Sunday, April 14, 2013

he ping / 和平

 Listen:  和平

For some time now, I've been slowly reading Red Pine's translation of Lao-Tzu's Taoteching, which has the Chinese characters next to the translation. Gradually I am learning to recognize some Chinese characters. In particular, I've been looking for 和 because I have a small framed calligraphy of the characters 和平, with the word "peace" below it. I had noticed 知 (knowledge) because it looks similar to 和.  Finally, in the 55th verse, I saw 和 in a line translated as "knowing how to be balanced we endure." Just now I was able to figure out, via the internet, that the framed calligraphy is made up of the characters he 和  and ping 平.

Yesterday we had snow mixed with rain in the morning and exquisite sunshine illuminating the clouds to the east in the late afternoon.

1 comment:

Taradharma said...

"knowing how to be balanced we endure." has special meaning today.