Well, this blog is a day late, but I was really excited to blog this week so I am going to post this anyways. I was really interested in learning about the words used in Analects and what a basic English equivalent is. I am attempting to learn Mandarin right now, and I am taking a course that teaches the 500 most frequently used words in Mandarin. The first thing I thought was interesting was the word tao, taught as "the way" in my course instead of just "way", was a common word used in everyday Mandarin. Then, the character for tao, 道, has the word for self, 自, in it. Like Matt said, we can't fully comprehend what exactly the Mandarin speakers mean by self. I would like to think that it means something similar to the concept of Self found in the Bhagavad-Gita, but I am no expert. However, it is similar to Self, then I would like to think it is nice that it is found within the word for "the way".

Any thoughts?