dài yǎn
Also rendered: the upturned eyes (Descriptive and literal) · eyes rolled upward (Plain, but suggests a movement) · staring upward (Loses the 戴 entirely)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The first sign of the greater yang’s ending. It is a small phrase for a very specific thing — the eyes fixed upward and not coming back — and the chapter puts it first of three, before the arched back and the spasm. Later medicine kept the word for this sign, and the commentary glosses it as the eyes no longer turning. It is characteristic of the chapter’s way of writing about dying: not a state, but a thing you can see.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Common English | upward staring, or eyes rolled up | Both are used; they describe rather than name. |
| This site | the upturned eyes | 戴 is to carry something on your head — the same verb as wearing a hat. The eyes are not merely looking up, they are being borne up and held there. Upturned keeps that, and keeps the stillness; rolled upward suggests a movement, and the whole point of the sign is that the movement has stopped — 睛不轉, the eyes do not turn. |
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