Song Lilin, Professor, Master Supervisor, Young Scholar of Taishan Scholar in Shandong Province, Deputy Director of the Excellent Traditional Culture Education Center of Qufu Normal University, Vice President of the Confucius Institute of Culture( concurrently), Director of the Institute of Chinese Lile Civilization, Dean of the National College of Kashgar University, member of the Academic Committee of Guiyang Confucius School.
The soul of Li lies in benevolence
Ritual has an extremely important position in Chinese culture and has exerted an extremely far-reaching influence. I once summed up the meaning of etiquette into three points: for the community, etiquette means order; for interpersonal communication, etiquette means respect; for individuals, etiquette means upbringing. There is no doubt that etiquette is still indispensable today. Decades ago, the famous thinker Mr. Liang Shuming called for "great rejuvenation of rituals and indoctrination, starting from the fundamentals of human disposition, and cultivating a natural and lively and harmonious and tranquil psychology." ”
After more than a hundred years of stigmatizing and criticizing "etiquette", more and more people today have very consciously promoted the Chinese liturgical music culture, which is a manifestation of cultural self-confidence. However, I think that to promote the culture of liturgy today, the most important thing to pay attention to is to grasp the relationship between benevolence and etiquette. We must understand that "the soul of the liturgy lies in benevolence." In Confucius Confucianism, the relationship between rites and benevolence can be expressed as "benevolence is made into rites, and rites are manifested by benevolence"—benevolence is the intrinsic essence of rites, and rites are to show benevolence. Without benevolence, the ritual would be a formality; therefore, benevolence is more critical, more basic, more fundamental. If benevolence is the body, then the ritual is the use. As Wang Yangming said: "The old benevolent one, the body of etiquette also ... Three hundred rituals, three thousand rituals, none of them are not benevolent, none are not sex... Therefore, self-denial and retribution are called benevolence, and poor reason is exhausted to the point of fate, and full of sex and emotion! "Benevolence is the essence of all rites, and if we ignore benevolence, rites become empty shells that have lost their souls, and the respect, humility, moderation, and concession required by rites will not become hypocritical performances."
In history and reality, there is indeed such a phenomenon of sacrificing the body for use. The "Five Years of Zuo Chuan Zhao Gong" records a famous story of the ancients who distinguished between "ritual" and "ritual". During the Spring and Autumn Period, Lu Zhaogong once visited the Jin Dynasty, "from the suburbs to the bribery, there is no dishonesty." Lu Zhaogong was very familiar with complicated etiquette and did not make any mistakes. Duke Ping of Jin praised him for being "good at etiquette", while the jin chancellor Shu Qi said: "Lu Hou Yan knows etiquette? "How can Lu Hou count the etiquette?" He made a famous judgment: "It is a ceremony, not a ceremony", and made a clear distinction between etiquette and ceremony. In his opinion, what Lu Zhaogong did was some form of etiquette, not a ceremony. The so-called "courtesy" is "so that those who keep their country and carry out their decrees, and do not lose their people." This is called "ben", and "yi" is regarded as "end", and it is believed that "the end of the ritual will be here", while Zhao gong "shavings and chips are used to practice rituals in a hurry", does not understand these fundamental avenues, and only clings to the subtle end of the ritual, so it cannot be said that it knows the etiquette. This Lu Zhaogong was the lu jun who brought carp to Confucius when his son was born. Confucius was grateful to him. Later, Chen Sifu directly asked Confucius "Zhao Gong Zhi Li Hu", and Confucius reluctantly replied "Zhi Li" out of the "etiquette" of "keeping secrets for His Holiness", but privately admitted that he had "had" this statement. It can be seen that Confucius's views on whether Lu Zhaogong knew the etiquette were consistent with his female uncle Qi.
