Martin Buber Seen in a Chinese Character

I was very much surprised when I saw my five-year-old son doing homework last evening. That a Hong Kong kindergartener had to do homework did not surprise me as a Hong Konger has to know at least a several thousand complicated Chinese characters just to be literate. (He had done homework almost for two years by now.) But what he wrote did.

He was assigned to write 憤怒(fènnù) or anger roughly a dozen times. Look at this 憤 (fèn, to be angry) character. It has as many as 15 strokes! I wondered if an ordinary American kindergartener would be told to remember a big word of the Latin origin such as indignant…

And I also noticed how the characters 怒(nù, anger) looked so much like 恕(shù, forgiveness), the one that I mentioned in my last post. The only difference is the elements on the upper right (又 yòu and 口 kǒu). Just straightening up two tilted lines and add another line below, anger can be transformed into forgiveness. Maybe turning anger into forgiveness perhaps is this easy…

Well, this view is too superfluous and too vulgar. (Actually it does not explain the origins of these words at all...) So I give you a more formal analysis. 怒 is made of the elements 奴 (nú, a slave) and 心(xīn, heart). As a slave’s forced labour requires much power, the element 奴 symbolises the power a person puts to his heart to tense it up. So anger is a state that tenses up heart with much power.

Although it is not a traditional interpretation, I also see another meaning in this character: Anger is a slave’s heart. It is an emotion so base, ignoble and un-liberated. When we are angry, we make ourselves slaves to our burning emotions…

Then what does 恕 or forgiveness is made of? It is made of the elements 如 (rú, similar to) and 心(xīn, heart). In the character 恕, the meaning of 如 is “similar to oneself.” So 恕 means that “forgiveness is a heart that treats someone just like yourself.” Maybe forgiveness is the transformation of “us-them” relationship (which is the source of all hatred) into that of “I-thou.” It sounds quite much like Martin Buber, doesn’t it?

Tags: forgiveness, Chinese, ACIM, Martin Buber