Analects 6.8: 雍也 (Yong Ye)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 6 asks how character becomes visible in governing, learning, giving, and answering other people. Judgments of practical ability sit beside a refusal of office. Yan Hui’s love of learning, steadiness in humaneness, and joy under hardship are framed by grief at his early death. The short sayings test relations between substance and refinement, knowledge and delight, reverence and distance. The closing exchange moves from the achievement of helping the people on a vast scale to a nearby method of humaneness: using one’s own desire for a firm footing and progress to help others find theirs.
Analects 6.8
伯牛有疾、子問之、自牖執其手、曰、亡之、命矣夫、斯人也、而有斯疾也、斯人也、而有斯疾也。
Boniu was ill. The Master visited him and took his hand through the window. He said, “We are losing him. It must be fate! Such a person, with such an illness! Such a person, with such an illness!”
Commentary
translation A hand through the window The physical contact and the repeated cry hold grief beside the word 命, fate or an allotted course. Legge explicitly names Heaven; the Chinese here names only 命. “We are losing him” takes the terse 亡之 as an approaching loss. The illness is unnamed, and the saying offers no explanation of why this particular person suffers.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium