[Buddha-l] Question about Chinese orthography

[Dan Lusthaus]

> How is written Chinese emphasized? Larger characters? Different colors?
>
> I ask because I see in John Blofeld's "Zen Teachings of Huang Po" that the
> word "BEING" is in all capitals in the middle of a sentence.

You are committing the cardinal mistake when reading translations, namely
assuming the original text resembles what you see in translation in anything
other than the imagination of the translator. The answer to your question:
Classical Chinese does NOT have any means of graphically indicating
emphasis. Nor, for that matter, is there a Chinese word that means "Being"
(with small or capital letters). That's Blofeld, not Chan/Zen.

Chan lesson for today: The dog has no buddha-nature, and Chinese has no word
for "being."

Dan Lusthaus