"Huainanzi": Cultivate yourself in things, respect small and cautious

There is a cloud in Liu An's "Huainanzi Human Training": "The saint respects the small and cautious, and when he does not lose his movement, he repeats the precepts with hundreds of shots, and the misfortune is not bad." "We must be very careful and careful from the beginning, and we should not be sloppy about small things, which tells us to pay attention to small things.

"The small one is bigger, and the small one is cute." Although the small lines and small ends are small, they can see the big in the small places, and their moral character can also be known in the small things. From the "Shang Shu" in "do not be careful, eventually accumulate great virtue", to the "to the vast and subtle" in "Zhongyong", to the "Great Things under the World, Must Be Done in detail" in the "Tao Te Ching", the emphasis on fine lines, subtleties and details has always been an important content of self-cultivation in Chinese culture.

"Respect" is the word for "respect", from the hand, with a cane or whip, indicating beating; from the gou, there is an urgent, urgent meaning. The original meaning is respectful and dignified. The Shuowen Jiezi believes that "respect, solemnity", by extension, "treat with caution, do not slacken off and be scrupulous." ”

Respecting small and cautious reflects the attitude towards "small". "Do not act with good and small, and do not act with evil and small", "Do not worry about the small, and start to cause great trouble; do not prevent the small, and eventually accumulate great virtue". If you don't look carefully at small things, you will be unstable in big things. We can always maintain an extremely sober and wise understanding of "small", so as not to let small things gradually develop into big things, making things tricky and difficult to recover.

Bai Juyi served as the assassin of Hangzhou for three years, and after returning home from his post, he found that he had taken two stones in Tianzhu Mountain during his tenure, felt ashamed, and wrote a self-reproach poem: "Three years for the history of thorns, drink ice and eat barberry." Only to tianzhu mountain, get two stones. This is worth a thousand dollars, but it does not hurt innocence. When his friend Liu Yuxi found out, he advised him: "There are only two small stones, why should you pay attention to them?" Bai Juyi said: "Although the mountain stone is not valuable, but it is a disgrace to the reputation, if every tourist brings back the Tianzhu Mountain Stone, where is the beauty of Tianzhu Mountain?" Bai Juyi's cautious attitude towards small things made posterity stand in awe.

Small things should be respected, "respect for small" should be correctly viewed "small", and have a reverence for small things. In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, the famous Qing official Emperor Fu Wuyi, when serving in Chengdu, was appointed as the governor of Yizhou, Shi, once, he inspected the territory, at night did not find a post, had to go to the people's homes to spend the night, just when the candle torch was about to burn out, the master was ready to continue, but he stopped. Believing that he had disturbed the people by spending the night, and that the people could not bear it, he drew his sword and cut off his clothes belt as a lamp. The story of Emperor Fu Wuyi's "broken belt for the torch" has been passed down as a good story by later generations. In the eyes of ordinary people, these small things are trivial and trivial, and even not worth mentioning, but the subtleties show their reverence for small things and subsections, reflecting a person's cultivation and character.

Small things should be cautious, and "cautious" should learn to reject "small". The ancients said: "Don't take small things lightly, small gaps sink boats; don't light small things, small insects poison the body." Lu Yan was the prime minister of the Tang Dynasty known for his "Qingshen". After the death of his mother, he needed to guard the tomb for three years, during which time the various clan towns deliberately begged this "internal minister" and gave generous gifts one after another, and Lu Yan did not take any of them. Even Tang Dezong felt that he was so "demanding" of himself, which was a bit excessive. But he said, "As soon as the bribery road opens, it turns out to be very much worse." Whips and boots will not cease to be clothed; the garments will be untold, and the currency will be bound; the currency will be untold, and the carts will be the same; the carts will be incessant, and the golden bi will be the same. The sun can see what is desired, how can you suffocate yourself in your heart. "The trickle keeps flowing, and the stream is infested." Everything has a process of quantitative change to qualitative change, and when a small problem has just sprouted, it is necessary to gain insight into the consequences of the great harm through the appearance of the subsection, so as to "see the small things and know the small things", and at the beginning, we must take precautions to prevent the accumulation of heavy and difficult to return and reach an unmanageable situation.

Respect small and cautious to do every little thing well. In view of reality, the smooth completion of any major event, on the surface, seems to be accidental, but in fact, it is the inevitable result of the accumulation of various small things to a certain extent. Small things can become big things, and ordinary things can be done repeatedly to achieve extraordinary. Keep in mind the respect for small and cautious, strengthen their self-cultivation from small things and sub-sections, do small things in detail, and accumulate more size work.

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