Why should modern people read the cultural classics handed down from ancient times? Different people may have different answers. As long as it's not for entertainment or vanity, then the following story is worth thinking about.
At the beginning of reform and opening up, an international trade lecture was held in a certain place. The main speaker was a foreign expert who did not understand Chinese, and the lecturers were all Chinese who did not understand foreign languages, so the organizer arranged for an interpreter. During the lecture, the speaker told a very funny story, which took more than two minutes, and the translation took less than half a minute to translate. The crowd who listened to the "translation" burst into laughter. The speaker was puzzled, because he could not imagine that Chinese could be so concise. Afterwards he privately consulted the interpreter. Unexpectedly, the translator replied indifferently: "I just told another joke." ”
In this story, if the narrator is only telling the audience to laugh, then the translation practice may not be too harsh, because after all, the purpose of the speaker has also been achieved. But if the purpose of the presenter is not to enliven the atmosphere, or primarily not to enliven the atmosphere, but to convey certain important messages, the translator's approach is obviously very inappropriate, and it can even be said that he is not a competent translator, because he is not loyal to his job, but chooses to be opportunistic and opportunistic.
If we can let go of the arrogance of modern man, or if we have not yet broken the limit of seeking truth from facts, then we must admit that there are individual differences between people. Whether Confucius or Lao Tzu can become recognized sages or philosophers, the works they left behind can be enshrined as classics, passed down for more than two thousand years, and are still immortal, absolutely not because their words can be used as chicken soup for the soul, not because their experiences can be ridiculed, not because they are successful people who pursue fame and fortune, not because their insights and insights are shared by everyone. By acknowledging this, we can understand why we should read cultural classics such as the Analects, Zhou Yi, and the Tao Te Ching. Or should we reflect on how to read these classics? If you just find some words that you can hear well and prove yourself correct or clever to cater to yourself, or speak for yourself, the other content is ignored, ignored, or simply buckled a "timeless" hat to obscure things, perhaps the classics do not have to be read. Because whether one is correct or not, whether one is clever or not, depends entirely on one's own opinions or actions, and does not depend on whether there is a sentence in the classics that can be taken out as proof or endorsement; and those who do not understand or disagree with them are discarded or resisted without thinking, then no matter how many classics they read, the final harvest is only a reinforced original self, and there will be no progress or improvement. And in reality, many people with this mentality or motivation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will do their best to interpret the classics in line with themselves. This is called "Classic Note Me" or "Classic Read Me". Not only will this not help you, but it will also distort the scriptures and sages to obscurity and unrecognizability.
If such a reader goes any further, or writes a book or preaches publicly, then he is not alone in being misled or even deceived. What others come into contact with him is largely him and his words in the guise of the sages and the scriptures, rather than the sages and the scriptures themselves. Compared with the audience in the above small story, how many times the loss of his readers or audience is greater? Because what is stolen is not a joke, but the sages and classics.
Nowadays, some traditional cultural lectures or reading materials are keen to use a large number of hot words, colloquialisms, and Online language under the guise of "popular", and are keen to project the thoughts, words, and deeds of the ancients into the contexts, mentalities, and scenes that ordinary people are familiar with today. This is also a kind of stealing, but what is used to steal the sages and classics is no longer the personal thing of the speaker or the author, but the current market fun. If you want to truly learn the classics and traditional cultures and really benefit from them, you obviously can't rely on such courses and books. Because we study classics and traditional culture, we want to temporarily break away from impetuousness and utilitarianism from the spirit, and enter a higher-level, far-reaching, moral, intelligent and elegant cultural world, absorb nutrition, energy, and nourish the body and mind, so as to improve our own language and cultural literacy, extend our own inner and life experience, and enhance our spiritual and life realm. If in the course of study, what we hear is still poor and vulgar colloquialisms, what we see is still clumsy and shallow hot words, and what comes to mind is still the mirror image of the materialistic world that we are in every day, but only some names and place names, then what else can we take to enrich and improve ourselves? Why should we learn? Not only that, if such "interesting" or "popular" epidemics are allowed to flood, it is bound to cause various erroneous impressions of China's excellent traditional culture, such as "traditional culture is just like this", "sages and heroes do not need to be feared", "classical education is meaningless", and so on. In the long run, eventually they may even dissolve the classics in the name of the classics in society and bury the sages in the name of the sages culturally. This may not be harmful to the sages who have long since passed away, but it is probably not a good thing for us and our children and grandchildren living in the present, and even for our countries and nations.
I have met many such people: out of reverence and love for traditional culture, I want to read some classics in a down-to-earth manner. But unfortunately, they often do not know traditional characters, nor do they have basic ancient literacy, in order to learn, they can only buy a variety of modern publications with labels such as "tasting reading", "full translation", "vernacular", "experience" and so on. Unfortunately, many of these publications are just cultural fast-selling products that closely follow the hot spots, and for large sections of ancient texts, they are either not annotated, or they are just dragonflies and vaguely pretentious. The so-called "vernacular translation" is mostly the so-called "paraphrase", that is, the original meaning.
I've also had the misfortune of buying some of these books. When I opened the study, I found that all the allusions to words that I did not know or could not determine the meaning of, there were almost no annotations in the book, and the only one or two notes were exactly what I already knew, relatively superficial, and often the same between the books. In the face of such books, I often can't help but ask myself: "Is it true that the level of readers is now so high that they do not need to be commented on, or basically do not need to be commented on?" Is his literary and historical literacy far below the level of the general public? Don't I know what I want to be annotated has long since become common sense? In desperation, I could only consult a large number of ancient books and read the notes of the ancients. For someone like me, who is still somewhat basic, it is easy to imagine the situation of ordinary readers in the face of such modern publications.
Because of this experience and the need for work, I began to try to "detail" some of the content that is urgently needed in the popularization of the classics in 2018. The Analects of filial piety are one of the results of this attempt.
The Analects is a quotation that records the Q&A exchanges between Confucius's teachers and students or between them and other contemporaries, which preserves a large number of first-hand information about Confucius and the era in which he lived, embodies the basic overview of Confucius Thought, contains many Confucian thoughts, and even the core concepts of Chinese culture, and is an unavoidable yuandian for understanding and learning the excellent traditional Chinese culture.
The Book of Filial Piety is a cultural canon that systematically interprets Chinese filial piety, and is also the only ancient classic in the world dedicated to filial piety. The filial piety ideology and practical principles advocated by her are the cornerstone of the ethics, morality and culture of traditional Chinese families and societies, the foundation of traditional Chinese educational concepts and educational models, the fine traditions of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, the source of the feelings of countless benevolent people and heroes throughout the ages, and the foundation of the Chinese nation's maintenance of strong centripetal force and cohesion.
The detailed annotations and translations of the Analects and the Book of Filial Piety in this book, like the previously published "Detailed Notes on Secondary School Poetry" and "Detailed Notes on Qionglin for Kindergarten Studies", are still based on the principle of "seeking truth in detail and paying attention to the details", based on language and writing, referring to many authoritative annotations in ancient and modern times, adhering to the practice of having evidence and not taking evidence, successively consulting more than 60,000 original documents, and completing more than 5,000 annotations, totaling nearly 120,000 words. All those who encounter strange words, polysyllabic words, and words that are easy to misread are also phonetic. For the knowledge points that appear in the content of the annotations, this book is also annotated. The reason why we want to be so tireless is that we only hope that readers with a degree of initial Chinese can read this book without obstacles, and only in this way can our classics be truly facing the public and benefiting society.
In the more than two thousand years from the Analects to the present, because Chinese words have been in a constant process of differentiation and evolution, when using modern Chinese to annotate ancient Chinese words, they often encounter the situation of multiple interpretations of one word. In order to explain as clearly as possible, it is often necessary to list multiple groups of expressions that are not of the same meaning in modern Chinese when commenting. To avoid confusion, the book uniformly uses "separate multiple expressions of the same meaning, with", "separate the expressions of different meanings; with ";" separate the sub-items under the same annotation.
For the different statements in the previous commentaries, this book generally takes only one of them when annotating. However, in order to avoid possible bias, other different points of view will also be listed at the same time, and the author's trade-offs will be indicated. This book generally states the following when indicating trade-offs: if it is not possible to negate views other than those taken, it is explained only by "this book takes so-and-so"; if there is sufficient evidence to determine that views other than those taken are insufficient, they are explained by "this book is not taken"; if other views other than those taken in this book are sufficient, the trade-offs are not specifically stated, but only the statements taken are prepended.
Since the positioning of this book is not a research work, when listing different views, it is generally no longer indicated that the proposer or supporter of the idea is proposed, nor is its source indicated. However, if the content of the annotations refers to documentary sources, the source of the citation is indicated in the book. The author believes that for non-academic readers, it can not only learn from the evidence, but also reduce a lot of burden.
In order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings or interferences, this book is generally not elaborated outside the text, except for the necessary literary and historical background or linguistic logical explanation. The author believes that the reader must first overcome the language barrier and understand the original meaning of the classics as much as possible, and then it is possible to walk into the classics and approach the sages. If we have not yet properly understood even the basic words and phrases, it is unreasonable, irresponsible, and meaningless, and it is not beneficial to others or to ourselves, whether to talk about the way of the sages and the values of the classics, and then to make so-called "promotions" or "criticisms." Or to put it conservatively: "experience", "practice", and "kung fu" without textual support are, at best, self-talking, self-intoxicating, and self-deceiving in the name of sages and scriptures.
In order to help readers understand the original text as a whole, this book also provides reference translations, and adopts a literal translation method that can best fit the original text, and strives to accurately correspond to the original text. In cases where words must be added for grammatical reasons to make the translation smooth, the additions are marked with "()". This is not only to be as faithful as possible to the original meaning of the original text, but also to help readers improve their familiarity and awareness of ancient Chinese, and gradually cultivate the sense of ancient Chinese language, thereby improving Chinese language ability.
Although the motivation and starting point are good, but limited to knowledge and objective conditions, there must be many problems or flaws in this book. Sincerely, I sincerely invite the wise people from all walks of life and the vast number of readers to give lessons and put forward valuable opinions, suggestions and criticisms.
Finally, I would like to thank all the leaders, teachers, relatives and friends who have cared, loved, and supported me for a long time, without their warm encouragement, careful guidance, and selfless help, I would not have been able to complete this book.
The Chinese nation has many great classics, and the text of each classic carries the wisdom and feelings of our ancestors in and behind them. By studying these classics, you can always get inexplicable insights and feelings unconsciously. Commenting on classics such as the Analects and the Filial Piety Sutra is also another in-depth and profound study for me personally.
Note: This book was published in June 2021. Readers can identify the QR code below to purchase directly.