This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
用
In brief: cultivating with the principles of heaven and earth one has grasped
Common reading
Pictographic. The oracle-bone form depicts a bucket; a bucket is useful, so it extends to “use”. Original sense: to use, to adopt. Shuowen: “用 means what can be put into practice.” Cangjie Pian: “用 means by means of.”
Design reading
冂: righteous cultivation of mind and body together. Two horizontals in the middle with a vertical running through them from the top show having grasped the principles of heaven and earth and using (用) them to cultivate. Together: using (用) the principles of heaven and earth one has grasped for dual cultivation of mind and body. 用 also shows what two horizontals with a vertical through them mean: cultivating with the principles of the Fa one has grasped.
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.