How to translate 修煉 into English ?

[awaken]

Practice? Cultivate?train?

 

Thank you.

[awaken]

Dawei told me "cultivation " is not a proper word .

 

But I don't know which word is more suitable to discribe the concept "修煉".

[Kar3n]

Practice? Cultivate?train?

 

Thank you.

 

• 修炼Trad. 修煉
  xiū liàn

  (of Taoists) to practice austerities to practice asceticism
   
• 修炼成仙Trad. 修煉成仙
  xiū liàn chéng xiān

  lit. to practice austerities to become a Daoist immortal practice makes perfect

   
  https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=修煉

Austerities-

aus·ter·i·ty

ôˈsterədē/

noun

1. sternness or severity of manner or attitude.

   "he was noted for his austerity and his authoritarianism"

   • conditions characterized by severity, sternness, or asceticism.

     plural noun: austerities

     "a simple life of prayer and personal austerity"

     synonyms: severity, strictness, seriousness, solemnity, gravity; 

     frugality, thrift, economy, asceticism; 

     self-discipline, abstinence, sobriety, restraint, chastity; 

     starkness

     "the austerity of the decor"

 

Asceticism-

as·cet·i·cism

əˈsedəˌsizəm/

noun

noun: asceticism

1. severe self-discipline and avoidance of all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons.

   "acts of physical asceticism"

 

 

Based on the translation from yabla.com I take it to mean to practice seriously without distraction or outside influence. 

[awaken]

So "practice" is a suitable word?

[Kar3n]

So "practice" is a suitable word?

 

I think so, a very dedicated practice.

[awaken]

Thank you.

 

What is the word "cultivate" mean?

[Kar3n]

Thank you.

 

What is the word "cultivate" mean?

 

In this sense I would have to go with "to improve" or "to better" by refining to perfection.

 

It can also mean to make something or yourself ready, to prepare a certain situation or set of circumstances.

 

I believe that cultivate and practice can be the same in some cases. It just depends on the person, I guess.

[cheya]

Not from a dictionary, but cultivation is also what you do with a garden, taking care of the plants every day, supplying what they need, protecting them, removing weeds, and thus supporting the unfolding of their inherent nature.

 

So... caring for (work) and attending to (focus) the growth and development of a plant, a skill, or even your own health.

[dawei]

Dawei told me "cultivation " is not a proper word .

 

But I don't know which word is more suitable to discribe the concept "修煉".

 

curious where I said that.... what was the context.  If a daoist usage, then self-cultivate or self-practice.

 

Just like this:  修炼成仙      is the practice to become a doaist immortal...    one can use the world cultivation.

[awaken]

curious where I said that.... what was the context.  If a daoist usage, then self-cultivate or self-practice.

 

Just like this:  修炼成仙      is the practice to become a doaist immortal...    one can use the world cultivation.

I forgot where, ha.

[liminal_luke]

Not from a dictionary, but cultivation is also what you do with a garden, taking care of the plants every day, supplying what they need, protecting them, removing weeds, and thus supporting the unfolding of their inherent nature.

 

So... caring for (work) and attending to (focus) the growth and development of a plant, a skill, or even your own health.

 

Exactly this.  What I personally like (and find difficult) about the concept of cultivation is there`s this sense that things can`t be forced.  I can provide the right conditions for the growth of a plant, keep it watered, put it in a sunny window, etc.  What I can`t do is reach into a stem and forcibly pull out the flower.  These things happen in their own time according to their own mysterious logic.

Edited February 10, 2017 by liminal_luke

[Kar3n]

curious where I said that.... what was the context.  If a daoist usage, then self-cultivate or self-practice.

 

Just like this:  修炼成仙      is the practice to become a doaist immortal...    one can use the world cultivation.

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/43251-ddj-meaning-chapter-2/?p=734577

[dawei]

thanks

 

I think my point is that I personally don't see Wu Wei approaches as 'cultivation' but I guess one could say it is Wu Wei cultivation ... daoists may have more open usage on the character than I tend to use.  

[Mig]

why not practice cultivation.Maybe if you can give an example from a quote or text then it will be useful to give a better rendition. It is true the word xiu doesn't have the same meaning as in English.

