Analects 7.15: 述而 (Shu Er)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 7 builds a portrait of the Master through self-descriptions, conversations, and observations of his conduct. He loves the ancient tradition, learns through sustained attention, and teaches by asking learners to carry an indication further. Music, mourning, plain food, and illness show how these commitments enter daily life. Political judgment calls for knowing when to act or withdraw and for accepting criticism. Repeated disclaimers about his own attainment sit beside confidence in Heaven and the nearness of humaneness. The closing portrait holds warmth, firmness, respect, and ease together.
Analects 7.15
子曰、飯疏食飲水、曲肱而枕之、樂亦在其中矣、不義而富且貴、於我如浮雲。
The Master said, “Coarse grain to eat, water to drink, my bent arm for a pillow—there is joy in these too. Wealth and rank gained by doing wrong are to me like drifting clouds.”
Commentary
ethics Joy with little, distance from unjust wealth 亦, “too,” gives joy a place even among coarse food, water, and an arm used as a pillow. The condition on wealth and rank is 不義, wrongdoing. The drifting clouds image expresses the speaker’s distance from gains obtained on that condition; it does not make wealth itself the wrong.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high