Nan Huaijin (Master Nan Huai-Chin 南懷瑾)

A Transcendent Perspective on

The Confucian Analects

(Lun Yu Bie Cai 論語別裁) 

Vol. 1 

Translated by C. Will Zhang

Table of Content

1. Xue Er 學而: Learning and …                                                                             

(1) The “Three-and-Four” Issue                                                                                                                                    

(2) The Change and Stability of the Language                                                                                                        

(3) The False Facade of the Four Books and Five Classics                                                                          

(4) The Ignored Taoist School                                                                                                                                        

(5) What’s Sold in the Three Shops?                                                                                                                           

(6) A Mistaken Strike                                                                                                                                                        

(7) The Analects Re-visited                                                                                                                                             

(8) Learning and … Where’s the Pleasure?                                                                                                          

(9) True Man and False Man                                                                                                                                         

(10) Solitary Enjoyment                                                                                                                                                  

(11) Who Would Appreciate You?                                                                                                                           

(12) Love and Crime                                                                                                                                                         

(13) Filial Piety Is Like This                                                                                                                                         

(14) The Beheaded Cross                                                                                                                                               

(15) Who Could Avoid Affections?                                                                                                                           

(16) Blandishments                                                                                                                                                           

(17) Three Mirrors                                                                                                                                                             

(18) Lovely Elementary School Students                                                                                                             

(19) Lv Duan Was Never Confused With Big Issues                                                                                      

(20) Eat and Drink, Man and Woman                                                                                                                      

(21) The Friendless God                                                                                                                                                  

(22) Melon Grower                                                                                                                                                             

(23) A Picture of Kong Zi                                                                                                                                                

(24) Five Characters Integrate the Five Classics                                                                                             

(25) Authentic or Unauthentic Teachers                                                                                                             

(26) The Filial Tao of Giving Birth to Baby Rats.                                                                                              

(27) Disorienting Rituals                                                                                                                                               

(28) Who’s the Grandma of God                                                                                                                                 

(29) Behind-the-Scene Merit of the Tales of the Three Kingdoms                                                         

(30) The Multi-Talented Zi Gong                                                                                                                                 

(31) Human Life of the Odes                                                                                                                                          

Translation Appendix:                                                                                            

The Confucian Analects 論語 A New Translation                                                                                         

1. Xue Er: Learning and…  學而第一                                                                                                                   

1. Xue Er 學而: Learning and …

(1) The “Three-and-Four” Issue

Today [1976 AD] at university colleges [in Taiwan] we hear about a new title, “the three-and-four professor”. If you see a professor you don’t know, and ask a student what the professor teaches, the student being asked would answer: “oh, a three-and-four professor”.  This is a scornful title. It means that the professor teaches the Three People’s Principles (Nationalism, Democracy, and People's Livelihood), the Four Books, and the Five Classics. No one on campus respects these professors, who, like those military trainers on campus, are scorned at by the students. This is a serious problem.

Eight or nine years ago, when talking with a friend who taught at a national university, I asked him what happened to the teaching that had caused so much resentment against the Three People’s Principles. He said that there was nothing that could be done about it.  I said that it did not need to be like that, and that I could take over his class for a few hours [just for an experiment].  Later, there was this opportunity that a student at a university asked me to participate in their meeting to discuss “a new revolution of Chinese literature.”  Having heard about the agenda, I said: “you really want to talk about this subject?! I’d join you in the evening!”

So I asked the professor of the Three People’s Principles to join me in the meeting.  The students who came to the meeting were all unruly but passionate. They talked a lot.  In the end they asked me to talk.  I told the students that we needed to know the meaning of “revolution” first of all.  The university was a top national one.  Young intellectuals on campus should understand the meaning of the word ge ming, or “revolution”, which first appeared in one of the most ancient texts of the country, I Ching. I talked a lot with them regarding the rationale.

For example, I said, ever since the May 4^th Movement of 1919, the old Chinese literature was changed to the bai hua, or vernacular, plain writing style.  But what effect has this had?  Over the decades, I have seen in China the popularization of education and knowledge about the world, which has undeniably contributed to the progress of the country.  But it has nevertheless broken the tradition of Chinese culture.  Why? [As we know] there is a lot in the historical storage of Chinese culture.  And the millennia of Chinese culture are all stored in the ancient style texts. However, these texts could not be accessed by those who received education only in the vernacular style literature.  So from the standpoint of Chinese culture, it has broken the traditional heritage.

