Analects 4.19: 里仁 (Li Ren)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 4 asks what it means to make humaneness a settled home. Love and hatred, poverty and wealth, haste and adversity test that commitment. The exemplary person’s concern with what is right is set beside the petty person’s concern with gain. Master Zeng explains the Master’s single thread as wholeheartedness and consideration for others. A cluster of sayings then places devotion to parents under the pressure of disagreement, distance, continuity, and aging. The closing sayings connect restraint in speech with action, return to the image of neighbors, and consider the cost of pressing correction on rulers and friends.
Analects 4.19
子曰、父母在、不遠游、游必有方。
The Master said, “While your parents are alive, do not travel far away. If you do travel, you must have a definite destination.”
Commentary
ethics Distance and a definite destination The first clause limits travel while one’s parents are alive. 方 then gives an actual journey a direction or place. “A definite destination” makes the traveler’s whereabouts settled and knowable, linking the exception to the continuing relationship with parents. The wording gives no exact distance or duration.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium