This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
刀
In brief: the Fa saving people is like scraping a bone to heal a wound
Common reading
Pictographic. The small-seal form depicts a knife; originally the name of an ancient weapon. Shuowen: “刀 is a weapon; pictographic.” Shiming: “刀 means to reach: it strikes when its chopping reaches its place.”
Design reading
The horizontal-turn-bend-hook stands for an object with three-dimensional volume, and the vertical left-falling stroke for showing outward. 刀 (dāo) sounds like 道 (dào), and 道 carries the sense of what is internal, within. By “sound gives rise to intent”, that means parting the surface to look within: an object that can show the inside of a three-dimensional thing to the outside, that is, cutting it open with a knife, and from this arises the meaning 刀. The knife looks upright and open, and it belongs to yang.
In its higher meaning: the top horizontal shows beginning by spreading the Fa, upright and open, then joining the vertical-bend-hook, using the Fa to save those with a predestined relationship; the left-falling stroke inside is a person deviating from the Fa and going down. The Fa saving people with a predestined relationship is like scraping a bone to heal a wound, removing karma and the bad things in their xinxing, as if cutting flesh from bone with a knife, piercing to the heart: this is the original meaning of 刀.
Related characters
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.