You now talk about the new revolution of Chinese literature, the vernacular literature.  So we first need to know why we needed to propagate vernacular writing style?  At the time of the May 4^th Movement, people commonly considered that the country must absorb new knowledge, esp. foreign culture and overseas learning.  So when the first groups of students went oversees to study, and saw many of these foreign nations having similar languages, they therefore thought that the backwardness of China was due to the linguistic and writing styles, esp. that of the Four Books and Five Classics, which had the particularly bad forms of “Zi yue…” or “the Master said…”  So these, they thought, must be thrown away, and the new vernacular literary style be promoted.

(2) The Change and Stability of the Language

However, there is one point that we must pay attention to.  If we look at the languages of the world, e.g., English, German, and French, although at this point the written and spoken languages are the same, but generally there is a change in spoken language about every 30 years.  So books published a hundred years ago in these languages would be hard to understand, unless you are a specialist.

Chinese ancestors knew that language and time would change, so they separated the written and spoken languages.  This way you would need a short period of training, say of two or three years, to be able to write.  And the written language would be an independent system that could express ideas.  So this kind of written language could preserve ideas that are millennia old.  Chinese descendents after thousands of years could still understand them without obstacles.  For a nation, what’s wrong with this? Nothing wrong.  The only issue was that education was not widely spread in China, so people could not learn the written language properly. In the May 4^th Movement, some people had the right progressive intention, but their learning, insight, cultivation, and maturity were in fact questionable.  As a result, the literary revolution has created problems.

For example, going to the bathroom, which is something we have to do everyday, used to be called chu gong, or go to the lavatory, when I was young, but later it was changed to jie shou, or relieve yourself, and now it is called shang yi hao, or go to the bathroom.  It has changed so much over the decades.  So if we look into the documents and study the vernacular writings around the May 4^th Movement, we find them unreasonable.  Until now, could you say that the writings in such vernacular style were not good?  They were good, except that they would be forgotten after you finished reading them.  Most of them have no value for preservation.  We don’t know how this would evolve in the future.  Now why do you want to have a new literary revolution [and keep this]? I don’t understand.

Therefore, I am not qualified to talk about literary revolution.  Nor are you.  Why? If you were good at writing the ancient style essays, the four-or-six-character style poems, the shi style poems [of Tang Dynasty], and the ci style poems [of Song Dynasty], and you discovered that there were problems with these, then you would be qualified to talk about the ge ming, or killing its life, or revolting against it.  Now you don’t even have a ming, or life, what would you want to ge, to kill?  Would you think you are qualified to revolt against, or to ge the ming?

They were shocked by my talk.  And the meeting later went aborted.  The turmoil around the issue at university campuses was then quietly disappearing. So I again told that friend of the Three People’s Principles, that I would take over his class for a few hours.  Because even though among the college students there were many who had firm beliefs [in these], there were also many who were very much against the principles.  So later I did teach that class, but I did not start off by talking about the Three Principles, rather I first talked about Chinese culture, and the reasons behind the evolution of Chinese thoughts.  I analyzed how from the remote ancient times to today, the culture has transformed, and as a result, our national founding father Sun Yatsen proposed the Three People’s Principles.  I asked them: would this sound right? Yes, they agreed. Then would this have value? Yes, it has value.  Therefore they would need to study the Three Principles.  They could criticize them after studying them, but should not blindly neglect them and say that they were just dang bagu, or  stereotyped writing of the Party officials.  Also do you understand the stereotyped Party style though? If not, you shouldn’t criticize it casually.  This way I raised their attention to, and interest in, studying the Three People’s Principles.  This is a story that I had personally experienced.

