Si Wu Zi 《思無字》
A1 — Canon + Compass
The Text First, and the World It Opens
A familiar pattern repeats whenever a work arrives that threatens a culture’s settled habits of meaning. First it is praised for “depth” and “mystery,” as if opacity were a virtue in itself. Then it is attacked for being “irrational,” as if everything that refuses quick paraphrase must be superstition. The two reactions are opposites only in tone. In structure they are identical: both assume that the proper fate of a text is to be summarized into a conclusion, either celebrated or condemned. Either way, the work is treated as a statue. It is admired or denounced, but no longer allowed to move.
Si Wu Zi (《思無字》) is written against that fate. It behaves less like a set of propositions than like a device that interrupts the reader’s desire for final landing. If you approach it as a theory you will be tempted to do what we always do: find the “main idea,” reduce it to a slogan, carry it away like a trophy. The text anticipates this impulse and installs an unusual countermeasure: whenever a claim begins to harden, the work reopens it. Not by retreating into silence, but by making speech itself refuse to become a home.
This is why any serious project on Si Wu Zi must begin with a question that is not merely literary but methodological: What kind of object is this text? Is it a treatise that happens to be written poetically, or a poem that happens to contain definitions? Is it metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, or something closer to an operational manual for meaning-making?
The answer cannot be given responsibly without first doing something unfashionable: printing the text whole, intact, as the primary evidence. There is no excuse for hiding the scripture behind paraphrase. A reader should be permitted to encounter the object before being invited into the commentary-world around it.
A1 therefore does two things and refuses a third. It presents the full four chapters; it provides immediate English definition for every Chinese line quoted; and it refuses to convert the work—at the threshold—into a finished doctrine. Later essays will examine mechanisms, causal chains, Möbius role-pairs, the tension of 信/妄/stasis, and the cross-domain mirrors (AI, logic, linguistics, Buddhism/Daoism, deconstruction). But those explorations are legitimate only if the reader keeps one fact in view: the ground is the four-chapter scripture. Not the discussions. Not the bibliography. Not the metaphors. The text.
With that in mind, we begin where the work begins: by letting it speak.
The Canon: 《思無字》 (Full Four Chapters)
(Each Chinese quote is immediately defined/explained in English.)
Title: 《思無字》
English (literal): “Thinking Without Characters.”
English (functional): A discipline: use symbols, but refuse to let symbols become the final boundary of thinking.
Chapter 1 — 「言無言」
Chapter 1 begins by breaking the reader’s most familiar habit: the belief that speech is where meaning finally lands. 「言無言」—“speech is not speech”—is not a call to silence. It is an opening strike against final settlement. The chapter refuses to let language become a resting place, a place where meaning hardens into an ending.
Immediately, it splits “speech” into two functions that are usually conflated. 「言，相之表述」 says: speech is the articulation of concept (相). This is language in its definitional mode: the part of speech that names, classifies, explains, fixes. Conceptual speech makes the world manageable by pinning it to categories. But the chapter will not let us believe that this is all speech is. So it repeats “speech” again: 「又言，語裡之象」—“and again speech: the form (象) inside utterance.” Speech is also a carrier of form: pattern, configuration, image-like presence, the felt-shape that rides inside what is said. In other words, language is not only a net of concepts; it is also a medium in which forms appear.
The first chapter’s primary operation arrives as a single instruction: 「於象離相」—“within form, detach concept.” This is the key: the text does not tell you to destroy form, reject form, or flee from form. It tells you to remain in form and loosen the conceptual grip that tries to own it. Form is allowed to be there; concept is prevented from becoming sovereign. This is the anti-idolatry move of the whole book: do not confuse the living presence of form with the conceptual clamp that tries to finalize it.
Then the chapter gives you a test for whether you have performed this operation: 「見眾象非相」—“see the many forms are not concept.” The word 眾 (“many”) matters. Plurality is not a poetic flourish; it is an anti-absolutism device. Because forms appear in countless configurations, no single concept can claim to be identical with form itself. Concept is always a reduction; form always exceeds it. To “see many forms are not concept” is not to deny concept’s usefulness—it is to refuse concept’s tyranny.