Why does Lu Zhaogong not know how to "etiquette"? In fact, it is because he only mastered the "ritual" of the ceremony and lost the "righteousness" of the ceremony, although the ritual is very familiar, but this skill is just a form. In fact, we are also prone to make the same mistake in life, that is, we only adhere to the external ritual process, and lack of sincerity in our hearts. What's more, there are still many people in society who use "etiquette" as a tool to grab fame and fortune. Therefore, Confucius would sigh: "If people are not benevolent, how can they be polite?" If people are not kind, why be happy? "The loss of benevolence, the loss of sincerity, the loss of solemnity, the degeneration of an obnoxious form of formality." In this way, the more ritualistic it is, the more disgusting it is. Isn't the kind of "formalization" that we often criticize because such a form lacks sincerity? Originally, etiquette is to cultivate people's disposition, is the "way of adulthood", so that etiquette has become a shackle that restricts the normal development of human nature.
When we talk about rituals today, they are often associated with Confucianism. In fact, before Confucius, rituals had existed for thousands of years. Ritual is the emergence of social development to a certain extent, but it is a natural socialization phenomenon. Xunzi's so-called "pre-king system ceremony" is that the society has reached a higher stage, and only then has a "holy king" like Zhou Gong appear, and through comprehensive sorting, the ceremony will be further systematized and institutionalized, and it will become a system ceremony with a unified nature. By the Spring and Autumn Period, after hundreds of years of evolution, the liturgical culture of the Zhou Dynasty had lost its soul, become increasingly rigid and sinking, and arrogance and hypocrisy prevailed.
In this regard, the thinkers of the Spring and Autumn Period have reflected on this. The Taoist master Lao Tzu criticized: "After losing morality, losing morality and then benevolence, losing benevolence and then righteousness, losing righteousness and then etiquette." Confucius also criticized: "Liyun Liyun, Jade Shuyun Huya? Leyun Leyun, Bell And Drum Yun? "It is easy for people to understand that Taoists opposed the ritual, but confucius who revered the ceremony also criticized the ritual, is it not contradictory? In fact, the reflections of Confucius and later Confucians on "etiquette" are not completely denied, and what they oppose is only hypocritical and arrogant etiquette. Etiquette is originally a civilization, but any civilization is inevitably alienated. Alienation means going to the opposite side of oneself. Taoists, because they oppose alienation, deny human civilization almost completely, and advocate a return to nature. Confucius, on the other hand, was wondering: Why did the rites become alienated? How can we avoid formalization of etiquette?
The greatest alienation of the rites is the "hypocrisy." In Confucius's view, "hypocrisy" is precisely because of the "unkindness" of the human heart. The reason why Confucius was "ashamed" of "clever words" was because of the "fresh benevolence" among them; the reason why he criticized "the thief who wishes to be virtuous" was because his "innocence" was itself a kind of "unkindness"; the reason why Confucius did not want to view "disrespect for courtesy, and not mourning in the face of mourning" was because it was only the formalization of etiquette. Therefore, Confucius even said: "If you do not go in the middle and go with it, you will also be crazy", and if a person with a neutral temperament cannot get it, then it should also be a madman with a true temperament who is worthy of contact. Therefore, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Zongzi's "Tao An Dream Remembrance" said that "people have no fetish and cannot have intercourse, because they have no affection; people cannot be intercourse without defects, and they are also without true qi", which is in line with the true spirit of Confucius. Mr. Liang Shuming said, "The courtesy that comes from the true disposition is frank, simple, and in line with the heart." It is not humane, and clever words are not etiquette", sincerely speaking!
Confucius "wrote in fiction" and founded Confucianism, which unified benevolence and etiquette. Among them, liturgy is inheritance (description) and benevolence is innovation (composition). The reason why Confucius put forward the doctrine of "benevolence" is that he hopes to infuse the spirit of benevolence into the worldly rituals and make it more in line with the heavenly path and human nature, so as to become an important way to promote the cultivation of Qi Zhiping. Therefore, there are similarities and differences between Confucian rituals and secular rituals. In other words, the obnoxious, cumbersome, hypocritical rituals that we criticize on a daily basis are also opposed by Confucianism. Therefore, Confucianism has constantly advocated the change of customs and customs in history, in order to reorganize the alienated customs and inject the spirit of "benevolence" to restore its vitality.