(3) The False Facade of the Four Books and Five Classics

It is the same when we talk about the Four Books and Five Classics. Here we are having a conversation about a movement of revitalizing Chinese culture. And outside, in the new style education in particular, i.e., in the implementation of the national policy of compulsive education, the resentment against the Four Books and Five Classics has gone to the extreme.  The problem arose because the ideas of Kong Zi (Confucius) and Meng Zi (Mencius)[1] in the Four Books and Five Classics have been mistakenly interpreted, which is not a modern problem, but a problem ever since the Tang and Song Dynasties, and even since the Han Dynasty [2^nd century BC to 3^rd century AD].  Many key points have since been wrongly interpreted.

To illustrate this, we also need to tell a true story.

As a background situation of our times, people of our generation live our lives in between conflicting forces and interactive changes of the new and the old, and of the Chinese and foreign.  My childhood was spent at the old style home school of private tutoring.  I was also resentful against the Four Books and Five Classics because the teacher would, when confronted by the students regarding the classic books, simply say that you would understand them in the future. But I did not know when that future would be. So then came the May 4^th Movement, and the new school of learning got propagated.  I was not a hatchet man, but nevertheless indignant to some degree with the old style.  After mid-age, and having seen the changes of the time throughout the years, and having studied the ideas of Chinese and foreign sources, I soon found out the root cause of the problem.

Regarding the root cause, I was once talking with a few friends about the cultural revival to save China.  That was 17 or 18 years ago.  So some scholars and professors suggested to re-edit the Four Books and Five Classics.  They thought that the books and classics were messy in their structures, so we would need to re-classify their contents and collect together all statements on the same subjects, like ren, or benevolence, and xiao, or filial piety.  We also would need to re-arrange the chapters of The Analects and I was expected to be responsible for one subject.  I said on spot that I could consider to participate.  But after rereading the books back at home, I thought that this approach was problematic.  In the meeting the next day, I opposed the initiative of re-editing the books.  It was, as I said, due to the fact that the books, say The Analects, seemed to have a consistent system of its own, which is completely appropriate and logical.  We would not want to destroy that logic with newly found ideas.  The problem was just that the classics were mistakenly interpreted.  What we need to do is simply to bring out the authentic ideas of Kong Zi and Meng Zi.  To do this we simply need to leave aside those interpretations of the Tang and Song Dynasties, and then the original ideas would naturally emerge.  This would be called to interpret the classics with the classics.  For this we would need to recite the classics well, so that we could see the meaning behind the sayings and statements.  If we could study The Analects with this kind of attitude, we would see the consistency of all the chapters.  So I would not favor re-editing it.

(4) The Ignored Taoist School

Later on I lectured on The Analects at different places.  I raised a question regarding the slogan of the May 4^th Movement: “Down with the Confucian Shop!”

The evolution of Chinese culture roughly takes two stages.  Actually the so called Kong-Meng Thought is but one main theme on the Chinese cultural landscape, which also include the Taoist and Mo Zi’s schools, and also ideas of zhu zi bai jia, or the numerous masters in a hundred schools. So there were many [main themes], all of which belonged to the same Chinese cultural system.  If we want to narrow these down, then we would have three main schools, Ru, or Confucian, Mo, or Moist, and Dao, or Taoist.  Especially [we should know] the Taoist school, which was used by many dynasties due to political and cultural reasons.  We have to pay attention to this.

In Chinese history, each time when there were chaos and change, and thus the need to bring order back to the society, then the Taoist school would be used, and would win the credit.  And when the society was peaceful, then the Kong-Meng ideas would be used.  This was a key to understanding Chinese history.  As a Chinese, we should all know about this.

Originally, the Kong-Meng school was not separated from the Taoist school anyway. The separation occurred during the Qin and Han Dynasties.  Later in the Tang Dynasty, Chinese culture would include the three schools of Ru, or Confucianism, Shi (Sakya-, in Sakyamuni), or Buddhism, and Dao, or Taoism, rather than the earlier three schools of Confucianism, Moism, and Taoism.

Buddhism came from India, representing the quintessence of Indian culture.  It came to China during the last years of the Eastern Han period [around 3^rd century AD], and continued its cultural inflow to China until the Song period, after which there was simply no authentic Buddhism left in India.  India was then taken by the Islamic Arabian and Brahman thoughts.  As Buddhism declined in India, students of authentic Buddhism today must come to China.  Buddhist thoughts in Europe and Japan are incorrect.

(5) What’s Sold in the Three Shops?

