This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
開
In brief: completing cultivation in the gate: opening of gong and enlightenment
Common reading
The simplified form of 開. Compound-ideative. In the small-seal form the two sides are the two leaves of a door, the horizontal in the middle the bar, and below a pair of hands, showing two hands lifting the bar. Original sense: to open a door. Shuowen: “開 means to stretch.” To stretch is to string a bow: a door opening is like a bow drawn, a door closing like a bow relaxed.
Design reading
門 is the Fa-gate of dual cultivation of mind and body. Cultivating in this gate means completing the cultivation of the laws within it from low to high (the top and bottom horizontals of 开), and also completing the cultivation of the body (the vertical left-falling stroke on the left) and the mind (the vertical on the right), finally opening one’s gong and becoming enlightened: that is 开 (開).
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.