This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
不
In brief: no second gate: going several ways at once will not do
Common reading
Shuowen: “不: a bird flies up and soars and does not come down. From 一; 一 is like heaven. Pictographic.” Its basic use is as a negative: not, not yet, is not.
Design reading
The greatest matter related to 不 is not according with the Fa, such as violating the principle of “no second gate” (不二法门). The horizontal stands for the Fa, and the vertical joined below for obtaining the Fa and cultivating; but at the same time a left-falling stroke and a right-falling stroke appear, which are different gates. A person can cultivate according to only one gate; going left, right and down at the same time will not (不) do. So from this most fundamental question of the single gate comes the negative 不.
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.