Chinese culture since the Tang and Song period consists of the three main schools or “shops” of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.

Buddhism is like a department store, which contains all the general merchandises for you to check out, if you have the time and money.  You could also just see around window-shopping, without actually spending a penny.  You could also stay away from it.  But the society needs it.

Taoism is like a drug store.  You don’t need to go there if you are healthy.  But if you are sick, then you have to go there.  With sicknesses, like in periods of chaos and changes, you would need Taoism in order to restore order and peace.  Taoism includes the arts of war and political strategies, and also astronomy, geography, medicine, etc., etc.  So when the state or nation is sick, this drug store is where you have to go.

Confucianism, including the Kong-Meng thought, is a food store, which you need everyday.  The May 4^th Movement did not destroy the drug store or department store, but wiped out the food store.  As a result, the Chinese people have no rice to eat, so they just have to eat bread from overseas, which they are not used to and which could, after a prolonged period, cause stomach problems.  To deeply appreciate the historical changes of Chinese culture, we not only need to understand why the situation has gotten to this point today, but also what to do for the future.  This is a very crucial question for today.  For this we have to study the Four Books.

To study the ethnic Chinese culture is not to go backward, but to understand it with the newest perspective.  Also to understand the cultural thoughts of over two-thousand years of Chinese history, we need to know that regardless of what political system was set up, it was always around a center of the legal system, which was not separable with the executive system.  Legal issues relate to laws, which we regard as consisting of only two systems, i.e., the common law and the civil law systems.  The legislative system within the legal system is also based on these two law systems.  But we forgot that there was a Chinese legal system since the Qin Dynasty, down to the Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.  The philosophical background of this Chinese legal system was the Four Books and Five Classics.  For example, many cases in history were judged by the ethical ideas in the Four Books and Five Classics.  So strictly speaking, before the concept of constitution ever existed, the Four Books and Five Classics served as constitutional thoughts, which were the center of the political philosophy and legal ideology.  Other kinds of philosophical ideas all served this central philosophy.  This is the good side of the story.

(6) A Mistaken Strike

The bad side of the story relates to the question of why the Confucian Shop was struck down.  It seemed inevitable that people wanted to destroy it in the May 4^th Movement.  But what’s the reason? Later on we discovered that it was actually an unfair strike, because this shop was originally a limited liability company created by Kong Zi and Meng Zi, with staff members such as Zeng Zi, Zi Si, Xun Zi, etc.  The two bosses had authentic merchandise on sale, which was however watered down by later generations throughout the millennia.  The quality of the merchandise was changed to inferior levels: it was wrongly interpreted by later generations, esp. by the neo-Confucian idealists of the Song Dynasty.  This misinterpretation casted a huge shadow on the image of the Kong-Meng thought.  That’s why people wanted to strike against it.

Now we have a more important issue, i.e., how to appreciate this cultural treasure house?  Today, people of mid-age or younger, especially those young students from middle school on up to universities, they knew almost nothing about it.  For this reason, we now start to explain the Four Books, beginning with The Analects.

(7) The Analects Re-visited

From young age, every Chinese reads The Analects.  But the version of the book that we all have now, is problematic.  It is the version with interpretations by Mr. Zhu Xi, the renowned Confucianist of the Song Dynasty.  Mr. Zhu’s scholarship and integrity were generally impeccable.  But are his interpretations of the Four Books  absolutely correct?  I personally would not agree with him, and would responsibly say that there are big problems.  His interpretations are not all correct.

Before the Southern Song period, his interpretations were not used.  It was from the Ming Dynasty that his interpretations became dominant.  The Ming ruling family [also named] Zhu ordered that his interpretations be a must read for the entrance exams for governmental office appointments.  So the last 6 to 7 centuries saw the “Kong-Meng thought of Zhu Xi” dominating and defining the Four Books and Five Classics. In other words, students who wanted to pass the exams would all be self-circling in his interpretations.  There are many problems with this, as we would know when we look further into it.  So the Zhu Xi version of the book that you all have is worth studying, but don’t believe it all.

