Sinograph Addenda · Signs

so

Name	so
Reads	rán
Means	so, thus; like that
Taught in	15 · And so

Where it comes from

Meat at the upper left, a dog at the upper right, fire-dots beneath: a roast on the flame — the original “to burn,” which later grew a fire-sided character of its own to keep that sense. The classics borrowed the graph for “so, thus, like that”; 自然, “so of itself,” is the Laozi’s word for the natural. Taught in the and-so chapter.

How to remember it

Flesh (the 月-shape) and a dog over four dots of fire: the roast is cooked, the matter settled — it is so.

In the wild

道法自然。dào fǎ zì rán"the way follows what is so of itself" — the last rung of the Laozi's ladder: people follow earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the way, and the way follows nothing but its own nature.

Laozi 25, the final line. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR5c0057:025:1a · license: attribution.