This piece is interesting because it points to something modern people keep missing: meditation is not the only way to loosen the grip of the self. Sometimes language itself can do that. Not language as information transfer, not language as utility, but language as a field that resists immediate capture.
That is where Classical Chinese becomes interesting. Not because it is exotic, mystical, or somehow purer, but because it seems to leave more unsaid without collapsing into emptiness. Modern Western language often moves too fast to fix subject, action, time, and meaning. It wants clarity before contact. It wants control before relation. It wants the world already interpreted before it has even been met.
And that is the deeper sickness.
We have become so conditioned to think that understanding means pinning something down that we no longer see how much violence there is in that reflex. We don’t enter reality. We seize it. We label it, stabilize it, categorize it, and then mistake that reduction for truth. So when a language appears that does not force everything into explicit subject-object grammar, many modern readers experience that as vagueness or deficiency. But maybe what they are really encountering is a form of intelligence that does not begin with domination.
That is why I think your point lands. Classical Chinese is not just a different linguistic system. It can function as a different posture of mind. It frustrates the modern ego because the ego wants to arrive too early. It wants ownership of the sentence. It wants to know who is acting, what is being acted on, when it happened, and what the final meaning is. Immediately. But not all reality presents itself that way. And not all wisdom survives that kind of grammatical conquest.
So yes, perhaps for many people meditation is needed because they are trapped in the compulsive machinery of modern cognition. But perhaps certain languages already carried another possibility within them. Not escape from thought, but a different relation to thought. Not silence against language, but language that has not yet been flattened into administrative clarity and nervous self-assertion.
That, to me, is the real point here.
Not that Classical Chinese is some magical cure. It is not. Any tradition can become empty ritual. Any practice can become performance. But some forms really do train perception differently. Some forms leave room for emergence instead of premature closure. Some forms do not force the world to appear only through the narrow grammar of control.
And that may be what modern people have lost most deeply: not peace, but the capacity to let reality arrive before they translate it into themselves.
JingYu and Leroy, Wonderful post as usual by JingYu and this exchange here interests me. I do both - meditate and attempting to read Classical Chinese though I don't yet find them as interchangeable.
While Classical Chinese, a bit similar to reading poetry, does loosen the grip of the self, there's still the cognitive input (more about conceptual self). Whereas in meditation, the input is somewhat different - sensorial, feelings, emotions - and so after sitting for awhile, the state we get to is very different than from looking deeply into difficult Classical Chinese texts (more experiential self, perhaps?). My point is, the process is actually also very important.
I’ve just started to learn some basic mandarin so I can have simple interactions with my teachers. This looks so cool! What comes to minds is how we view chord symbols in Jazz. Looking forward to your webinar on Sunday! ❤️☯️🙏🏼
Hi Fernando, thanks for asking. Actually, learning Classical Chinese is equally hard for modern Chinese speakers, whether they speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or Hokkien. It has a steep learning curve for everyone before you can really start to grasp its beauty. I'm actually researching ways to help ease that learning curve right now, so stay tuned for future posts! In the meantime, a very common and excellent recommendation is 'Classical Chinese for Everyone' by Bryan W. Van Norden. I’ve read it and found it does a great job of lowering the threshold for beginners.
Actually, all the things in the poll, but it only lets us choose one...and then there's the aspect of defining it as antithetical to The Way... There should have been a 5th option of non-attachment... :-)
We're watching the New Year TV Show right now, the martial arts robots were amazing. The production values, the logistics of orchestrating hundred of thousands of participants across the entire country in a seamless extravaganza is pretty cool.
i’m so blessed to have find your writing here as earlier in the day i thought i hope to see more authentic writers or folks writing about classical chinese or should i say ‘my people’? and here you are.
I practice chinese calligraphy myself so i live and breathe every sentences you mention here, thank you Jing Yu 🤲🏼
I can understand why some have a low view of Wang Bi's interpretation. How does "man" "ruin" Nature by anything he does or does not do? Man is part of Nature. Laozi's text genius lies in leaving those subconscious assumptions out.
That subtlety, that I took to be a self-awareness of “not understanding” is what I thought sets this work apart from all others. People think they are searching for answers; it is too tempting to start providing them.
This was a wonderful account of ancient Chinese that helped me imagine the consciousness of the people who spoke it. As you have shown before, the modern world has sacrificed much of value while focusing mainly on the cultivation of the rational mind, It is time to balance the analytical and holistic modes of thinking. The left-hemisphere approach has dominated for too long and we are suffering the consequences in the world today.
great article. I am native but now English helps me understand classical Chinese, and when I really spend the time to meditate upon them, I got goosebumps. Our education system is so bad😭
Fascinating. I see some parallels with eastern thought, particularly Buddhism. I am an Indian Hindu btw. Would u say that a lot of Chinese thought had been influenced by it?
This piece is interesting because it points to something modern people keep missing: meditation is not the only way to loosen the grip of the self. Sometimes language itself can do that. Not language as information transfer, not language as utility, but language as a field that resists immediate capture.
That is where Classical Chinese becomes interesting. Not because it is exotic, mystical, or somehow purer, but because it seems to leave more unsaid without collapsing into emptiness. Modern Western language often moves too fast to fix subject, action, time, and meaning. It wants clarity before contact. It wants control before relation. It wants the world already interpreted before it has even been met.
And that is the deeper sickness.
We have become so conditioned to think that understanding means pinning something down that we no longer see how much violence there is in that reflex. We don’t enter reality. We seize it. We label it, stabilize it, categorize it, and then mistake that reduction for truth. So when a language appears that does not force everything into explicit subject-object grammar, many modern readers experience that as vagueness or deficiency. But maybe what they are really encountering is a form of intelligence that does not begin with domination.
