Zheng Xuan's way of learning: Tampo Mingzhi immersed himself in teaching

Tampo Mingzhi immersed himself in teaching

——Zheng Xuan's way of learning

Liu Yuli

Sutra is the root and soul of Chinese culture. Almost no one who has ever read Zheng Xuan's commentary has not read zheng xuan's commentary. Zheng Xuan (127-200), courtesy name Kangcheng. He devoted his life to sorting out the ancient cultural heritage, and annotated the Qunjing, especially the "Three Rites Commentary", which was the most accomplished, and was the master of the Eastern Han Classics. During the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, Zheng Xuan was listed among the twenty-two "first teachers" and deserved to enjoy the Confucius Temple. Gu Yanwu of the Qing Dynasty praised him in the "ShuGu Poems": "Zheng Kangcheng, the great lord, is not a probing. The six arts should be passed, and the hundred arts should also be taken at the same time. So far, the three gifts have existed, and their learning is not a small supplement. In contrast, Zheng Xuan's academic experience is not as well-known as his commentary. In fact, it is precisely because Zheng Xuan adhered to his attitude of being indifferent to MingZhi and immersed in the teaching of the scriptures throughout his life that he achieved his outstanding achievements in the history of classics.

The teenager aspires to concentrate on scripture

When Zheng Xuan was young, he worked as a village clerk, that is, a small official in charge of hearing lawsuits and collecting taxes. However, he did not want to be an official, and often sought advice from the scholar. Zheng Xuan established the ambition to study the scriptures from a young age, immersed in the books all day long, and diligently pursued them. He is not vain and pragmatic by nature. At the age of eleven or twelve, he accompanied his mother to his grandmother's house. At that time, there were many guests, and the dozen or so guests present were all beautifully dressed and exaggerated, appearing to have both power and style. Only Zheng Xuan sat silently on the side, as if his identity and talent were inferior to those of others. When his mother saw it, she felt that there was no light on his face, so she secretly urged him to show his face and show a little talent and spirit. But Zheng Xuan disagreed, saying that these vulgar scenes were "not what I wanted, not what I wanted."

Later, Zheng Xuan went to Luoyang to study Taixue, and learned "Jingshi Yi", "Ram Spring and Autumn", "Three Unified Calendar", "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic", and later learned "Zhou Guan", "Li Ji", "Zuo Shi Chunqiu", "Han Shi", "Ancient Wen Shangshu" and so on with Zhang Gongzu of Dong County. After that, he went to Fufeng to ask Ma Rong for advice. In the first 3 years under Ma Rong's door, Ma Rong's high disciples taught him, and he had never seen Ma Rong's face. But he studied day and night, never tired. Later, Ma Rong heard that he was good at arithmetic and astronomy, and only met him. From then on, he began to have the opportunity to ask Ma Rong for advice in person.

Zheng Xuan spent 7 years under Ma Rong's door and devoted himself to studying classics. Ma Rong's personality is relaxed, "the festival of the informal". He "taught the disciples before and the female music in the back", taught the disciples in the front, and set up the female music behind the tent. The other disciples could not avoid peeking at these women during the class, but Zheng Xuan did not turn his eyes and concentrated on his studies. It can be seen that Zheng Xuan's concentration is extraordinary. Ma Rong could see from this that he would succeed in the future. After Zheng Xuancheng left, Ma Rong said to his disciples many times: "Zheng Sheng is going to go now, and my way is dongyi." This means that after Zheng Xuan, a student, leaves, my knowledge will be brought to the East by him and carried forward.

Keep the festival, quiet and far-reaching

Zheng Xuan returned to his hometown after more than ten years of study, and there are nearly a thousand students. Later, because of the party strife, he was imprisoned for 14 years. He took advantage of this to be out of the door and specialized in the study of scriptures. It was not until the last year of the Han Ling Emperor that the party ban was lifted.

The general He Jin heard that Zheng Xuan was a sage, so he sent someone to recruit him and hoped that he would become an official. Because He Jin was extremely powerful, the governors of the prefectures and counties did not dare to disobey his will, so they coerced Zheng Xuan. Zheng Xuan was forced to visit He Jin in desperation. He Jin respected him very much, prepared a sitting table and a cane for him, and treated him with courtesy. However, Zheng Xuan did not accept the imperial clothes given by He Jin, but only wore a scarf to meet He Jin, and fled after staying overnight.

At that time, the general Yuan Shao was commanding the army in Jizhou, and also sent emissaries to invite Zheng Xuan and entertain guests on a grand scale. Zheng Xuan was the last to arrive, and Yuan Shao invited him to his seat. At that time, there were many talented people among the guests, both eloquent and learned, and seeing that Zheng Xuan was a Confucian, he did not think that he was a "general person", that is, a knowledgeable and knowledgeable person, who competed to get up and ask him questions. Zheng Xuandu defended and replied according to the Confucian classics, and each answer went far beyond the scope of the question itself, telling a lot of remarks that these people had never heard before, and as a result, no one in the audience was not impressed.

