Xuan
Glossary: xuan 玄, 'dark' — the Daodejing's word for what is deep beyond naming; the root of 'Twofold Mystery' (chongxuan) and the family name of everything profound in the tradition.
Xuan (玄, xuán) — “dark,” the word the Daodejing opens with for the character of the ultimate: the named and the nameless “same in origin, differ in name — together they are called the dark; the dark of the dark, the gate of all wonders” (同谓之玄。玄之又玄，众妙之门). It is not darkness as the absence of light but the dark of depth — what is too deep to be seen into, as ancient commentary explains: “xuan means distant, deep; so deep it looks like black.”
Usage note: xuan became the family name of everything profound in the tradition — 玄学 (“dark learning,” the Wei-Jin metaphysics), 重玄 (“Twofold Mystery,” the Tang exegetical school that read the Daoist canon through a double-negation dialectic, influencing the Qingjing Jing), and the 玄 in the meditative ideal itself. In practice contexts it marks the recess of experience rather than a hidden content: the claim is about depth, not secrecy. This site renders it “dark/depth” and avoids “mysterious” where that would suggest the occult; “mystery” survives only in the traditional rendering of 众妙之门 as “the gate of all mysteries/wonders.”
Sources
- Daodejing ch. 1: 'these two, same in origin, differ in name — together they are called the dark; the dark of the dark, the gate of all wonders' (此两者同出而异名，同谓之玄。玄之又玄，众妙之门)