■ Editor's Note
Mr. Qian Mu has been teaching all his life and has been respected by the Chinese academic community as a "generation of grandmasters". Qian Mu, who died without illness at the age of 96, left many valuable works for the world, about 15 million words, leaving a valuable spiritual legacy for the study of Chinese culture.
This article is a speech by Qian Mu when he was teaching as the dean of the Hong Kong University of Arts and Business. He taught his students to be happy to read and "be a person of high realm." And Mr. Qian Mu himself has become an example for everyone through reading books to become a generation of sages.
Mr. Qian Mu was born in a chaotic world, wandered and turbulent, lived in a long-term way, and hung alone overseas in the second half of his life, but he was able to encourage himself and improve himself, precisely because he was good at reading. Reading not only gave him the nourishment of knowledge, but also created a smooth integration of the mind.
This article reprinted the public number: Liberal Arts Humanities
Wen | Qian Mu
Why can you learn to be a high-level person by reading?
Because in the book, you can meet many people, these people have a high realm of life and a deep sense of affection, so as to be your example.
At present, although there are as many as three million and hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong, the realm of all of us as human beings is not necessarily high, and the taste of life is not necessarily deep.
We are all ordinary people, but the people we meet in the book are different; they are selected from millions of people, and they can withstand a long period of testing and remain to this day, like Confucius, 2600 years ago, how many Confucius can there be in China? Another example is Jesus, who is also fast to 2000 years; he is like Shakyamuni, Muhammad and others.
Why should we worship and worship them? It is because of their behavior. Of course, there are many characters in history, and they have been passed down because they are unique, so they have been remembered by future generations.
▲ Qian Mu calligraphy works
There is never a horse ticket in the world, becoming a millionaire and being able to pass on to future generations. Even if you become a great president or emperor, there are not many people who can pass on the memories and make people yearn.
Didn't china have many emperors? But most of them, not remembered at all, only have a name for him in history. Where is there a book to remember people's names? Being an emperor is also worthless, the rest is known.
The China-Malaysia ticket is inherently insignificant; if you want to study abroad and get a degree, what is the value and significance? When being a person of knowledge, there should be something important about it.
If we sincerely want to be a person, "cultivate interest, improve the realm", only these eight words, we can be inexhaustible in our lives; as long as we are willing to read, we can follow these eight words to read, we can get a new interest, enter a new realm.
If you can continue to read every day in your spare time and persevere, then the long period of ten years and twenty years, the short or three years and five years, you can cultivate the interest in life and improve the realm of life. That is the greatest happiness and the highest enjoyment of life.
▲ Qian Mu
What books to read?
Speaking of which, let's go one step further and talk about the choice of reading. Which books should I read? I think that amateur reading should be roughly divided into the following categories:
The first is the cultivation of books.
The so-called cultivation is like planting a pot of flowers, we need to prune the branches and leaves frequently, and then fertilize and water; if we do not take care of it for three or five days, we will never blossom good flowers, or even do not flower at all, or even die. Planting flowers is still true, let alone being a person! Of course, it is even more necessary to redouble our cultivation.
Several books on life cultivation in China are required for everyone to read.
The first is the Analects.
Don't read it for me before, and I don't have to read it again now. Just as eating every day, it cannot be said that if you eat today, you will not eat tomorrow; good books should be read all the time.
Again, Mencius.
These two books of Kong Meng are the simplest, but also the most precious. If you can keep these two books around you often, read one or two times a day, but spend three or five minutes, but you can get endless benefits.
At this time, reading is voluntary, there is no need to insist on remembering, nor to take the exam, nor to be an expert in learning or to write a doctoral dissertation; this is extremely easy and free, just as Confucius said, "tacit understanding".
Just read it day by day, don't think it's useless; for example, if you eat a lot of food every day, you don't have to and can't always calculate how many vitamins and calories you contain in it, and it's beneficial to just eat it; the same is true for reading. This is just a private life for us, but at the same time it is a noble enjoyment.
