Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 1660

II, 9.
THE MISSION TO SEEK THE PRINCE.
103
'For having spued forth lust, passion, and ignorance, shall I return to feed upon it ? as a man might go back to his vomit! such misery, how could I bear? 727
Like a man whose , house has caught fire, by some expedient finds a way to escape, will such a man forthwith go back and enter it again ? such conduct would disgrace a man!! 728
So I, beholding the evils, birth, old age, and death, to escape the misery, have become a hermit; shall I then go back and enter in, and like a fool dwell in their company? 729
"He who enjoys a royal estate and yet seeks rescue ?, cannot dwell thus, this is no place for him ; escape (rescue) is born from quietness and rest; to be a king is to add distress and poison; 730
To seek for rest and yet aspire to royal condition is but a contradiction, royalty and rescue, motion and rest, like fire and water, having two principles, cannot be united. 731
'So one resolved to seek escape cannot abide possessed of kingly dignity! and if you say a man may be a king“, and at the same time prepare deliverance for himself, 732
* There is no certainty in this o! to seek certain
1 How would such a man be not accounted insignificant (tim, a dot or spot).
? I have translated 'kiai tuh,' rescue; it means rescue from sorrow, or deliverance in the sense of salvation.
• Two, or different, principles (li). • A man may occupy a kingly estate.
5 This is still opposed to certainty; or, this cannot be established.
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