Now that we are studying Kong Zi, [we should know what] he says in his I Ching Xi Zhuan: “writing cannot complete what you want to say, and what you say cannot complete what you mean.”  In today’s words, this means that human language cannot fully express what one wants to express.  Now there is a new discipline devoted to the study of this issue: semantics.  The same sentence with the same voice, when spoken face to face with facial expressions and body movements, would have different impact, comparing with playing out from a recorder, even for the same person to hear.  So there is no spoken language in the world that can fully express the meaning in the will and thought. Now, making spoken language into writing, which then is further made into books, would further block the meaning.

We must start with The Analects when we study Kong-Meng thought.  This is not to say that The Analects could fully express the Kong-Meng thought.  But we have to start there.  Now my perspective is rather daring in that it negates many of the ancient interpretations.  I think that The Analects cannot be divided, and each of its 20 chapters is a coherent essay.  Now the book we all have contains bits and pieces in the chapters, which were the work of the Song idealists, who started to fragment the original text, and turned it into dogmas.  We cannot do this.  Moreover, the 20 chapters together form a whole essay.  At least that’s my view as of today.  Maybe I will have a new idea tomorrow, and change my mind.  Who knows?  But I do think of it this way now.

(8) Learning and … Where’s the Pleasure?

Now this chapter Xue Er includes the purpose, attitudes, goals, methodologies, etc., of the teaching of the Kong school.  To read it in fragmented sentences, as we used to do, would be wrong.

[01.01] Zi said: learning and then practicing it often, isn’t that a pleasure? Receiving a bosom friend from afar, isn’t that joyful? When others fail to appreciate you, and you don’t take offence, aren’t you like a junzi –gentlemanly?

Reading these three sentences together, all Chinese, regardless of age, would understand the words.  According to the interpretation of the ancient [idealistic] scholars, learning needs to be practiced often.  Isn’t that a yue, or pleasure? Yue, is a character that expresses pleasure and happiness.  If this is the correct interpretation, and Kong Zi became a sage just because of this, then I would not be convinced, and would refuse to go to the Kong Temple at [Taipei] Dalongtong.  To be frank, when our teacher and parents forced us to read the books way back, it was really like “learning and then practicing it often, isn’t that painful?”  If Kong Zi had said that, I would regard him as a sage, because then he would have really understood human life.

As to the next sentence,  “Receiving a bosom friend from afar, isn’t that joyful?”  It seems right, but really not quite. Why? As common people, or as government staff, we live on salaries, which means “rich for three days, and then poor for the whole month”.  During the long period of poor days, if we have friends coming from afar to be treated with all meals, we would have to pawn our pants, and we would be very miserable. “Receiving a bosom friend from afar, isn’t that miserable?”  We would not have any joy.

The third sentence,  “When others fail to appreciate you, and you don’t take offence, aren’t you like a junzi –gentlemanly?”  Yun, to take offence, and be angry in your mind, but not expressing it out, rather just keeping the resentment and anger inside yourself.  When not being appreciated and yet having to keep your anger inside, you could then, and only then, become a junzi[2], or gentleman?  Well, I would rather not become one.  If I’m being wronged and yet not fighting or cheating back, and furthermore, I’m also just keeping my feelings inside of me, is that still not ok?  If not, I would be unable to become a junzi.

From the superficial interpretation of these sentences, it would go like the above.  So for many centuries, people have been feeling resentful against the Four Books.  It’s not just recent feelings amongst the modern youth.  Students in history also resented the books, because the scholars had turned them into dogmas, i.e., rigid laws that you had to abide.

But in fact it’s not really like this.  A genuine understanding of the text would make us appreciate Kong Zi as a sage. No mistake.

“Learning and then practicing it often” has an emphasis on the xi, or practice, and shi, or often, from time to time. First please note that, Kong Zi’s whole work, the totality of his thought, would indicate what “xue wen”, or “learning inquiry”, really means.  The common understanding is “reading a book is learning”, which is wrong. As explained in this text, learning in the Confucian tradition is not literary study.  Good writing only indicates literary skills, and good intellectual knowledge, which is different from xue wen, or learning inquiry, which you can have even if you could not read at all.  You only need to know how to do things, and how to be a good human being, and when you can do it well and appropriately, then you have learning, or learning inquiry.  This is not my personal interpretation.  If you complete the study of the whole text of The Analects, you would know that Kong Zi really talked about becoming a complete human being, capable of living life properly and doing things well.

