This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
岡
In brief: cultivating within the Fa, one can pass the test
Common reading
The simplified form of 岡. Phono-semantic: from 山, with 网 as the sound. Original sense: a ridge, a hill. Shuowen: “岡 is the bone of a mountain; from 山, with 網 as the sound. 岡 is a mountain ridge.” Shiming: “A mountain ridge is called 冈; 冈 means high, the word for what is above.”
Design reading
Inside 冂, a right-falling dot and a left-falling dot meet at a horizontal, and below is 山. 冂 stands for righteous cultivation of mind and body together; the yin right-falling dot on the left sits in a yang position and the yang left-falling dot on the right in a yin position, showing contradiction: the tests and tribulations met in cultivation. The horizontal shows that if one can cultivate within the Fa, the mountain-like tests and tribulations will be pressed beneath and one can get through. So the tests and tribulations of cultivation are used to express a mountain ridge, a hill, also reminding people: as long as one holds firm and cultivates within the Fa, one can pass the test.
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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.