An important note. While translating the third part, I realised that I had mistranslated the character. As it turns out, Tao’s book was wiser than I was. It was naive to think that two characters would have the same meaning. In this book, the characters have their own meaning, the overall meaning is similar, but the subtle difference is enormous.
弗 means actually “not exactly”, not just simple “not”.
The point is that, for example, a phrase where this character was used with the character for life does not simply mean “not to live”. It’s impossible not to live. It had a different meaning. That is, to live, but in a different way than one normally lives.
不 means “not” and it’s a strict “no” with no other options.
It proved difficult to translate, and I apologise. Again, book wise, the characters have their own unique meanings.
Here are all the negations I’ve found in the book so far, and their corrected meanings.
非 means “not be”. It is used when describing a state in which an object/thing will NOT be in. For example, when we want to say that “it is not sleeping”.
不 means “not”. It is a clear denial, without any ambiguity. You could say it’s a 100% denial.
弗 means “not exaclty”, (“not exactly as you think”). It is a negation, but indicating that the object spoken of is not being done as it is thought of. But nevertheless, it is PERFORMED. This is the key difference.
This is my key mistake, because with this new translation comes a new accuracy.
No offense intended but there is a legitimate reason that ancient languages is an entire field of study. Copy and pasting characters into a dictionary is very unlikely to yield a correct understanding. Best of luck to you.
