一切經音義 12.109

English (machine translation) 12.109

Language: English

12.109

An instant (瞬息: [first character pronounced] shì-rùn fan [shùn]. The Yunying says: "To move the eyes." In the text of the sūtra it is written as 瞬, which is a popular variant. The orthodox form in the Shuowen is written 瞚: "To open and shut (pronounced hé) the eyes in rapid flutters." It takes mù [eye] as radical and yín as phonetic. Note that shùnmù is a single blink of the eyes; an xī is a single breath. It refers to what is extremely brief and hurried. The Lüshi chunqiu states: "Ten thousand generations are like a single blink of the eyes").

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一切經音義 — 慧琳, Classical Chinese