At this point the text introduces a term that could easily be misread as religious assertion: 「即見如來」—“then one sees the Thus-Come (Tathāgata).” Read functionally, this is not theology; it is a name for an epistemic mode. It marks what happens when conceptual fixation is loosened: a way of seeing that does not collapse form into concept. “Thus-Come” here functions like a label for un-fixed seeing: the arrival of perception that does not seize.
But the chapter is not finished. It anticipates the reader’s next mistake: turning this de-fixation into a new concept, or treating “no concept” as another final claim. So it states: 「無相而象無言」—“without concept, form has no (final) speech.” This is not mystical quietism. It is a structural consequence: once you detach concept, form cannot be exhausted by statement. Not because nothing can be said, but because what can be said does not finish what form is. Conceptual speech can carve; it cannot contain. Form exceeds the closure of articulation.
Finally, the chapter seals its gate with a triple move that prevents two symmetrical errors: clinging to affirmation and clinging to negation. 「非非相，非非象，非非言」—“not-not concept; not-not form; not-not speech.” This “not-not” does something precise. It refuses the cheap escape where one thinks de-fixation means declaring concept, form, or speech unreal. The text will not let negation become another idol. “Not-not” reopens the field: concept is not simply denied; it is prevented from becoming final. Form is not simply affirmed or denied; it is kept from being captured. Speech is not rejected; it is kept from hardening into doctrine.
In short, Chapter 1 is a gate that teaches a discipline of language: speech has a conceptual function (相之表述) and a form-bearing function (語裡之象). The danger is not speech itself; the danger is concept becoming sovereign. The remedy is not silence; it is the operation “within form, detach concept.” When that operation succeeds, form cannot be finished by what is said—and the text prevents you from turning even that insight into a new final stance by forcing a reopening through “not-not.” The chapter does not end by solving meaning. It ends by ensuring meaning can continue.
Chapter 2 — 「行有形」
Chinese:
「行有形，行作而形著，而著，而行，而作; 有著，有行，有作。 行作之初，行隨作往來，形著之始，形並著出入， 作中之著則行旺，著中之作則形盈。
形由行，著形至作行，至作，至著，至形; 由著，由形，由作。 著形之午，形由作降，作行之子，行由著升。 作先行，後浮出作，著先形，後沉入著。
作又著，行作以著形，以行，以作，以形; 又行，又作，又形。 行生作以形收，又以行煮以話形， 著畫形以作聞，又以著行以聲作。 著遊作，作佐行有形又著以作由， 著作形由行右左依著遊。」
Chapter 2 opens with a claim that looks simple until you hear what it is not saying. 「行有形」 does not mean “action has a shape,” as if form were a property glued onto deeds. It means: where there is acting (行), there is forming (形)—forming as a verb, the process of giving form, the emergence of form-events from enactment. Acting is already a kind of forming. You do not first “do” and later “have form.” Doing is a way form comes into being.
Then the chapter immediately shows the engine rather than describing it: 「行作而形著，而著，而行，而作。」 Acting enters working (作)—work as labor, production, the working-through of making—and from that working, forming appears, and forming becomes 著: authored, inscribed, stabilized as trace. But the crucial move is what follows: “and once authored… acting again… working again.” In other words, authorship is not the end of the process. The inscription is not the last page. Stabilization is a hinge that restarts the loop. The text is not praising “completion.” It is describing a recursion: acting → working → forming → authoring → restart.
To make sure we understand that this is not merely a poetic flourish, the chapter declares its operator-world: 「有著，有行，有作。」 There is authoring, there is acting, there is working. These are not three objects. They are three modes that co-exist whenever anything is genuinely made: the enactment that moves, the labor that produces, and the inscription that stabilizes.
At the beginning of the loop, the text says, nothing is linear. 「行作之初，行隨作往來。」 At the start of acting-working, acting goes back and forth with work. Acting does not simply cause work like a spark lighting a fuse; it shuttles with it. And just as acting and working interweave from the start, forming and authoring also co-emerge from the start: 「形著之始，形並著出入。」 At the beginning of forming-authoring, forming and authoring enter and exit together. The mark is not something you stamp on later; inscription begins while forming is happening, and forming becomes legible through being marked.
