Tag: Yôu

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).