This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
樂
In brief: the worlds of the Buddhist and Daoist schools above the universe
Common reading
The simplified form of 樂. Joy, delight: “happiness”, “gladness”. Analects, “Xue Er”: “Is it not a joy (乐) to have friends come from afar!” To like, to enjoy: Analects, “Yong Ye”: “The wise delight (乐) in water, the humane delight in mountains.” Pleasures of sound and sense: Guoyu, “Yueyu II”: “Now the King of Wu indulges in pleasure (乐) and forgets his people.” Shuowen: “The general name of the five notes and eight sounds.”
Design reading
木 stands for the universe. The two silk-like parts at the corners show the four images, arising from two changes of yin and yang, which stand for the Daoist school; two sets of four images show that there are many. The 白 in the middle is the same as 百 (a hundred), showing many and the whole, and it also stands for the Buddhist school. Together: above this universe are the worlds of the Buddhist and Daoist schools, and there are many of them. The 乐 (lè) of happiness also stands for music (音乐, yuè): people are happy when listening to music, showing that in those places people have only happiness (乐) and no troubles.
And the traditional 樂 with 艹 added becomes 藥 (yào, “medicine”), which shows that 樂 and 藥 share one origin.
Also explained here: 药
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.