▲ In 1949, Qian Mu and his colleagues founded New Asia College in Hong Kong
Mencius once said, "A gentleman has three pleasures, but a king does not have a relationship with him." "Even being the emperor of the world is not a pleasure; then, what is it to watch movies and horse tickets?" But what exactly are the three pleasures that Mencius spoke of?
We might as well flip through Mencius and think carefully about his words, for that makes sense. The desires of life will never be satisfied. Some people think that if you increase your monthly income to two hundred and fifty yuan, you will be happy; even if you get what you want, you will still feel unhappy--even if you are a king, you will be unhappy.
When we try to read history, we know that many emperors live more unhappily than ordinary people. It is true that there will be unhappiness in being human, but we cannot stop there, we still want to seek happiness.
The true joy of life, I urge you to find it from books; you can buy the Analects of Mencius for only three or two dollars to go to the bookstore; even if you read one a day, you will enjoy it for a long time.
There is also a "Lao Tzu". The whole book is only five thousand words.
A "Zhuangzi". The length is larger, the text is deeper, and it is more difficult to read; but I am talking about amateur reading, so you don't have to seek full understanding. To know: even if you are a university, he will not understand when he reads; not to mention that we are amateur readers; it is equivalent to looking at the scenery outside the window, or sitting in the bus ferry to enjoy the surrounding scenery, as you are happy to see anything, not necessarily all the exterior view, and no one can see it all.
There is also a Buddhist Zen Sutra of the Six Ancestral Altars. Written in the style of language, the inner story is extremely vivid, the truth is extremely profound, and it can be read in one breath in a few hours, but it can also be read intensively from time to time.
Secondly, there are Zhu Xi's "Records of Recent Thoughts" and Mr. Wang Yangming's "Records of Transmission and Practice".
Both books are not very long, and they can be read separately. Love to read a few, just a few.
I often advise the Chinese people to read the above seven books frequently. The essence of cultivation in the Chinese tradition has been exhausted. And these seven books can be read no matter what profession you do and how busy your life is.
The young students here today only hope that you will remember the titles of these books and prepare to read them when you grow up in the future. If everyone can take some time every day to read these seven books continuously, we can be reborn and embark on the road of new life.
The second is the appreciation of books.
The scenery can be enjoyed, the movies can be enjoyed, and even tea and coffee can be appreciated. We also need to appreciate life itself, and we need to be able to appreciate it from a high place.
The most effective thing is to read literature, especially poetry. This does not require everyone to be a writer; as long as they can appreciate it.
There is a proverb: "If you read three hundred Tang poems well, you will not be able to make poems and you will also chant." "The realm in the poem is all-encompassing; whether it is the natural part, whether it is the life part, the Chinese poem can be described as all-encompassing; all the seasons of the year, the seasons of the day, all the climatic scenes, even the flying submersible plants, a willow, a flower, even a village dog or a nasty mouse, all enter the poetic realm, through the poet's pen, all show a very affectionate, interesting; enter the joys and sorrows encountered in life, all in the poet's works."
When we read poetry, we can cultivate our appreciation of nature, appreciate life, and make the realm of poetry the realm of our soul appreciation. If we can immerse our lives in poetry, it is really interesting.
Such as Tao Yuanming's poem: Dogs bark in the deep alley, chickens chirp mulberry trees on the top.
These ten words can not be encountered anytime and anywhere in the poor countryside and remote areas! But we ignore the fun. Described by Tao's poem, a scene of rural leisure with rich flavor is brought to life in front of our eyes. We can read Tao poems and live in the countryside, but they can bring us into the highest state of life and make you live like you live in poetry.
Another example is Wang Weishi: the fruits of the rain fall, and the grass worms under the lamp sound.
When you live in the mountains at this moment, you may also be exposed to this situation: when it rains, the ripe fruits on the fruit trees next to the house fall down one by one, and you can hear the sound of "fluttering" and "fluttering"; the small green insects in the grass have sneaked into the windows through the rain and chirped under the lamp. It was a quiet rainy night in the mountains, but there was someone in this poem.
The Tao poems quoted above are also people behind them. Just one in the mountains, one in the village; one during the day, one at night. Isn't it good that if you read more poetry, in any situation, you can evoke a literary realm and make you live in poetry as if you were?
