Sinographs 101 · Chapter 07

Doing and being

Three of the most famous borrowed pictures in the script, and two plain drawings to anchor them:

Sign	Key	Says	Means	How to see it
為	do	wéi	to do, to make; to act as; (wèi) for	the old form draws a hand leading an elephant — work itself, borrowed for the verb "do"
無	without	wú	without; there is not	a dancer, sleeves full of tassels — the dance moved out, "nothing" moved in
我	I	wǒ	I, me, we	a toothed halberd, borrowed early for the word "I" — the weapon long forgotten
心	heart	xīn	heart; mind	the heart with its chambers — in the classics, the organ of thought
生	grow	shēng	to grow, to be born; life	a sprout rising from the ground-line

為 and 無 are the loan move at its grandest. A hand leading an elephant — the very picture of getting work done — was borrowed for the plainest verb in the language: do, make, act as. A dancer with streaming sleeves was borrowed for there is not; the dance eventually took itself a new character and left this one holding pure absence.¹ And 我, the classical “I,” began as a kind of halberd — three thousand years of writers calling themselves by an old weapon without ever thinking of it.

The grandest loan in the script: the dancing figure kept its strokes and lost its dance; classical philosophy's favorite word — nothing, absence, without — lives there now.

The triple paradox opens

Chapter 04 closed on three characters of the Laozi’s advice. With 為 and 無 the whole saying unfolds:

為無為，▢無▢，味無味。wéi wú wéi, shì wú shì, wèi wú wèi"act without acting, work without working, taste the flavorless" — the middle pair ("work") is the one word still boxed; the outer paradoxes are entirely yours

Laozi 63 — chapter 04's closing line, unfolded. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR5c0057:063:1a · license: attribution.

無為, wú wéi — “doing-without-doing” — is the most famous two characters of Daoist thought, and you now read both. But what does doing-without-doing mean? Not laziness. The Laozi’s claim is that forcing things breaks them: the best ruler barely seems to govern, and the state runs; the best work does not feel like straining; push against the river and it drowns you, move with it and it carries you. 為無為 is advice to act the way water acts — effective without effort, never forcing. Now notice the pattern of the sentence: VERB 無 VERB, three times; classical prose loves a mold, and once you see the mold you can pour any verb into it.

The teacher arrives, the root grows

Two returns, each closer to open:

三人行，▢有我▢▢。sān rén xíng, bì yǒu wǒ shī yān"when three walk together, my teacher is surely there" — 我 takes its place: MY teacher; only "surely," "teacher," and the final particle stay boxed

本▢而▢生。běn lì ér dào shēng"when the root is set, the Way grows" — the root is care close to home, family feeling; get that planted, says the saying, and the whole moral Way grows out of it. 生 sprouts at the end of the old root sentence; the boxed pair are "is set" and "the Way"

Line 1: Analects 7.22 — the fourth visit · urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:007:26a. Line 2: Analects 1.2 · urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:001:2a. Both license: attribution.

And 心 the heart closes the chapter in four characters from the great anthology — an elegy’s closing cry:

天下▢心。tiān xià guī xīn"the hearts of all under heaven come home" — 天下 the world, 心 its hearts, one box for the homecoming verb between them; the phrase every dynasty reached for when it claimed the people's love

Wen xuan (Selections of Refined Literature), an elegy. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR4h0001:047:31a · license: attribution.

Where this goes

Forty-five characters, 18 percent of the corpus. Next: the chain 止 → 正 → 是 — stop, upright, this — and the evening that names things, ending on a saying you will read without a single box.

The elephant-and-hand reading of 為 and the dancer reading of 無 are the standard paleographic accounts; see Qiu Xigui, Chinese Writing (2000). The dance later re-armed itself as a separate character; classical texts leave 無 to absence. ↩