This paper discusses how Western thought would be developed far more with the help of Buddhist philosophy, which pursues the ultimate Truth (窮極 的 眞理) in a direct way. The Chinese characters employed in this paper would make meanings of the words clear. Western metaphysics has been a study of the presence of existence that goes with reason and logic in the dualistic mode of thought (二分法的 思考) with binary opposition, and even the contemporary thought to be called “postmodern ethics” is not fully free from that mode of thought. On the other hand, Buddhism (佛敎) in general has been the religion of “Emptiness”(空) for almost 2,600 years, and especially the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism (大乘佛敎 哲學) has been “true Emptiness with wondrous movements”(眞空妙有) for about 1,500 years. The true Emptiness has been misunderstood by many Western thinkers with the concept of nihilism. But Emptiness as the ultimate reality transcends (超越) both states of presence and absence and produces both. In this paper, the philosophies of Deleuze and Levinas and affect theory are taken as the supreme examples of contemporary Western thoughts that tries to reach the genuine transcendence that lies beyond/behind/beneath, and also within, phenomena more directly than ever. Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Stevendon’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are discussed as the representative literary works that show Western literature has pursued Emptiness and led readers to it through the moments of the sublime. The sublime seems to be a weak state of Samadhi , the Buddhist way of reaching the perfect Emptiness. Then this paper demonstrates that the Avatamsaka Sutra presents to us the ocean Samadhi penetrates the whole universe or universes where everything happens in terms of cause and effect, sources and consequences. I am convinced that we as Asian scholars should great efforts to present more ideas on the reality of true Emptiness with wondrous move ments(眞空妙有) to Western scholars and people in general.

Comparative graphology is an important branch of graphology research. It includes adopting the comparative method to analyze two or more kinds of scripts in order to find the differences and relationships between these scripts. However, the angle of script comparison is somewhat monotonous and not systematic enough at present. This article starts from making a brief introduction to setting the comparative targets, selecting the comparative materials, choosing the comparative contents, finding the starting point of comparison, choosing the framework or theory for comparison, and finally aiming at finding the certain paradigm for the comparative study of scripts.

This article has shown the actuality of Chinese character teaching activities by using the method of name-choosing with 井. First of all, teachers must design the name question into the curriculum activity. While I started from the question of “assuming Xu Shen’s opening of a bookstore and how to get its name”, the students collectively completed the kanji character on the blackboard. Furthermore, the questioning method is used to promote student thinking, and the teacher is to give students feedback on the knowledge of the Chinese characters, sounds, and meanings. Finally, the teacher will explain the origin and development of the word “彧” in the structure of shape, sound, and meaning. The Chinese character teaching method provided in this article is an innovative and effective learning that can promote the teacher-student interaction. If we can implement this method through the teacher education, we will have a refreshing experience in the dissemination of international character education!

Abundant cultural information is included in the items for names, marriage and family, Zi or Hao, and the description of women in Shuowen, a noted Chinese dictionary. The research and analysis on it will help us understand the customs, morals, social systems, tastes and habits of thought in ancient China, and comprehend the basic characteristics and spirits of Chinese culture.

The ancient Chinese character “ ” in the second slip of Kongzishilun was calligraphed as “ ”, and explained as a kind of musical instrument made of bamboo. However, it is suggested in this paper that this character should be calligraphed as “ ” in Clerical Script instead of “ ”. Its phonetic loan is “蕩”. Its meaning is “profound and grand” according to the bamboo’s exact meaning and the masterpiece Shijing. The second part of this paper mainly discusses the ancient Chinese character “ ” in the tenth slip of Kongzishilun. There are many explanations of it, such as “攺”, “改”, “妃”, “媐”, “逑” and so on. In our opinion, this character should be written as “施”, which means “educate” or “education”. “關雎之” reflects Confucian ethics of “克己復禮”.