[Nintendao]

I love zhongwen.com for digging into etymological components, and seeing the other words they are used in.
Poking around in this way, I form a collection of imagined pictures and scenarios, hoping to build a fuller vision of what these words mean.

 

xiu http://zhongwen.com/d/173/x215.htm
lian http://zhongwen.com/d/183/x210.htm

 

Xiu seems to convey the skillful mending of fabric, each thread taken into consideration, like hair elegantly braided, yet suitable for adventuring.

 

Lian is a wonderful tool of hermetic arts, using heat to liquify, and coalesce a crucible's contents.
 

Thus I've made a rhyme out of 修炼成仙,
to "Align and Refine into Divine"

[dawei]

On 9/6/2017 at 9:40 PM, Nintendao said:

I love zhongwen.com for digging into etymological components, and seeing the other words they are used in.
Poking around in this way, I form a collection of imagined pictures and scenarios, hoping to build a fuller vision of what these words mean.

 

xiu http://zhongwen.com/d/173/x215.htm
lian http://zhongwen.com/d/183/x210.htm

 

Xiu seems to convey the skillful mending of fabric, each thread taken into consideration, like hair elegantly braided, yet suitable for adventuring.

 

Lian is a wonderful tool of hermetic arts, using heat to liquify, and coalesce a crucible's contents.
 

Thus I've made a rhyme out of 修炼成仙,
to "Align and Refine into Divine"

 

You just might make it past the Lion's Den of TDB

[Walker]

Some notes written in a hurry...

 

I think for general purposes "cultivation" is just fine...

 

But if you break this word into its two parts, there's a lot to say. 

 

修 does mean to mend things (like fabric... but nowadays bicycles, cars, airplanes, whatever), but it also means a lot of other things. If you look at the 《康熙字典》, the massive dictionary put together under during Emperor Kangxi's reign, you'll see what a variety of meanings the term can have. And yet even that dictionary doesn't contain one (iirc) that I have heard used more than once in oral teachings, which is close to being a synonym for "損" ("to harm," but in Daoist contexts more at "to reduce," as in Laozi's, "reduce every day to [come closer to] the Dao]/爲道日損"). The idea here is that when you 修 you get rid of all that is extraneous, inessential, false, and occluding.

 

煉, "to refine," is a metallurgical term; its meaning in such a context is the same as "to refine" would be in the context of extracting gold from base metals or iron from ore in English. 

 

These two words side-by-side indicate a dual process of reducing that which is false on the one hand, whilst making more pure that which is real (or beneficial, from the standpoint of the goal a Daoist cultivator seeks) on the other. 

 

Returning to "to cultivate," if you are cultivating a garden, both of these things need to be done. You eliminate weeds, sources of toxicity in the soil, trash, etc. You also constantly work to improve soil quality, seed quality, timing of planting, watering, & fertilizing, and so forth. 修 and 煉 are done side by side.

[Aetherous]

Interesting. Outlier etymological dictionary says that the original meaning of 修 xiū was "to decorate", based on the 彡 shān radical...kind of the opposite idea of getting rid of something, as Walker suggested (not to contradict him for any other reason than exploring ideas...he knows way more than me about the Chinese language).

Outlier's reference for that: 王力 主編，2000《王力古漢語字典》，北京：中華書局，2007 重印。

The Shuōwén Jiězì agrees: "The meaning ‘adorn, decorate’ (修饰 xiūshì) is suggested by 彡 ‘feathers’. 攸 yōu is phonetic, as it is in 悠 yōu and 條(条) tiáo."

 

Similarly, according to Kroll's Student dictionary, 修 xiū can also carry classical translations of "adorn", "embellish", and "improve" in addition to things like "refine" and "discipline"...among many other definitions. So it can carry a subtle meaning of addition of things that make better, rather than a reduction of things that make worse.

In Medieval Chinese, 修 xiū can also mean "perform". I'm not sure when 修煉 was first used side by side.

As other have said, if the two characters are used as a compound in modern Chinese, it means for a Daoist/religious person to "practice austerities".