This is why the chapter can state two feedback laws that sound almost paradoxical until you see the mechanism. 「作中之著則行旺。」 When authoring happens inside work—when the working process includes framing, naming, recording, staging, publishing, or any act that makes the work citeable—acting flourishes. Stabilized traces create surfaces for further enactment. And conversely: 「著中之作則形盈。」 When working happens inside authoring—when the frame is not merely a signature but a site of labor—forming becomes full. Authorship is not a crown placed on top of work; it can become a workspace in which forming deepens.
The chapter then states an ordering principle: 「形由行。」 Forming arises from acting. Not form as a static noun-object, but forming as a process: it is downstream of enactment. Yet immediately, the text refuses a single origin story by giving you routing logic rather than a straight chain. It says author-forming can proceed “to” different phases and also restart “from” different phases: 「著形至作行，至作，至著，至形; 由著，由形，由作。」 This is not decorative repetition. It is a statement that once the engine is running, it has multiple re-entry points. You can route forward through phases—into work-acting, into work, into authoring, back into forming—and you can restart from authoring, from forming, or from working. There is no sacred beginning. There is only circulation.
To make the circulation intelligible as lived time, the text introduces phase markers: noon and midnight. 「著形之午，形由作降；作行之子，行由著升。」 At the “noon” of authoring-forming, forming descends from work: when stabilization reaches peak visibility, productive novelty can begin to decline under the weight of its own authored frame. But at the “midnight” of work-acting, acting rises from authoring: the stabilized trace becomes the rail from which the next cycle of enactment can emerge. Stabilization reduces and regenerates; it can be saturation, and it can be seed.
Then the chapter names a principle that every maker recognizes: visibility is delayed. 「作先行，後浮出作。」 Working goes first with acting, later the working floats up—work is real before it becomes seen. 「著先形，後沉入著。」 Authoring goes first with forming, later it sinks into authoring—at first, the mark is obvious; later, it becomes infrastructure. The work appears; the signature disappears into the background; the trace remains as the silent rail for return.
The chapter repeats its restart insistence again in a slightly different register: 「作又著…又行，又作，又形。」 Working again authors; and again acting, again working, again forming. The point is not redundancy—it is discipline. The text is training the reader not to look for a terminal state where the loop ends and meaning rests.
Then comes a twist that makes Chapter 2 more than an abstract engine: it explicitly includes cross-media transformation as part of making. Acting gives birth to working, and forming gathers it: 「行生作以形收。」 But then: 「又以行煮以話形。」 Again, use acting to cook form into speech. Speech here is not “communication” as a report about what already exists; it is a cooking operation—a re-forming that produces a new form in another medium. Likewise: 「著畫形以作聞。」 Use authoring to draw form so as to make hearing. Drawing is not mere depiction; inscription produces a condition of reception—hearing is made. And: 「又以著行以聲作。」 Again, use authored acting to work through sound. Sound is not an ornament; it is a work-medium. The chapter treats speech, drawing, hearing, sound as transduction operators: forms are continually re-formed across channels, and that re-forming is part of the engine.
Finally, the chapter closes by insisting that authoring is not a prison. 「著遊作。」 Authoring roams with work. Authorship is not a static ownership claim; it travels with the work’s transformations. Work assists acting’s forming, and authoring takes work as its route: authoring happens through work, not above it. And the last gesture is oscillation: 「右左依著遊。」 Left and right, it roams relying on authoring. The stabilized trace is the rail that permits roaming without collapse; the oscillation is method, not indecision.
Read this way, Chapter 2 is not an essay “about creativity.” It is the grammar of a living process: acting enters working; working generates forming; forming is authored into trace; trace restarts acting; and across every phase, media are not containers but operations. In this loop, authorship is necessary—without 著, nothing stabilizes enough to return—but authorship must remain a verb, not a tombstone. The work survives by roving, not by closing.
