This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
出
In brief: breaking through layer upon layer of Three Realms to return home
Common reading
The manuscript gives no common reading for this character, so none is given here.
Design reading
Two 山 stacked make 出. Beyond the Three Realms there are higher Three Realms, and the lives that have fallen into the Three Realms may well come from places higher than these layers of “Three Realms”. Making 出 from two stacked 山 carries a reminder to people in the Three Realms: to break through these layers of Three Realms and return to the place where one was first born is the ultimate goal of living here. This is also the highest meaning and original sense of 出.
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.