This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
飛
In brief: obtaining the Fa, cultivating, and ascending
Common reading
飞 is the simplified form of 飛. 飛: pictographic. The small-seal form depicts spread wings below and a bird’s head above. Original sense: a bird flying. Shuowen: “飛 means a bird soaring; it depicts spread wings.” Book of Changes, “Xiaoguo”: “The flying bird leaves its sound behind.”
Design reading
The horizontal-turn-slanting-hook slants to the right, showing turning inward, that is, cultivating according to the Fa and saving oneself. A being who is saved can ascend, ascend in broad daylight, and so there is the character 飛. Outside the slanting hook, the short left-falling and right-falling strokes joined together show the rise and fall of yin and yang: amid the ups and downs of yin and yang, obtaining the Fa, cultivating and ascending. The character 升 (shēng, “to rise”) below is also given a 飞: fly, fly, fly up to heaven.
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.