(9) True Man and False Man

Talking about being a human, we would be reminded by Zhuang Zi, who called the cultivated person True Man.  After the Tang and Song Dynasties, those cultivated persons or saints were still called True Men.  For example, the idol of Lv Chunyang on the altar of Nan Gong is called Lv Zhen Ren, or True Man Lv.  People today tend to think of the term True Man as religious, like God in the West, or Buddha or Saint in China.  Actually in Taoism, the term True Man meant a person with accomplished xue wen, or learning inquiry. The antonym would be False Man, who would still be a man, but just not yet grown up to the highest human ethical standard. When one has grown up to the highest human ethical standard, he would be called a True Man in Taoist tradition, while for Kong Zi, he would be called having xue [wen], or learning [and inquiry practice].  So the character xue would include so many connotations.

Then where does the xue wen, or learning inquiry, come from?  Learning inquiry is not literary ability, nor knowledge. It came from personal life experience, through doing things and interacting with people.  This is a cultivation which is done not just through reading books.  Our daily life experience is the book, for our education.  So Kong Zi said later in the text, “knowing ren, or benevolence, through observing mistakes.”  When we see others making mistakes, we need to reflect on ourselves, so that we would not make the same mistakes.  This is xue wen, and in principle this is how he had learned, through constantly reflecting, practicing, and studying.  It would not be easy to do reflection in the beginning.  But gradually you will make progress, and will naturally appreciate it and develop the interest, and thus feel the pleasure and happiness.  We would have this kind of experience in our daily life.  For example, when we see certain friend who is doing something, which we would advice against by saying: “hey friend, don’t do that, you’ll get into trouble.”  He would not listen, and you would become sad. And in the end you would be proven right.  Although you would feel sorry for your friend, but you would also smile with an appreciation of your own insight having grown to a deeper level.  This is yue, a quiet smile in your heart, an experience of inner pleasure and appreciation, not a loud laugh.

The first point above is the purpose of xue wen, or learning inquiry, emphasizing “practice” the learning often, “from time to time”.  This means that we should practice learning in our daily life, not just in reading the Four Books as we do today, which is not what it’s meant originally. It is not the case that, if you do not read the Four Books, there would be no learning inquiry.

(10) Solitary Enjoyment

The second point next, is about the preparation that a person of learning inquiry should do.  I have personal experience in this.  True learning inquiry is for the sake of the learning inquiry, and for one to do what is appropriate, and not do what is inappropriate, even if it means sacrificing one’s own life.  “There are things that a junzi does, and that he does not.”  One would do those appropriate things for the sake of helping others, not for any other purposes, even at the risk of one’s own life.  Those would be the things that are “naturally agreeing with ren, or benevolence, and yi, or righteousness.” Thus practicing learning inquiry for the sake of learning inquiry, would mean to get ready for a lifelong loneliness.  We would realize this if we look at the experience of Kong Zi, who’s life was spent in loneliness.  Nowadays he enjoys many good treats [on altars] with pig-head meat, but back then he did not even have a lunch box.  But he was also not searching for wealth and position.  How come that he knew how to get these things and yet he did not do it?  Because, he knew clearly that he could get in high offices, and some of his students also wanted him to do that, however, for a total Chinese population of only a few million people at the time, he had three thousand disciples who were also the best minds of each of the states, thus forming a formidable force in the society. So, feeling very high and mighty, some of his disciples, especially Zi Lu who was a military specialist, almost wanted to raise their fists and say: “Master, we can do that!”  But Kong Zi did not move.  Why?  He saw that even if the society were to be peaceful, there would still be no solutions to its problems without completing the cause of education and culture.  Fundamentally solving the problems would rely on the purity and righteousness of thought, which was called “de xing”, or virtue nature.  Therefore, for the sake of developing the educational system, he rather chose to stay in poverty.  So if you want to practice learning inquiry, you should not be afraid of loneliness and solitude.  Only with this kind of spirit and attitude, can you start to practice learning inquiry.