At that time, Ying Shao of Runan also submitted to Yuan Shao, and introduced himself to Zheng Xuan, saying: "I am the former Taishan Commandery Taishou Ying Zhongyuan, and I want to be your student, what do you think?" "The former Taishou took the initiative to ask for worship, and ordinary people would feel very honored, even flattered. However, after hearing this, Zheng Xuan smiled and said, "The Gate of Zhongni examines disciples in four disciplines (virtue, speech, political affairs, and literature), and I have not heard of Yan Yuan and Zigong, who call themselves officials." After Ying Shao listened, his face showed shame.

Yuan Shao recommended Zheng Xuan as "Mao Cai" and recommended him as the general of Zuo Zhonglang, but Zheng Xuan did not accept it. The Bus Department recruited him to be the Grand Si Nong and gave him a four-horse car. Wherever he passed, all the counties and counties had to send their chiefs to pick him up and drop them off, and the pomp and circumstance was full. However, after arriving at the imperial court, Zheng Xuan went home on the grounds of illness.

At that time, just as Yuan Shao and Cao Cao were at a stalemate at Guandu, Yuan Shao asked his son Yuan Tan to send emissaries to force Zheng Xuan to follow the army. Forced by helplessness, Zheng Xuan took the illness to Yuancheng County, and could not continue to travel because of his critical condition. He died of illness that year at the age of 74. Zheng Xuan left a will and demanded a thin burial. Among the people who studied with him below the sheriff, more than 1,000 people came to the funeral.

Pay attention to the group scriptures and concentrate on education

Zheng Xuan wrote to his son in his later years, mentioning that his ambition was "the unevenness of the whole hundred families" and claiming to be "quite high as the lord". He had no intention of fame and fortune, but was preoccupied with giving a good commentary on the classics of the multitude of opinions. Therefore, his annotations of "Zhou Yi", "Shang Shu", "Mao Shi", "Rites", "Ritual Records", "Analects", "Filial Piety", "Shangshu Da biography", "Zhonghou", "Qianxiang Calendar", etc., are very famous.

Zheng Xuan's annotation of the scriptures, contrary to the cumbersome winds of the time, strives to be concise and clear, and does not annotate where the meaning of the text is clear and clear, but focuses on the obscure and difficult to understand of the scriptures. Therefore, his commentary on many passages in the Book of Rites is less than the number of words. For example, his commentary on the Book of Music is 5533 words, while the verses in the Book of Music are 6459 words, while the commentary on the Book of Sacrifice is only 5409 words, while the verses in the Book of Sacrifice are 7182 words.

Zheng Xuan, with his profound learning, has studied the Qunjing throughout. Fan Ye praised him in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty for "encompassing the canon, snaring the families, deleting and slandering, and publishing and missing, which is a scholar who knows a little bit about it." In the process of annotating the scriptures, he included all the important classics, referred to the commentaries of the various families, deleted the cumbersome and unintended content, and proofread and corrected the omissions and errors. Since then, scholars have studied these classics again, all of which have referred to Zheng Xuan's commentaries.

In addition, he is also the author of more than one million words of works such as "Seven Politics of Astronomy", "Lu Li Yu Yi", "Six Arts", "Mao Shi Spectrum", "Refuting the Different Meanings of Xu Shen's Five Classics", and "Answering the Difficulty of Filial Piety and Zhou Li". His students compiled the dialogues he usually had with his disciples into 8 pieces of Zheng Zhi. The genre of Zheng Zhi is similar to the Analects, from which it can be seen that his teaching was modeled after Confucius and adopted the method of question and answer inspiration.

Zheng Xuan has been engaged in education for more than 20 years and has put forward some educational views. For example, he believes that beginners should start from the near and the small, and attach great importance to the education of virtue. For moral education, he advocated paying attention to "teaching by example" and "practicing by example", and also attached special importance to family education. In his later years, he wrote a letter reminding his son: "I ask the gentleman's way to study and drill, and to be cautious and virtuous, so as to have virtue in the near future." And asked the family to "eat and drink, thin clothes" and insist on frugality.

The reason why Zheng Xuan's commentaries can become authoritative commentaries and be passed on to future generations is closely related to the methods he adopted and his efforts in classics and teaching. In particular, he was indifferent to Ming Zhi, immersed in the teaching of the scriptures, and his attitude of "the bench must be cold for ten years, and the articles should not be empty", so that he finally made an indelible contribution to the history of classics, which is still of deep enlightenment significance for contemporary scholars to establish a good style of study and style.

Source: Learning Times