Analects 3.4: 八佾 (Ba Yi)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 3 examines what gives ritual its authority and meaning. Household displays borrow the forms of rulers, while humaneness, restraint, grief, and reverence test what those forms can express. Questions about poetry, inherited rites, sacrifice, and music show understanding at work: a learner carries an image further, the Master asks about everything, and a musical whole holds its parts together. Rulers and ministers each receive a standard of conduct. The book ends by distinguishing beauty from goodness and by asking what high office, ritual, and mourning are worth without the qualities they require.
Analects 3.4
林放問禮之本。子曰、大哉問。禮、與其奢也、寧儉、喪、與其易也、寧戚。
Lin Fang asked about the root of ritual. The Master said, “A great question! In ritual, better restraint than extravagance; in mourning, better grief than smooth observance.”
Commentary
ritual The root beneath performance Lin Fang asks for 禮之本, the root of ritual. The paired preferences put restraint above lavishness and grief above an easy command of mourning forms. 易 can mean ease; “smooth observance” reads it here as ease in carrying out the ceremony. The comparison gives grief priority when feeling and accomplished performance come apart.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium