Selfless love

Like, literally selfless and universal

兼愛無私
ken.ai.mu.shi

Literally: already / and – love – no – self / I

Alternately: Equal affection for all people, without drawing lines between oneself and the Other. Universal love without bias or petty tribalism.

Notes: A kundoku variant – that is, one that sounds a bit less like pure Chinese and more like regular Japanese – goes 兼愛私無し (ken’ai watakushi nashi) but remains unchanged in meaning. Synonyms include 一視同仁.

That said, this compound does come to us from Chinese; specifically, from the writings of Zhuangzi (荘子, Japanese Sou shi), a.k.a. Zhuang Zhou, a Warring States era Taoist philosopher whom we’ve met before.

KenAiMuShiPaper

It’s not about erasure of identity, just that identity and its politics shouldn’t get in the way of love.

About Confanity

I love the written word more than anything else I've had the chance to work with. I'm back in the States from Japan for grad school, but still studying Japanese with the hope of becoming a translator -- or writer, or even teacher -- as long as it's something language-related.
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