Chapter 3 — 「思無字」
Chinese:
「書者字之道法，言者文之相象，意者心之思念。
字，形法于心，尋思以達意，法無一法，法印假象。
字，行道于心，想念以意會，道不足道，道不似相。
心，著思于文，抽象以無言，思無一思，思存假法。
心，作念于文，共相以言外，念不足念，念不失道。
文，行象于字，依法以書畫，象無一象，妄象假念。
文，形相于字，知道以來信，相不足相，相不思過。
書不盡言，言不盡意，意然，亦不盡字[*]。
道形字著，法行字作，相形文著，
象行文作，形思著意，行思作念。
相一心，象無心。法一文，道無文。
眾一念聚以一字，一眾思拘無所字。
念一字，思無字。」
Chapter 3 does something decisive: it stops merely warning against fixation and starts building the architecture that makes fixation both inevitable and correctable. It begins with three definitions that look like dictionary entries but behave like wiring. 「書者字之道法，言者文之相象，意者心之思念。」 Writing (書) is not “what’s on paper”; it is the place where characters (字) function as both Way and Law—continuity (道) and constraint (法) at once. Speech (言) is not separate from text (文); speech is text’s concept-and-form—the moment 文 appears as conceptual articulation (相) and as manifested form (象) within utterance. And intent (意) is not a private inner jewel; it is the heart’s operations of thought (思) and remembrance (念)—projection and reconstruction.
From there, the chapter draws two lines that must be held together. First, Law is real but cannot be made into an absolute: 「法無一法。」 There is no single final rule that exhausts law. Constraint exists, but the moment it becomes “the one law,” it becomes a concept-idol. Second, Law operates by stamping provisionality into workable form: 「法印假象。」 Law “stamps” forms, but what it stamps are provisional forms—假象—scaffolds that function without claiming final essence. The system openly admits: we need constructs to work, but constructs must not be worshipped.
Then the chapter turns to Dao. It does not treat Dao as a grand concept. It treats Dao as the principle that prevents any concept from becoming final: 「道不足道。」 The Way is “insufficient to be the Way”—meaning: any complete definition of Dao would betray Dao. Dao is not something you can seal; it is what keeps the system moving. So the chapter adds: 「道不似相。」 Dao does not resemble concept. If you try to treat Dao as concept, you lose it. Dao is continuity beyond conceptual closure.
With Law and Way set as constraint-without-absolutism and continuity-without-concept, the chapter introduces the heart (心) as the operator that actually runs the system. It gives the heart two distinct verbs. First: 「心，著思于文。」 The heart stabilizes thought in text. Thought (思) is a projecting, ideating force—yet the chapter insists: 「思無一思。」 There is no single thought that can monopolize thinking. Thought is non-singular, a field. And still, thought must use scaffolds: 「思存假法。」 Thought “keeps” provisional law—because without workable constraints, thinking cannot become transmissible or usable. Stabilization (著) here is not ego; it is the act that makes thought inhabitable in a medium.
Second: 「心，作念于文。」 The heart produces remembrance in text. Remembrance (念) is not a passive memory-image; it is work—reconstruction. And remembrance is structurally inadequate: 「念不足念。」 Memory cannot fully complete memory. But the chapter refuses pessimism: 「念不失道。」 Even though remembrance is insufficient, it does not lose Dao—because Dao is continuity, not completion. Memory fails as closure, succeeds as continuation.
At this point, the chapter delivers what functions as its core proof-chain about why delusion arises. 「文，行象于字，依法以書畫，象無一象，妄象假念。」 Text (文) moves form (象) through characters (字); by law it writes and paints—meaning: 文 operates through a constrained symbolic medium. But then comes the pivot: 「象無一象。」 Form has no single form. Forms are inherently non-singular—plural in principle, not merely in quantity. Therefore, whenever someone insists on “the one form,” that unity is an imposition. How does the imposition happen? Through “假念”—provisional remembrance that treats a contingent stabilization as final. When that happens, the result is “妄象”—delusive form: not because form is bad, but because closure is premature. Delusion is not simple error; delusion is forced singularity—a conceptual lock placed over inherently non-singular form.
The next sentence adds the missing counterpart: concept is necessary and incomplete, and coherence depends on trust rather than final capture. 「文，形相于字，知道以來信，相不足相，相不思過。」 Text gives shape to concept within characters: conceptual articulation happens in and through symbolic inscription. But “knowing Dao” brings “信”—trust, credibility, transmissible coherence. And then the chapter states: 「相不足相。」 Concept is insufficient to be concept; no concept fully closes what it claims. Yet concept has a discipline too: 「相不思過。」 Concept does not “think past” or overstep—meaning: concept must not pretend to exceed its role. Its job is to be a tool, not a throne.
