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Yin Face

"White page reserved for complementary reflections, for drawings, for calligraphy, for ideogram philology .. on the right side of the page and also for readers' remarks"

"Reflection on the character (Ta), example from the Encyclopedia Universalis.

One finds the same weaknesses in the Margouliès' book "Chinese language and handwriting", concerning the universal value of the Chinese ideograms, and in the book by R.Grousset " History of China ", in the chapter dedicated to explaining Tao. The small step forward in showing a Chinese ideogram inside the alphabetical text, in reality misleads the reader onto a false track with a good compass.

Of course the meaning in English of the Chinese ideogram (Ta) is, depending on the context, "tall", "high" or "big". In French it is "grand" or "grande", and "gross" in German. But such translations fail to catch the meaning of this sign itself. They reduce its divinatory symbolism to a linguistic utilization, as to equal alphabetical writing.

It is absolutely dramatic that this text apparently attributing a universal character to Chinese ideograms simply passed over in silence, even buried, the Chinese philologists who created 214 ideogram keys and from them, more than 50,000 words, as can be seen in Chinese dictionnaries.

This word should not be partitioned nor limited in its meanings. It does not only designate the size of some thing or someone. Its philology, linked to taoïsm, deserves an exegetic treatment that was the subject of my courses given in the Wan Yun Lou Pagoda Auditorium of Rambouillet.

All the passages of the Tao Te King which include this word (Ta) imply this philological richness which cannot be translated so easily into alphabetical writing, as the Encyclopedia Universalis would make it appear by translating it as "grand", "tall", "high"," big", or "gross".

For the moment, I prefer not to go any further... A quarter of an orange is not the whole orange.
The greatest lie is it not to give a part of the truth as the whole truth?"

"Should I add that the word contains "hao": the ideogram "tze", which can be translated as "son", also means "seed" and "master".

Genius of Chinese ideograms! The real master, who wants to master knowledge puts himself at the level of "tze", son, child, because it is the latterwho teaches.

It is necessary to foresee, in a perspective of evolutional reincarnation, that this son, masculin, is a seed, that is, then, neither masculin, nor feminine in the original sense of Mother.

As in the image of Tai Ki, a seed is again the symbol of the coexistence of contraries, the alternation of Yin-Yang, since in chapter 1 of the Tao Te King, it is said : "Tao... is the Mother of the universe."

When a Son (tze) is in the house, (to keep the tradition between ascendants and descendants alive ... for the study of philology... instead of fighting in the street or stealing from neighbors) he becomes the word meant by the ideogram.

This word "Son" is the first in a series of 12 words having the same astrological, numerical and zodiacal value.
Similarly to the ideograms "Love", "Tao" and "Birth"... it has suffered surgical operations over thousands of years. In losing all its hair (a sort of telecommunications antenna connecting Heaven-Man) it has been disfigured into , monstrous compared to its image at the time of its birth: The dualist West has dressed it in a wig: the television. In wearing it, the child, the Son, is constantly suffering from a headache. I nurse it with a lot of sorrow...

The fate of humanity depends on the embryonic quality of the Son, the seed the trinity shoot springing from the earth. Seen to be biologically degenerate, this shoot already eaten by insects, has been submitted by the dualist West to processing by the atomic bomb"

Yin Yang

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Yang Face

Returning to the explanation of taoïsm, it is useless for me to speak anymore nonsense. Tons of books have been printed on this subject ever since the Tao Te King first came into existence, this "Classic on the nature of Tao", better known under the title "Classic on the way of virtue".

How could this "Book on the nature of Tao" have become, in French, the "Livre de la Voie et de sa vertu"? A mistake in the meaning of the title? Or rather, the common dismay of the Western translator of Chinese when face to face with a "bogeyman" for which there is no apparent translation.

Does he not see these rugged and thorny scarecrows that have forced me to break with the werewolves claiming to be friends or pupils, companions or followers?

Chinese is untranslatable, Tao is inexplicable.

Victims of the Tower of Babel, my language and my pen are becoming lazy.

Why dress a ship for the affinity between a person born with an alphabetical language and another living in an ideographic world?

With a view to facilitating the public with approximate understanding, here is a text by Mr. René Grousset, an author who appreciates our country.

He writes on page 13 of his work "Chinese History" :

"The cycle of countryside life , as we see, is modeled closely on the cycle of the seasons. From this conformity might have well derived the main Chinese conceptions of the universe and first of all the first "classification" of things into two general categories, a classification that we shall see will preside continuously up to modern times in all philosophical Chinese systems without exception. The archaic countryside life, as we have seen, is divided very rigorously into a period of winter seclusion which was dominated by feminine works (it was the season of weavers), and a period of agricultural works in principle reserved for men. According to an analogous distribution, all things will then be distributed between two principles or modes: the Yin principle that corresponds to shade, cold, retraction, humidity and feminine gender, the Yang principle that corresponds to heat, expansion and male gender. These two principles, as the seasonal phases on which they seem to be modeled, are opposite and at the same time conditioned by each other, appeal to each other and moult one into the other. Their interdependence or, if one prefers, the order that presides over their alternation and their mutation will be the very order of the world as well as that of human society, or, as the Chinese used to say, the Tao. It is this central concept, that, we will see, will become the cornerstone to all later philosophical doctrines, but of which, here again, it is necessary to seek its origin in the first naturalist ideas of an agricultural society."

Anyway a regrettable fact should be observed: in many studies on Chinese history and civilization I do not find a single Chinese character, and even less any analysis of these characters.

Authors, sinologists , have perhaps thought it useless to drive alphabetical readers into research into the origins and the contents of Chinese characters.

But because of this fact, they have not contributed to or established a dialogue between two totally different modes of thought.

The paths of "alphabetical" thought and that of ideographic thought are still far apart.

Let us take as an example, this word Tao. This is no more than the approximate pronunciation of the Chinese word Tao. If you ask me : "How do you write Tao?" the reply could be no other than: T as in Thomas, A as in Andrew, O as as in Odile, in the same way as one would say P.T.T., U.D.R. or C.C.P.
This is absolute nonsense. In a Chinese dictionary, 23 words of different meaning are pronounced Tao, 35 others are pronounced T'ao and Tao is also a family name.
What are their links to Taoïsm?
Sounds, according to which one recognizes words in an alphabetical language, do not have the same importance in the Chinese language. It is the form of characters, their image that determines their meaning, independent of pronunciation. Thus, to try to better understand the meaning of Tao, it is necessary to ascend to the form as it was shaped in archaic times. According to the Chinese, the term "evolution", cyclical alternations of Yin-Yang, is different from the idea of "Continuation of transformations, in a constant direction forward", without return, contrary to the law of Tao, which is circular, as the return of day or spring.
Alphabetical writings are composed of a small number of letters, twenty-six for French, while Chinese ideograms are logical aggregates stemming from two hundred fourteen keys, symbols of a fundamental classification.

Taoist philosophy has always been oriented towards research and the maintenance of a balance between the complementary Yin-Yang forces, in order to insure their coexistence.
In a world where the biological balance is gravely disrupted, where man is often forgotten, denied, submissive, beneath the wheels of economies and ideologies, in parallel to a current that seems to go forward towards great catastrophes, let us say towards destruction of life and destruction of natural death, because, it is necessary to understand that, for the naturalists of Tao, natural death is not a destruction, it is more and more necessary to establish another current that questions the first and replies to it.

To everyone, his way.