Text of Confucianism Part 01

SR No.: 007675
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1879
Total Pages: 2829
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 50 MB

Page 1832

214
THE LÎ ki.
BK. XXI.
are the ordering of the various ceremonies and the music; and there is the complete array of the officers for all the services. When they are engaged in the maintenance of that dignity and absorption in their duties, how can they be lost in their abandonment to intercourse with the spiritual presences? Should words be understood only in one way? Each saying has its own appropriate application.'
9. When a filial son is about to sacrifice, he is anxious that all preparations should be made beforehand ; and when the time arrives, that everything necessary should be found complete ; and then, with a mind free from all pre-occupation, he should address himself to the performance of his sacrifice.
The temple and its apartments having been repaired, the walls and roofs having been put in order, and all the assisting officers having been provided, husband and wife, after vigil and footing, bathe their heads and persons, and array themselves in full dress. In coming in with the things which they carry, how grave and still are they ! how absorbed in what they do! as if they were not able to sustain their weight, as if they would let them fall :Is not theirs the highest filial reverence? He sets forth the stands with the victims on them; arranges all the ceremonies and music; provides the officers for the various ministries. These aid in sustaining and bringing in the things, and thus he declares his mind and wish, and in his lost abstraction of mind seeks to have communion with the dead in their
spiritual state, if peradventure they will enjoy his . offerings, if peradventure they will do so. Such is the aim of the filial son (in his sacrifices)!
10. The filial son, in sacrificing, seems never able
Digitized by Google