This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
冂
In brief: dual cultivation of mind and body, rising to completion
Common reading
Shuowen: “Beyond the town is the suburb, beyond the suburb the open country, beyond the open country the forest, beyond the forest 冂. It depicts a distant boundary. All of the 冂 class follow 冂. 冋, the ancient form of 冂, follows 囗 and depicts a city; 坰 is 冋 with 土.”
Design reading
一 stands for the Dao and the Fa, and a long horizontal for the Great Law. The two verticals joined at the sides show cultivating according to the Fa: the left stands for the outer and means cultivating the body (命, ming); the right stands for the inner and means cultivating the mind (性, xing); together they are dual cultivation of mind and body. The left vertical has no hook, showing that cultivating only the body cannot raise one’s level, rise and reach completion; the right vertical has a hook, showing that cultivating the mind can raise one’s level. Together: cultivating a Great Law of dual cultivation of mind and body, one can reach completion and rise.
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About this entry
This entry is taken from the edited manuscript of LI Xutong’s Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters. The common reading follows traditional philology, the Shuowen Jiezi and other classics, and modern dictionaries; the design reading recovers the rationale of the character’s formation from the meanings of its strokes, the pairing of yin and yang, and the nine-palace layout, following the New Six Scripts. The premise of the design reading, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology; the two readings are kept apart, as surface and depth.