All of this culminates in the famous insufficiency cascade: 「書不盡言，言不盡意，意然，亦不盡字。」 Writing cannot exhaust speech; speech cannot exhaust intent; even intent cannot exhaust characters. This is not a lament about failure. It is the engine statement: each layer fails to contain the next, so the system must recurse. Incompleteness is not the defect; it is the motor.
Then the chapter presents a wiring diagram in compressed form: 「道形字著，法行字作，相形文著，象行文作，形思著意，行思作念。」 Read as roles: Dao “forms” and characters stabilize; Law “acts” and characters work; concept “forms” and text stabilizes; form “acts” and text works; forming-thought stabilizes intent; acting-thought produces remembrance. The point is not that these are metaphysical substances, but that the book is mapping how operations translate across layers: continuity and constraint, concept and form, stabilization and working, thought and remembrance.
Finally, it seals two Möbius role-pairs that prevent simplistic dualism. 「相一心，象無心。」 Concept is one with heart—concept requires a holding-center to function—while form has no heart: form exceeds any single center and cannot be owned by mind. And: 「法一文，道無文。」 Law is one with text—constraint is textual and operational—while Dao has no text: Dao is not bound to any single settled inscription. Law gives you a rail; Dao keeps the rail from becoming a prison.
The chapter ends by giving the practice of compression and reopening. 「眾一念聚以一字。」 Many remembrances gather into one character: compression makes action possible. But compression also constrains: 「一眾思拘無所字。」 A multitude of thoughts becomes constrained, having nowhere as character—thinking exceeds what can be tokenized. So the final instruction is both discipline and liberation: 「念一字，思無字。」 Hold one character in remembrance; think without characters. Commit enough to act. Refuse to idolize the token. Reopen into the non-final field.
Chapter 4 — 「心由幸」
Chinese:
「沾苦淡閒言
甘問宮
幾步多
路回足
自行走
近圓空
似作達而意煮
辛油形即答心」
Chapter 4 arrives after the book’s machinery has been built, not as an “extra poem,” but as the system’s felt ending—an ending that refuses to end. It begins with 「沾苦淡閒言」: touched by bitterness, idle words become thin. 苦 here is not pessimism; it is friction—the cost of living inside insufficiency, the abrasion that makes speech lose its decorative excess. Then the poem pivots into a synesthetic calibration: 「甘問宮」 is not simply “sweet questioning in a palace.” 甘 is literal taste—sweetness on the tongue, the body’s register of flavor. 宮 is sound: the gong tone, the tonal center in the five-tone system, resonant with Five-Phase correspondences. Questioning (問) is therefore not abstract debate; it is a tuning act where taste and tone meet—where inquiry becomes a way to align the body’s sensory truth with a deeper resonance. From there, the poem counts without concluding: 「幾步多」—how many steps, so many—not to measure progress toward a destination, but to keep the motion honest: continuation is made of increments, not final arrivals. The road then performs the book’s recursion in plain life-language: 「路回足」—the road returns, and the feet are enough. Return is not regression; it is the condition of re-entry, and “enough” names a minimal sufficiency that lets the loop continue without needing a final guarantee. That sufficiency becomes embodied agency: 「自行走」—self-walking—not heroic individualism, but the fact that the system can only be lived by enactment: one walks, the walking happens, the loop is carried by the body. Then the poem names the book’s ultimate geometry of non-closure: 「近圓空」—near the round emptiness. “Near” refuses arrival; “round” suggests coherence without endpoint; “empty” refuses conceptual possession. One orbits meaning rather than owning it. Even “attainment” is treated as craft rather than capture: 「似作達而意煮」—it seems making reaches, yet intent is cooked. What looks like arrival is actually a process of preparation; intent (意) is not discovered like a treasure, it is cooked into readiness through work. Finally, the closing line seals the whole scripture with a sensory pun and a structural echo: 「辛油形即答心」. 辛 is pungent taste; 油 is the medium that carries and spreads flavor—taste made transmissible. Together 辛油 sounds toward 幸: grace, fortune, the felt success of continuation. And the line’s hidden braid reaches back to Chapter 2’s routing logic—由 as “from/by/through,” the re-entry operator of the engine. Here grace is not a reward outside the loop; it is what happens by route, by the way the process is carried. “Forming” (形) answers the heart immediately—not as concept (相), not as an explanation, but as crafted sensation: flavor, medium, form replying through the body. Chapter 4 therefore closes the book exactly as the book demands: not by a conclusion, but by an answer that is a made form—a lived response whose sweetness and pungency, tone and route, return the reader to the engine that keeps going.