That is why I think your point lands. Classical Chinese is not just a different linguistic system. It can function as a different posture of mind. It frustrates the modern ego because the ego wants to arrive too early. It wants ownership of the sentence. It wants to know who is acting, what is being acted on, when it happened, and what the final meaning is. Immediately. But not all reality presents itself that way. And not all wisdom survives that kind of grammatical conquest.
So yes, perhaps for many people meditation is needed because they are trapped in the compulsive machinery of modern cognition. But perhaps certain languages already carried another possibility within them. Not escape from thought, but a different relation to thought. Not silence against language, but language that has not yet been flattened into administrative clarity and nervous self-assertion.
That, to me, is the real point here.
Not that Classical Chinese is some magical cure. It is not. Any tradition can become empty ritual. Any practice can become performance. But some forms really do train perception differently. Some forms leave room for emergence instead of premature closure. Some forms do not force the world to appear only through the narrow grammar of control.
And that may be what modern people have lost most deeply: not peace, but the capacity to let reality arrive before they translate it into themselves.
JingYu and Leroy, Wonderful post as usual by JingYu and this exchange here interests me. I do both - meditate and attempting to read Classical Chinese though I don't yet find them as interchangeable.
While Classical Chinese, a bit similar to reading poetry, does loosen the grip of the self, there's still the cognitive input (more about conceptual self). Whereas in meditation, the input is somewhat different - sensorial, feelings, emotions - and so after sitting for awhile, the state we get to is very different than from looking deeply into difficult Classical Chinese texts (more experiential self, perhaps?). My point is, the process is actually also very important.
I’ve just started to learn some basic mandarin so I can have simple interactions with my teachers. This looks so cool! What comes to minds is how we view chord symbols in Jazz. Looking forward to your webinar on Sunday! ❤️☯️🙏🏼
How do you recomend start to learn classical chinese?
Hi Fernando, thanks for asking. Actually, learning Classical Chinese is equally hard for modern Chinese speakers, whether they speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or Hokkien. It has a steep learning curve for everyone before you can really start to grasp its beauty. I'm actually researching ways to help ease that learning curve right now, so stay tuned for future posts! In the meantime, a very common and excellent recommendation is 'Classical Chinese for Everyone' by Bryan W. Van Norden. I’ve read it and found it does a great job of lowering the threshold for beginners.
Actually, all the things in the poll, but it only lets us choose one...and then there's the aspect of defining it as antithetical to The Way... There should have been a 5th option of non-attachment... :-)
We're watching the New Year TV Show right now, the martial arts robots were amazing. The production values, the logistics of orchestrating hundred of thousands of participants across the entire country in a seamless extravaganza is pretty cool.
Happy New Year! I will definitely come up with a better, more nuanced poll next time.
Cool. I wasn't trying to be critical, more like humorously observing that polling anything about The Way...isn't The Way.
新年快乐！I love your stuff! It's consistently one of the best things on Substack.
i’m so blessed to have find your writing here as earlier in the day i thought i hope to see more authentic writers or folks writing about classical chinese or should i say ‘my people’? and here you are.
I practice chinese calligraphy myself so i live and breathe every sentences you mention here, thank you Jing Yu 🤲🏼
Reading this was like meditation..🙏🏻
I can understand why some have a low view of Wang Bi's interpretation. How does "man" "ruin" Nature by anything he does or does not do? Man is part of Nature. Laozi's text genius lies in leaving those subconscious assumptions out.
Laozi is subtler than his commentators. Wang Bi might have been trying too hard to correct the 'artificial' behavior
That subtlety, that I took to be a self-awareness of “not understanding” is what I thought sets this work apart from all others. People think they are searching for answers; it is too tempting to start providing them.
This was a wonderful account of ancient Chinese that helped me imagine the consciousness of the people who spoke it. As you have shown before, the modern world has sacrificed much of value while focusing mainly on the cultivation of the rational mind, It is time to balance the analytical and holistic modes of thinking. The left-hemisphere approach has dominated for too long and we are suffering the consequences in the world today.
Many moons ago I attempted translation of some ancient wenyan texts. I really should dig them up.
Fascinating!
great article. I am native but now English helps me understand classical Chinese, and when I really spend the time to meditate upon them, I got goosebumps. Our education system is so bad😭
Thanks for sharing this! I'm not as far along in my journey, but I this gives me a lot of hope for my future Chinese studies as a mindfulness 办法!
So inspiring! Thank you!
Fascinating. I see some parallels with eastern thought, particularly Buddhism. I am an Indian Hindu btw. Would u say that a lot of Chinese thought had been influenced by it?
言葉は、世界を所有するためにあるのではない。
世界との関係を開くためにある。
空とは、言葉を捨てることではありません。
言葉に固定された実体を見いだし、それに執着することから自由になることです。
法華経は、その自由を他者への慈悲へと開いていきます。
読むことも、語ることも、書くことも、一つの行為として世界に働きかけます。
陶淵明は、東の垣根で菊を摘みました。
そこには、山があります。
風があります。
季節があります。
そして、それを読む私たちがいます。
そのどれもが、独立して存在しているわけではありません。
互いに関係し合うことで、一つの風景が立ち現れています。
文字を読むことによって、文字の向こうにある世界が見えてくる。
そして、世界を見ることによって、そこに固定された「私」がいないことに気づく。
それが、この文章を空と法華経から照見したときに見えてくる、最も深い可能性だと思います。
🙏 言葉を超えるとは、沈黙することではない。言葉を通して、他者とともに生きることである。
But you gave a totally different perspective! Beautiful essay!
That’s why Classical Chinese is so f… difficult 😅 Had to study it during my Sinology years at the University. I think, I wasn’t ready for this yet.