太乙金華宗旨 - understanding the title's meaning

[natalie]

Hello everyone,

I'm just reading the miraculous book of Lu Dongbin (呂洞賓): 太乙金華宗旨,

and I would be so grateful if any of you could take a moment to help me understand the title.

In English they translated it to "The Secret of the Golden Flower".

However,

Looking at the Chinese origin makes me think the title is more complex than that.

太乙 : I read somewhere it means "unity of yin and yang", but even if that is true, why does it mean that? It also makes me wonder about the 太 in the word "tai chi", which seems to mean- the extreme of the extreme...

金: gold

華: this is not the "hua" of flower... has 华 ever meant "flower"?

宗旨: meaning

I hope someone whose Chinese is fluent will help me solve this magical enigma

Thank you!

[monto]

The meaning of 太乙金華宗旨 was explained in the book itself:

".....太乙者，无上之谓。" ----- 太乙 is the description for the highest;

".....金华即光也"，"金华即金丹" ------ "金华 is light", "金华 is golden panacea";

Of course, 宗旨 means principle, basic idea or essential. So, to call it secret sounds ok.

put them together, we get "The Secret of the Highest Golden Panacea"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[gencaetia]

'宗旨': aim; purpose;object;what one is making for;

here it means the ultimate spirit of '太乙金華'

'太乙', a term of Taoism. It's an equivalent expression of 'the highest','the divinely supremacy'. It's not the 'highest' itself, for '太乙' itself has much more occult meanings.

'金' means golden literally, indeen, it's much more than that meaning. It contains the many characters of gold, so it has the meaning of 'noble, flamming, glorious, brightness etc.' '华'(華, the classcial form) can be used as same as '花'(flower) in ancient (classical )Chinese, but here it has nothing to do with flower, it's the aspect of being shining, lustrous and so on. The wole word'金华(華)' means the light of sanctity(or something like that.) In the book, this 'light' refers to the 'pill of immortality', a kind of medicine which has extraordinary power, it's also a term of Taoism.

You don't need to mind what the whole translation of this tile is. Ancient Chinese is hard to translated into other Languages(excpet Japanese), especially something like a title, for when it is translated, the conciseness and meaningfulness can't be remained at the same time.

[SanderP]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here. I was looking for info on this text, and that is how i found this forum. I am still a bit of a beginner with Chinese, but i think it could be translated like this:

太

excessively

乙

It is the 2nd of the 10 Heavenly Stems. According to Wieger it means: "Germination; it represents the germ that strives to get out."

金

Golden

華

1 glory; splendor 2 essence

宗旨

aim

So something like: excessively striving to get out (like a seed that first has to go through the skin when starting to grow); the golden splendor/essence as the aim

Which seems to be more in line with what the text is about. Or, what i think the text is about. But i am basing myself on the english translation by Thomas Cleary.

Does anyone agree?