What has been gained by laying the text out like this—Chinese intact, English definitions attached line by line—before any larger theory is proposed? First, the scripture stops being a rumor and becomes an object. The reader no longer has to accept someone else’s paraphrase of Si Wu Zi as the thing itself; the four chapters can be revisited, quoted, tested, and argued with. Second, the reader can see that the work is not merely “about language” in the abstract. It is about the operations that keep meaning from freezing: Chapter 1’s core move of staying within form (象) while detaching concept (相); Chapter 2’s recursion where acting (行) enters working (作), forming (形) is authored into trace (著), and the trace becomes the hinge of restart; Chapter 3’s proof that form is inherently non-singular (“象無一象”) and that delusion arises when a contingent stabilization is forced into a final “one”; and Chapter 4’s lived register where taste and tone (甘 / 宮) tune the body into inquiry, where “辛油” sounds toward “幸,” and where “由”—so central to Chapter 2’s routing logic—returns as the felt truth that grace is not a prize outside the loop but something routed by it. In this light, the scripture’s recurring themes become sharper: stabilization is necessary yet dangerous, plurality resists absolutism, trust (信) makes provisional coherence livable, and the body becomes the final witness of whether the system continues or stalls.
But A1 still must do more than present the object. It must offer a map of the world this object opens, without pretending that the map is the territory. A long project on Si Wu Zi can fail in two common and opposite ways that secretly share the same error. It can become theology: the text is treated as sacred, therefore protected from precise reading, therefore endlessly vague. Or it can become technical manual: the text is treated as code, therefore reduced to one mechanism, therefore dead. Both failures refuse to let the work remain what it is—an artwork that embodies its theory in motion. The task is to build a commentary-world that stays as mobile as the scripture: capable of re-entry, capable of close parsing, capable of braiding across chapters, and capable of opening outward into mirrors without letting the mirrors replace the ground.
The “world map” of future essays therefore names not topics but modes of reading, each producing a different kind of reader while returning to the same four-chapter base. One mode treats the scripture’s connective tissue—又, 而, 至, 由, 先, 後—not as ornament but as control-flow, reading Chapter 2 as a workshop of recursion and Chapter 3 as circuitry, so that diagrams, entailment chains, and operator tables become legitimate commentary forms. Another mode insists the philosophy lives in syntax knots and turning-words, so that single phrases like 「於象離相」 or 「象無一象」 are read with courtroom precision, yielding micro-essays that refuse grand summaries and instead expose how the text actually moves. A third mode treats the book as an ethics of fixation: how 假 scaffolds action without claiming finality, how 妄 is premature closure rather than mere error, how 信 is the currency that keeps provisional structures usable, and how 著 is a hinge that enables return yet risks turning into a prison. A fourth mode reads Chapter 4 as outcome rather than appendix, taking taste and sound, walking and cooking, “near-round-empty,” and “幸/由” as the lived phenomenology of the same engine—a poem that does not decorate the system but embodies it. A fifth mode braids the chapters into a web, refusing to isolate “the philosophy” in Chapter 3 alone: it tracks 著 across Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, tracks 相/象 from Chapter 1’s de-fixation into Chapter 3’s non-singular form and mind-bound concept, tracks 非非 from Chapter 1’s reopening into Chapter 4’s lived non-arrival, and tracks 思/念 as projection and reconstruction mirrored by the creation-loop. And finally, a sixth mode uses tangent mirrors—AI, logic, linguistics, Buddhist/Daoist and deconstructive practice-logics—not as external authorities but as stress-tests of transferability, beginning and ending with specific scripture lines so the outside never replaces the inside.
The scripture ends by giving its discipline in a single line: 「念一字，思無字。」 In English, literally: “Hold one character in remembrance; think without characters.” Functionally: commit enough to act, then refuse to freeze the field into a final token. A1 ends here deliberately. The next step is not a conclusion; it is a route—engine, close-reading, ethics, phenomenology, braids, mirrors—and then the long work the text itself models: returning, again and again, to the four chapters that ground everything.