Practicing learning inquiry you could end up being unknown for your whole life. But Kong Zi said that as long as you have learning inquiry, you would naturally have bosom friends.  Thus he says next, “Receiving a bosom friend from afar, isn’t that joyful?”  When one thinks for the nation, for the society, and for the wellbeing of people of many generations in the future, and he is lonely, and then a bosom friend comes to him, how joyful would he be?  Here the word yuan, or “from afar”, does not mean physical distance, like nowadays friends coming from abroad and overseas and learning Chinese culture, and we become joyful because they brought foreign currency to pay us.  That’s not what The Analects means.  This coming from afar means the difficulty of getting a bosom friend who can appreciate you.  We have an old saying, “having gained one bosom friend in your life, you would die without regret.”

In your whole life, you may not gain from among your friends, including your spouse, children, and parents, anyone who is bosom.  That’s why you would not die in regret if you could find one such friend.  You may have a grand and spectacular life, very successful and victorious, but you may not have any bosom friend who completely understands you.  This is especially true for those who practice learning inquiry.  So we have the second sentence here, which means that you should not be afraid that you would be unknown. You would be known gradually by someone from afar, not necessarily physically though.  Kong Zi’s learning inquiry was not widely known until 500 years later, at the time of Wu Di, or Marshal Emperor of the Han Dynasty, when Dong Zhongshu promoted Kong’s learning, and Sima Qian wrote the Shi Ji, or Chronology of History, in which he very highly praised Kong Zi.  How far apart in time was this!  The 500 years saw a deep loneliness, which however makes us deeply appreciate the line, “Receiving a bosom friend from afar, isn’t that joyful?” 

(11) Who Would Appreciate You?

The third sentence, “When others fail to appreciate you, and you don’t take offence, aren’t you like a junzi –gentlemanly?” This means that even if no one appreciates you for the whole life, as a person of learning inquiry you would not take offence.

Not taking offence is important.  We know the phrase yuan tian you ren, or “complaining about heavens and blaming other humans”. When we run into difficulties or suffer hardships, we would blame others for wronging us, for not helping or something.  This is a common psychological tendency.  Some would even go further to complain about the heavens.  So the yun, the “taking offence”, includes blaming both heavens and humans.

If one really practices learning inquiry for the sake of the learning inquiry, one would not complain about the heavens or blame other humans, but would rather reflect on oneself: why cannot I stand up on my own?  Why did I fail to accomplish the goal?  It would be due to problems in my own learning inquiry, in my own cultivation, and in my ways of approaching things.  Just deep self-reflection, without even the slightest complaint hidden in the mind.  In today’s terms, this would be the perfectly healthy psychological outlook.  Only this way can one start to be a junzi.  And only a junzi can properly engage in learning inquiry, and walk the path of learning and cultivating the Tao of human life.  In today’s new terms, this qualifies one to study life philosophy.

Moreover, these three sentences together indicate that the cultivation of learning inquiry and studying the books would simply mean to enjoy it yourself, and then can you achieve the broadest sense of responsibility: “be happy only after all under heaven are happy”[3] .  The emphasis in these three sentences is the phrase “isn’t that joyful?”  Let’s now quote from Chen Meigong of the Ming Dynasty as a reference: “what does it mean to enjoy a solitary joy? It means: when you have nothing to do, just sit and meditate, and one day would be worth two days.  What does it mean to enjoy an interpersonal joy? It means: you have a conversation with a friend, which is worth more than ten years of studying the books.  And what does it mean to enjoy a communal joy? It means: there is this primal emptiness in here, which can hold more than many hundred people like you.”  With this kind of mental flexibility, spiritual capacity, and magnanimous space, you can naturally accomplish “When others fail to appreciate you, and you don’t take offence”. Otherwise, the more you have knowledge and power, the more you cannot loose your bearings when feeling proud or depressed, so you end up like [what a Song poet wrote]: “reaching the highest spot of the heavenly gate, where you cannot bring in anything but yourself.”

(12) Love and Crime

The next paragraph is by You Zi:

[01.02] You Zi said: it is rare that one has filial love and fraternal respect in his daily life, and still tends to defy his superiors; it is unheard of that one does not defy his superiors and still want to start a rebellion.  A junzi focuses on the fundamentals, which, when established, naturally give rise to the Tao.  So filial love and fraternal respect are the fundamentals of being human, aren’t they?

