This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
亡
In brief: fleeing is no way out
Common reading
Compound-ideative. The small-seal form is from 入 and from 乚: 入 is a person, and 乚 (yǐn) is hiding; together they show a person going into hiding. Original sense: to flee, to leave. It means to flee, to lose, to die, to perish, to forget, to lack, to be away; in ancient times the same as 无. Shuowen: “亡 means to flee; from 入 and from ㇗.” Duan’s note: “The original sense of 亡 is to flee. People today take 亡 only as death; this is wrong. By extension, losing is called 亡, and dying is also called 亡. A filial son cannot bear to think of his parents as dead… It is also borrowed for 无, ‘not having’.”
Design reading
The long horizontal on top symbolizes the Great Law; below it a vertical joins, then a short horizontal, symbolizing the Great Law rectifying the laws of every level. The dot on top points to the key of this process. In the Fa-rectification of the universe, large numbers of high-level beings fled (逃) the Fa-rectification, hiding in the Three Realms and the human world; but the Great Law’s rectification, within and beyond the Three Realms, encompasses everything and misses nothing. Those who cannot assimilate to the Great Law in the Fa-rectification have nowhere to flee. So this character warns people, and indeed all beings: when you want to flee, look at and think of this character, and reflect: fleeing is no way out; it has only one outcome, death; accepting the Fa-rectification and assimilating to the Great Law is the right path.
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.