they also substitute other words in different places, depending on the context: always, constantly, never, abides, forever, and so on. Sometimes they don’t directly include this word but fold it implicitly into how something just “is” or “isn’t” something.

By now, you know I get frustrated when I’m reading a translation and can’t tell if I’m looking at the same word that was used in the paragraph before, the page before, etc. But of course, I understand why it’s done. It’s hard to make just one phrase make sense or even fit grammatically in every context.

And you also know what I’m going to do next: throw in ALL the things! To heck with brevity and certainty! The translation I use everywhere for this character is:

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 ‘ji’ version of…

I like the square shape of the jīn… so pleasing. I love that this word includes fabric which to me relates to the revelation in yesterday’s post that the word xuàn shows us an infinity-loop of black thread! I wonder how else parts of this word will tie into other pictograms and concepts as we move on.

And when I step back and look at this phrase and how it’s normally translated as eternal or constant, I think it gives us a very particular sense that in ancient China, these traditions of becoming, being, and being recognized as an adult man were indeed very timeless, ubiquitous, and solid. And they were revered—which is why I think the “phonetic” component in this word actually contributes a lot to its meaning.

Of course, now when we look back at how cháng‘s used in Chapter 1, it’s even more interesting. But we’ll delve into that more and put it all together after we look at a couple more words in this chapter. Thanks for joining me here once more! I hope you’re settling into the uncertain, floaty feeling of this text and letting it wash over you without having to come to any conclusions. There’s some powerful alchemy at work, I just know it.

TINKERED WITH: 1/15/20, I replaced my paper-drawn composite of the Bronze Inscription components with a digital hand-drawn version.

Categories
#1 Bù 不 Fú 弗 Fēi 非 Wú 無 Wú 勿 Wú 毋

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

wú

What does this drawing look like to you? Linguists say it was a pictogram of a person with something long dangling from each hand—maybe long tails or sleeves—dancing. It must be a fancy dance or maybe a shamanic one, judging by those tails/sleeves.

That drawing is the Western Zhou Bronze Inscription character, close to the kind of script I believe Lâozî would have used. Later—maybe toward the end of Lâozî’s era—this character evolved into a Seal Script form in which the horizontal and vertical bits got exaggerated:

From there, maybe we can see how it turned into the modern character:

無

But here’s the thing: I have a hard time understanding why a beautiful, powerful, evocative drawing of a dancer holding long flowing objects turned into a word that’s now translated as not, without, not having, free from, no, un-, nil, -less, non-, or some other negating concept. How did it go from portraying a person engaging in celebration/ritual to conveying a complete lack/undoing of something? And, more importantly to me, when did it undergo this change? Because, of course, you and I want to know how Lâozî actually experienced this character’s meaning.

Chinese has several “negation particles”—little words placed before or after other words to indicate the opposite or lack of that base word. English does too as evidenced by that list of translations in the previous paragraph. When this wú character was ‘borrowed” away from its original meaning and turned into a negation particle, a new character was created for the word dancing by modifying the original pictogram with some extra marks near the person’s feet to show they’re taking steps.

This change seem to have happened in or just before the Western Zhou Bronze (WZB) era. We know this because 1) Oracle Bone script didn’t use this negating form of wú, and 2) this new character for dancing appeared in the WZB era:

Later, by the time it turned into Seal Script, it looked like this:

And now it’s written as 舞. My point here is that some linguistic effort was made to change the original character just to retain its own original meaning because somehow this person dancing with long things flowing from their wrists was turned into… nothing. Literally. Or worse, it was turned into something that undoes or negates every kind of stuff or abstract idea that it’s attached to. Puzzling. Especially because there are others way to “undo” things.

Negation

And now we are going to go down a rabbit hole into nothingness. Literally. It’s an important part of the Dào, so it’s good to go there right up front. Bonus: contemplating it elicits a not-unpleasant sort of spaciousness.

As you remember, Oracle Bone (OB) script was the version of written Chinese immediately preceding Lâozî’s time, though he certainly was familiar with it since he was a court scribe. There were five negation particles found in Oracle Bone script, and our word-of-the-day wú (無) was not one of them because back then it still meant dancing. We see documentation that this word was indeed used quite often as a negator in Classical Chinese which was the main writing beginning in the 5th century BC—well after Lâozî’s time. But what was happening with this word in between, during Lâozî’s lifetime? This wú appears 43 times in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng. Why and how did Lâozî use it? Did Lâozî use it with the earlier OB meaning of dancing or with the later Classical meaning of negation… or both/neither? Conventional translators make it out to be a negation particle. I like to read through the text and substitute that dancing being for wú. It’s kind of wild that way. I am starting to wonder if, like Shakespeare, Lâozî hybridized and made up words and, indeed, changed the language of that time. It’s something to keep in mind as we move through the Dào.

What makes things even more tricky in translating—if you’re trying to use unique translations for each character—is that Lâozî uses other negators as well. The most common negation particle in OB was bù (不). And bù appears 113 times in the first 37 chapters of Lâozî’s Dào. It’s the most common negator in the book, so in this way, Lâozî is using a typical Oracle Bone style. The bù glyph which Lâozî would have used depicts a sepal—those outer, guard petals on a flower. I translate it as the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal—but not really the true inner flower of… [whatever word follows it]. It looks like this:

Bù is what’s called a p-type negative, and wú is an m-type negative. No one’s sure why there are two parallel series of negative particles. Some linguists hypothesize they represent a very old, possibly prehistoric fusing of two different peoples and dialects—maybe each group of people had a different sound they commonly used to mean “uh uh.”