Fanqie (反切) is a traditional method of indicating the pronunciation of a Chinese character by using two other Chinese characters, one having the same consonant as the given character and the other having the same vowel (with or without final nasal) and tone. There are seven problematic aspects regarding Fanqie (反切) phonetic notation of polyphonic characters in The Grand Chinese Dictionary, 漢語大詞典. The first, the cited Chinese characters used as phonetic notations are wrong; the second, the attributions of phonological status about some polyphonic characters are not correct; the third, one or two phonetic notations are missing among several pronunciations of the polyphones; the fourth, the materials for phonetic evidences are neglected; the fifth, the evidences of some ancient sounds are lagging because of not finding the earliest evidence in citing ancient sound; the sixth, the main sounds and the secondary ones are reversed; and the last, the selected Chinese characters are not appropriate in some Fanqie phonetics.

Modern Chinese Dictionary, one of the most popular language reference books in Mainland China, has been published in seven editions by the end of 2016. As the most important and comprehensive revision was published in 2012, the 6th edition laid the foundation of the next version. The article makes a comparison between the fourth (supplement edition in 2002), fifth and sixth edition of Modern Chinese Dictionary in the changes of entries, phonetic notations, meanings and styles of standard revision in order to reveal the difficulties of the dictionary compilation. On the other hand, based on the evolution of the theory and practice, Modern Chinese Dictionary still needs to be modified constantly.

Li Yun is a book written by Liu Qiu in the Song Dynasty. This book contains a collection of inscriptions in Han Dynasty and arranged in order of 206 rhymes. During the period from Small Seal to Official Script, it is of great value for studying changes in fonts and components. However, as far as the current research status of this book is concerned, it is mainly a brief analysis of the shape of the characters, citing individual glyphs to explain the problem, or lack of comprehensive and systematic research. Therefore, this article is based on previous scholars' researches, taking the inscriptions’ glyphs received in Li Yun as the main research object. Based on the ways in which the components evolve, this work compares these inscriptions’ glyphs with the seal scripts’ glyphs of Shuo Wen Jie Zi, and conducts a relatively systematic study of the character shape and organization system of Li Yun. There are five parts in the full text. In addition to the ‘Introduction’ of the first part and the ‘Conclusion’ of the second part, the remaining three parts are the main research contents. The second part is the study of the book, the version and style of Li Yun, and the presentation of research status and research ideas related to the research objects. The third part is to divide the evolution of the forms in the Li Yun into five types, to reclassify each type of glyph evolution for example analysis, and to briefly summarize the characteristics of each evolution type reflected in the book. The fourth part is mainly an overview of the analysis of the causes of the five types’ features and the evolution of the fonts. This article will also be accompanied by a full-text version of Li Yun. To have a clearer understanding and application of the classification description in the article, this article also shows a spreadsheet of all the glyphs of the book in the appendix section.

Vietnamese practice of avoiding tabooed names and its expressions found in Vietnam’s Sino-Nom texts, which consists of texts written in the classical Chinese language and those in Nom, belong to a tradition that began in the Tran dynasty (the 13th century). There are three kinds of expressions of tabooed names in Sino-Nom literature: (1) lowercased annotations written in the place of the (unwritten) tabooed name: this type is very rare, only found in the documents of the 13th and 14th centuries; (2) a blank in the place where the tabooed name should have been inserted: this method is also very rare, only appearing once in a 15th century document; (3) modified forms of the character that represents the tabooed name: this is the main method of avoiding tabooed names of ancient literature. Because Chinese characters are built using different radicals and strokes, the omission or separation of them in order to modify the character into a new variant is easy. There are four modes: (3.1) the omission of strokes: this mode can be further divided into even more specific varieties which are the simple variety of characters with missing strokes, the variety of characters with missing strokes and an added circle-shaped mark, and the variety of characters with missing strokes and added components; (3.2) dividing and flipping of the characters: in this mode, the character is divided into two halves, left and right, or lower and upper, and each half is flipped to face the opposite direction, the “ 兩腳”, “two-footed mode”, so to speak; (3.3) the addition of new components regardless of whether or not their shapes are flipped or reversed; (3.4) variants with forms very different from those of “normal” characters. Each type of those mentioned above exists in even more varieties. The first two were mainly used in the 13th and the 14th centuries, when the practice of avoiding tabooed names just began to appear. The third type was mainly used in the 16th and the 17th centuries. After each dynasty, the practice as such became ever more important, and thus also more reliable as an indication to determine the date of each specific Sino-Nom text.