First of all, filial piety and fraternity are mentioned here as the fundamentals of being human.  The fundamentals of Kong’s learning are ren, or benevolence, and xiao, or filial piety.  But one of the charges against the Confucian shop, which modern people wanted to destroy, was this xiao ti, or filial piety and fraternity. 

Why were these the targets for the criminal charge?  To understand this, we need to first know that the completion of the Chronology of History by Sima Qian was a big event.  At the time he was resentful against some of the Marshal Emperor’s policies, but he nevertheless had to obey the emperor.  But to obey the emperor did not bring peace to his mind, so he wanted to write the Chronology, and to put his ideas in it.  For example, in the “chronology of emperors”, which is called ben ji, or basic records, he included Xiang Yu, who never was an emperor.  But this way he indicated that in the fight between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, who won and later became the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty, both were heroes, except one lost the fight and the other won.  Also in the section on shi jia, or “families of long heritages”, which normally only records events of dukes and ministers, he included Kong Zi, who never was a duke.  By this he meant to indicate that Kong Zi had a cause of thousands of years, and that the deeds, thoughts, and words of Kong Zi would have impact for many generations, and thus deserve to be listed in there.

There are many places in various books that show the deeds, thoughts and words of Kong Zi.  The most important major piece of writing by Kong Zi is Chunqiu, or Spring-Autumn, whose last two sentences are: “by Chunqiu some people would get to appreciate me, and also by Chunqiu some others would incriminate me.”  There have been all kinds of interpretations of these two sentences throughout the millennia, which are all quite vague.  Now in our generation it has been clarified.  Why? Since the time of the modern democratic movement, people have been blaming Kong Zi for helping the autocratic emperors, who have been using Kong’s thought about zun jun, or “revere superiors” [and jun, as explained later, is most often understood as “emperors”].  People wanted to wipe him out just because of his ideas in this regard, they thought that he was really like that.  Now in re-reading Chunqiu and looking into Kong Zi’s thought, we find that this was not the case.  There are other reasons [for his ideas].

Secondly, we talk about filial piety and fraternity because these were the essence of Chinese culture.  I want to share with you two true stories here.

Over ten years ago, I was advising a doctoral student at Harvard who came to study for his thesis on Chinese culture.  Before he returned for the US, I asked him to promote the Tao of filial piety in his country.  He said it would be hard.  I told him that this would be a cause of thousands of years, not for immediate effect, and I explained about what filial piety meant.  I said that the character of xiao, or filial piety, indicates a mirror concept of ci, or loving-kindness, from the parents.  Parents give love to the child, who then returns that love in the form of filial piety.  Similarly, an elder brother takes care of his younger brother, who then returns that care in the form of fraternal respect, which is called xiong you di gong, or elder brother being friendly and younger brother being respectful.  But later on the concept of filial piety was changed to: “you ought to have filial piety, and toward all under heaven, who would also be like your parents.”  Now this was problematic, because there are those under heaven who are not my parents, aren’t there?  So that was not the Kong-Meng thought.  Someone else wanted to use the hat of Kong-Meng.  The Confucian shop was destroyed this way, which was hugely unfair.

(13) Filial Piety Is Like This

 Look at the biological creatures in the world.  Human beings are also biological creatures.  Taoists used to call humans “luo chong”, or naked creatures, i.e., animals without hairs. The human being was called the spirit of the myriad creatures, which was really a self-bragging title.  Perhaps for pigs, bulls, dogs and horses, the human being is the worst among the myriad creatures, because he “specializes on eating us pigs, bulls, dogs, and horses”.  This would be a different viewpoint.  From the perspective of biology, “naked creatures” are the same as other creatures.  The difference between humans and other creatures, is really only the additional feature of humanistic culture.  Thus we should know how treasurable the human culture is.

Why do we talk about this?  Animals in the world, like pigs, bulls, dogs, horses, chickens, ducks, etc., are all the same [as humans in one respect].  For example, hens would protect chicks, which shows the greatness of the nature of motherhood.  When the offspring grows up though, it would leave the mother, and they would never relate to each other again.  Animals are all like this.  Humans are not so different originally.  But why aren’t humans behaving like that too?  This leads us to the issue of education in a humanistic culture.