Analects 6.9: 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 6.9
子曰、賢哉回也、一簞食、一瓢飲、在陋巷、人不堪其憂、回也不改其樂、賢哉回也。
The Master said, “How worthy Hui is! One bamboo bowl of food, one gourd of drink, living in a poor lane—others could not bear that hardship, but Hui’s joy is unchanged. How worthy Hui is!”
Commentary
ethics Joy under hardship The repeated praise encloses a concrete scene of scant food and drink in a poor lane. Others would find these conditions distressing; Hui’s joy persists within them. The statement praises what hardship fails to alter in him. Together with his early death and sustained humaneness, this gives his portrait both admiration and grief.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high