This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
霧
In brief: mist, matter, enlightenment: the Three Realms are delusion
Common reading
The manuscript gives no common reading for this character, so none is given here.
Design reading
A series of articles on Zhengjian summed up the rules of “same sound, same origin”: characters with the same sound nearly all share a common source (a base character); the base character is often something in nature, and the characters of the same sound are linked by its image or meaning, showing “the identity of matter and spirit”; same sound with opposite meanings shows that “yin and yang coexist, good and evil coexist”; the good or evil tendency of same-sound characters shows the different outcomes of things, awakening people’s righteous thoughts through “strong contrast”. A well-known example is the group built on 霧 (wù, “mist”): 霧 (the Three Realms are like a mist that keeps people from seeing the truth), 物 (wù, “things”: people’s attached desire for things becomes an obstacle to rising, so everything the eye sees is called 物 and classed with 霧), 悟 (wù, “enlightenment”: cultivators must right themselves amid delusion through enlightenment). These three characters of the same sound vividly display the principle that “the Three Realms are delusion, and cultivation requires enlightenment”.
Also explained here: 物
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.