In his book A Dolphin in the Woods, Robin D. Gill writes about a short exchange he had with Shirakawa Shizuka, whom he was told knew more about old Chinese things than anyone else.
Gill is thinking about the multitude of possible translations for the opening lines of the dao de jing. I did not know this, but Alan Watts wrote of eighty possible translations for the famous opening. Like most people, I learned it as something like “The dao that can be told is not the eternal dao.”
way-can-way-not-usual-way
Gill suggests, “the way of ways is not a way…” or even better, “The way is not this way or that.”
Consulting with Shirakawa, he decides that way 道 should always be thought of as verb — as a combining 首 head and 辵 chaku meaning to go. I have never heard this before but consulting Shirakawa’s legendary kanji dictionary I see that Gill heard right. That in ancient times a place was exorcized and purified by holding someone’s head by hair over the ground. The dictionary specifies that it was a head of someone from “a different tribe” —does that mean a severed head?
I do agree with Gill that Way is a process or a verb but then is this “Way” of tea ceremony and flowers, and the way of Gods, from this ancient idea of purification of ground as one walked?
Pictures shared by Robin Gill of Shirakawa’s handwriting—not what I expected but fantastic nonetheless!
He “paints a dolphin in the woods, a boar in the waves.” — Horace