It’s also not clear how the particles or their uses evolved, and furthermore there are different theories among linguists as to when and why a particular negation particle is used. Some say the the p–types modified actions beyond the control of living people and the m–types attached to words describing actions over which people thought they had control. Interesting. Since bù was most commonly used, I wonder if the people that used the bbbb/fffff sound to mean “nope” were more dominant than those that used the wú sound? Or did OB-era conversations tend to negate a lot more uncontrollable actions than controllable ones? Did Lâozî?

Now, brace yourself for what lies ahead. Chinese has a lot of homophones—words that are pronounced exactly the same as each other but mean something altogether different or, as in this case, they mean something similar but uniquely flavored and with a different written Chinese character. And it turns out that a separate m-type negation particle, also pronounced wú, was most commonly used as a negation particle during the Oracle Bone years: 毋. It derived from the character that meant mother. By the time of Western Zhou Bronze inscriptions, this other wú looked like this:

Lâozî doesn’t use this character at all in the Dào. So in this case Lâozî’s deviating from OB negation style completely. And yet… and yet using a word that sounds like the typical negator but looks like this fancy dancing person. Linguists have noted that in Zhou time, this character “was already phonetically confused with and read like 無.” So again we see these big changes in the negation particles happening during Lâozî’s era. Indeed there were all these different drawings to make this one sound and general meaning, but, I would say, each drawing has a different effect. I doubt scribes like Lâozî were just confused or careless with their spelling.

There’s also a THIRD (!) m-type negative pronounced wú: 勿. It’s an obsolete character whose pictogram was a bloody knife:

Wow. Hardcore. Lâozî uses this other wú character four times in Chapter 30, and that’s the only place in the Dào that it appears. I translate it as not—seriously like blood on a blade, just don’t… [Dramatic yet again, I know, but I’m only trying to keep it accurate!]

So far we’ve found that when it comes to the m-type negators, Lâozî prefers our word-of-the-day version of wú even though that hadn’t been the norm up until then. That being the case, all the m-types are still way out-numbered in the Dào by the p-type negator bù.

And Lâozî uses one other p-type negation particle: fú (弗). Its Western Zhou glyph is considered to depict either 1) two arrows leaning against each other and wrapped up to be straightened or 2) a bundle of sticks tied together to start a fire. (In English, the latter was called a faggot which shows really horrible things about our culture and language.) Lâozî uses this fú twice in Chapter 2 and nowhere else in the Dào.

Finally… there’s one more negator in the Dào, fēi (非). It doesn’t seem to be classified as either one of the older two types of negation particles—it came on the scene after the Oracle Bone years:

Some say this is a pictogram of a pair of broken wings on a baby bird. Others say it’s a combination of bù with a compound character that shows a heart and a short-tailed bird. I translate it as: is breaking the little wings off…

Okay, that also sounds a little dramatic, but, dang. Either one of those possible etymologies is pretty harsh. Happily Lâozî only used this word fēi four times. Of course, two of those are right in the first chapter, which, by the way, is where we are, or were, before this side trip into negation…

Back to wú 無

I read somewhere that to write this wú character you begin with three horizontal lines and add eight kind of slashing or negating marks on top of it—four vertical ones downward through the three-line structure then four short diagonals spraying out from the bottom. It may just be the power of suggestion, but I do experience this repeated-negation sensation when writing out the character. Try it and see how it feels.

Because of the completely annihilating tone of all modern definitions as well as these eight “no no no no” kind of marks and the fact that I want a translation that will work in any setting, I decided to translate this wú character as noone-noway-no-never-nothing-nowhere-nohow-not-Being. You saw that phrase in the complete Chapter 1 translation I put in yesterday’s post.

Why did I include the word being? It allows me to use this phrase everywhere, including in places where other translators have felt the need for a noun and translated this term as nothing, nothingness, or non-being. Plus at least I’m throwing in a reference to the actual being that appears in the original pictogram.

But writing this post to you today has made me realize that I broke my own rules with this translation. I was so swayed by the singular modern focus on the negating aspect of this character that I completely left out the actual original image and its meaning. And my whole goal is to include those drawings for the reader to experience! So I’m officially changing my translation right here.

Then the question becomes: how can I keep the the extreme “nil” effect, the ability to be a noun as well as a modifier, and our dancer? I don’t think the dancing part can be the first or last thing without throwing off the negation. After many arrangements, I come up with:

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

It gives me goose bumps, and that’s my favorite kind of “yes.”

~

You can see how and why my translations are not short and catchy and why they’ve gone through so many iterations. It’s hard to have it any other way, given my goals and intentions. You can see why some people prefer to find a short-hand translation (like, in this case, Not-Being), and I fully support whatever they—or you—decide works. In fact I myself often silently shorten my own translations in my mind when looking through my book or thinking about a chapter. But for me, these longer historical written versions carry a fullness and a mysterious, evocative sense—even if they don’t look like regular, clear-cut writing. It feels like they constellate into something bigger… eventually.

Meanwhile, I stay open to what occurs. I’ve changed my translation for wú in the Chapter 1 tab and throughout my whole Dào document, so now I’ll be reading through and see if it works everywhere. And I’ll be getting ready for the next post when we’ll delve into something that may (or may not!) be the opposite of Not-Being: a timeless eternal piece of fabric.

Thank you for joining me on this journey! I hope you’ll use the comment section below or contact form to send me your thoughts and feelings. I’d love to hear them.

Betsy