Confucius's life was full of positive, optimistic and open-minded vitality, and did not fall into hypocrisy, pedantry and rigidity. Before "standing in the ceremony", he can "flourish in poetry", and life and the natural things of heaven and earth are connected, which is the leap of benevolence; after "standing in the ceremony", he can "become happy", and life reaches harmony with the nature of heaven and earth, which is the perfection of benevolence. You see him, he has had hardships in his life, but no matter what kind of difficulties he encounters, he can "sing the strings and songs" and be optimistic. Reading "The Township Party", the image of a scholar-doctor who observes etiquette is not annoying. In Zigong's eyes, it was the weather of "gentleness and frugality", which was the temperature of life under the influence of etiquette. Zi Xia's so-called "looking at it is like looking, that is, it is also warm, and listening to his words is also strong", which is the image of Confucius in the hearts of his disciples, and this life is full of perceptual, infectious, and indoctrination, so it is inevitable that Mencius said that "the service of the seventy sons of Confucius" is "the center of pleasure and sincerity". All this stems from his "lively" "benevolent heart". "Benevolence" is the self-awakening of life, the one who holds others in the heart, and the person who treats people as people, so benevolence will give birth to "love", "sincerity", "justice" and "forgiveness". Mencius's so-called "color is also clear, seen in the face, on the back, applied to the four bodies, the four bodies are self-evident" The glow of life must be presented in the "unity of benevolence and etiquette"!
In fact, not only Confucius, but among the Confucian sages, such a true disposition can be described as the norm of life. If you like to read all kinds of biographies, you will find that the really great people are full of natural and lively true temperament. In October 2021, Mr. Yang Chaoming and I were invited to Wuyi Mountain, Fujian Province, to participate in the first "Wuyi Lecture", and more truly felt the "double beauty" of nature and humanities in Zhu Zi's hometown, and more understood the true life situation of Zhu Zi. I realized at that time that for Zhu Zi, in the past, I only read the "Four Books, Chapters, Sentences, and Notes", and so on, and saw only the side of his thinking, literature, and secretion, and I did not know much about the mood of his life. In the past, we always imagined the theologians as mr. Taoists who did not smile and lacked interest, based on the descriptions of textbooks. However, this is not the case. Zhu Zi, as a master of science, is actually a true "lively" temperamental person. The historian of philosophy, Chen Rongjie, once commented: "Zhuzi's teaching is its happiest place. Leisure and fun, in the tourism and poetry of the pleasure. Indeed, I flipped through the Zhuzi culture series compiled by local scholars and found that Zhuzi really liked the famous mountains and rivers, drank and cooked tea, and wandered between the mountains and rivers with the second and third sons, often issuing poetry chants. In the current Qingming season, I found that Zhu Zi also had such heroic and free verses as "satisfied with carrying a glass of wine, climbing the mountain and facing the water", "the book is buried in the sun, it is better to abandon it to find spring", which actually stirred my silent and dull heart and triggered the idea of indulging in landscapes and rivers. Heavenly opportunities are as lively as Confucius and zhuzi, and they still feel us, and those who use Lilly as a shackle to bind others and bind themselves have long been swept into the garbage bags of history and disappeared. This is the charm of "benevolence and etiquette"!
A popular saying today: Life needs a sense of ceremony! Indeed, "the barn knows etiquette in practice, and the honor and disgrace are known when there is enough food and clothing", and people should have a higher level of spiritual needs after the food and clothing are solved. However, how to distinguish between the similarities and differences between "ritual sense" and "formalization" is probably the first thing that must be clarified. We should understand that the "sense of ceremony" we expect is actually the "sincerity" and "solemnity" brought to us by "ritual", and all this comes from the soul of "ritual" - the "benevolence" in our hearts!
Article Source: China.com, Culture China, Original Column (April 12, 2022)