On 11/28/2012 2:46 AM, Joe wrote:
Wu li would be something like "Physics".
Yes, clearly I have conflated the terms in my recollection of reading
that book, several decades ago: > it was said that the Chinese term for
physics is 'Wu Li', or "patterns of organic energy." <
It's a different "Wu", and is not "not", as the Wu in Wu wei.
And is /that /"wu" just a different way of rendering the same /meaning
/into English as the "mu" of the koan or as in "mu shin"?
We miss out on the Tones
I know so little of any of the Chinese languages that a tone would be
meaningless to me, perhaps especially in this case:
"... The toneless <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_%28linguistics%29>
pinyin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin> phrase /Wu Li/ in the title
... "
Anyway, it has been a long time since I read that book, and I don't feel
like making a research project out of it, but I seem to remember that
the author
used the term to connote 'non doing', as in:
> The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns <
but, he also worked in a lot of other usages:
> chapters of the book are each titled with alternative translations of
/Wu Li/, such as "Nonsense", "My Way" and "I Clutch My Ideas". <
and perhaps some are equally problematic.
RAF
