座
座る（すわる）
座禅（ざぜん）
座蒲（ざふ）
座布団（ざぶとん）
or sit, to sit, zazen, zafu,zabuton.
So apparently we use this character a lot in Zen.
And as noted in Jundo's Wordless Language School Kanji have a long history of confusing people for centuries
.
Not to rehash too much of it but pronunciation is based on whether it is Chinese or Japanese. the Chinese way is called On'yomi (my mnemonic is that it is the pronunciation of the people ON the continent), and Kun'yomi(mnemonic - the honorific Kun is for the children of Japan and their language)
My fast and dirty way of recalling them while reading them (there are exceptions) is that Kun'yomi pronounced Kanji typically stand alone where On'yomi need some Japanese Hiragana attached to them such as in the proper verb, to sit, being pronounced suwa instead of Za.
If you want to go a little further into this, here's a good description. https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/
For now I would just like to go over how the character is written. Henshall's Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Amazon) Classifies Kanji as representing simplified pictures of objects, signs, and ideas or in some manner to their pronunciation. This Kanji is of the former.
Kanji can be broken down in to components called radicals. Some of them are Kanji in their own right, some can only bee seen in combination. For the sit kanji, there are three, with one of them being used twice.
First is the Ground or earth radical/kanji ⼟ (つち, tsuchi). Next is the Person radical/kanji 人（ひと, hito). Finally, a radical representing a roof ⼴ (まだれ,madare) but actually a modification of cliff (⼚) and perhaps representing cave and it's implied shelter.
It is then easy to see that this character shows two people sitting on the ground in a building or shelter.
I don't know if the original Chinese Kanji was made by Buddhist's as a representation of meditation in a group, but I think that considering Treeleaf's impact we should change it to this:
IMG_0180.PNG
Gassho
Sat
座る（すわる）
座禅（ざぜん）
座蒲（ざふ）
座布団（ざぶとん）
or sit, to sit, zazen, zafu,zabuton.
So apparently we use this character a lot in Zen.
And as noted in Jundo's Wordless Language School Kanji have a long history of confusing people for centuries
.Not to rehash too much of it but pronunciation is based on whether it is Chinese or Japanese. the Chinese way is called On'yomi (my mnemonic is that it is the pronunciation of the people ON the continent), and Kun'yomi(mnemonic - the honorific Kun is for the children of Japan and their language)
My fast and dirty way of recalling them while reading them (there are exceptions) is that Kun'yomi pronounced Kanji typically stand alone where On'yomi need some Japanese Hiragana attached to them such as in the proper verb, to sit, being pronounced suwa instead of Za.
If you want to go a little further into this, here's a good description. https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/
For now I would just like to go over how the character is written. Henshall's Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Amazon) Classifies Kanji as representing simplified pictures of objects, signs, and ideas or in some manner to their pronunciation. This Kanji is of the former.
Kanji can be broken down in to components called radicals. Some of them are Kanji in their own right, some can only bee seen in combination. For the sit kanji, there are three, with one of them being used twice.
First is the Ground or earth radical/kanji ⼟ (つち, tsuchi). Next is the Person radical/kanji 人（ひと, hito). Finally, a radical representing a roof ⼴ (まだれ,madare) but actually a modification of cliff (⼚) and perhaps representing cave and it's implied shelter.
It is then easy to see that this character shows two people sitting on the ground in a building or shelter.
I don't know if the original Chinese Kanji was made by Buddhist's as a representation of meditation in a group, but I think that considering Treeleaf's impact we should change it to this:
IMG_0180.PNG
Gassho
Sat
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