▲ Mr. Qian Mu in front of the Sushu Building
Even if we can't experience it in person, we can also empathize with the spirit and get another realm in the poem, such as Tang poetry:
Matsushita asked the boy, and the teacher took the medicine and went; only in this mountain, the clouds were deep and unknown.
Isn't that a living portrait of life? It is not the person who paints, but the life of the painting. That portrait of life is vividly reflected in front of our eyes, let us appreciate it. In my opinion, appreciating a poem should be more interesting than appreciating a movie, because it can make us wander for a long time and have endless fun.
This is true not only of poetry, but also of Chinese prose. Even if you only read three hundred poems of the Tang Dynasty and only one ancient literature, you should know that when we study literature, we do not want to be literary scholars for ourselves.
Therefore, if you don't understand poetry, you can still read poetry. Read prose more freely. Studying literature is for the enjoyment of one's own life, and in the enjoyment, there is still the harvest of one's own life, which is really a secret of life.
The third is the UBM class.
There is no hard and fast rule for such books; only to love to read, history, travel, science, philosophy, sex, self-willingness to read tirelessly, increase knowledge, extensive knowledge, age, unusual.
The fourth is the new knowledge class.
We were born in this era, and we should always seek new knowledge in this era. This kind of knowledge can be found in modern published periodicals and magazines, and even in newspapers. This category does not need to be elaborated upon.
The fifth is the pastime class.
In fact, in a broad sense, the above mentions can be used as a pastime; because this is basically amateur reading, it can also be said to be an amateur pastime. But in a narrow sense, such as novels, plays, legends, etc., these books belong to this category. If you read water margin, romance of the Three Kingdoms, and dream of the Red Chamber, it can be used as a pastime.
The above has been roughly classified as the books that amateurs should read. But when can you read it when you are busy with life? In fact, life is busy, it is also deserved; only in the ability to use idleness, such as Ouyang Xiu's three, that is: pillow, toilet and horse. When you go to bed, you can't sleep for a quarter of an hour; you can go to the bathroom and take a book with you; today you don't ride a mule, but it is more comfortable to read on a boat than on a horse.
The ancients also said three more: the winter is more than the age, the night is the day, and the yin is sunny. Now we live differently than the ancients; but each person must have many fragmentary hours, such as: before breakfast in the morning, before dark in the evening, and before going to bed; there are three fragments of the day. Just like a piece of cloth, after cutting a set of clothes, the rest of the fractions can be used for other purposes.
In addition, there are weekends and Sundays, festivals and holidays; especially winter and summer vacations for teachers. These can be fully utilized as amateur reading time.
If you can save one hour every day, you can have 3,600 hours in ten years. For example, if a person is employed at the age of thirty and reaches the age of seventy, he can save fourteen thousand four hundred hours, which is not a huge sum? Now it is not to tell you to suffer hardships and do learning, but to read for entertainment and entertainment, but also like playing sparrows, watching movies, which will say that there is no time!
If we are as interested and accustomed to reading as we are playing sparrows and watching movies, we can read books in any environment or under any circumstances. In this way, there will be higher enjoyment and better entertainment, which is not a great thing in life!
As long as you have perseverance in reading, you can cultivate interests, and you can cultivate habits, and you can improve the realm of life from now on. This is something that no amount of money can buy.
Today's Hong Kong society is too short of reading air, middle-aged and older people, with a career, no longer think of further study, and no longer think of amateurs can also read again.
I hope that you will take this matter seriously, and you may wish to cooperate, and if you have books, you may wish to exchange books, and you can talk to each other. In this way, it is easier to cultivate interest. In just one year, habits can be formed.
I hope that people with careers in middle age and above can do the same, and young people in school should be able to do the same when they leave school one day. In the past, the natural life realm will be high, and the taste of life will be thick. Everyone is like this, and society has become a good society.
What I am talking about today is not an empty theory, but only my personal practical experience. Today I contribute to you, and I would like to share with you the precious joy of this life.
Click to read, and get acquainted with the good books in your life