After writing the "Book of Songs", we are going to write the "Three Rites", which are the "Weekly Rites", "Rituals", and "Rites". In the arrangement of the Thirteen Confucian Classics, I will try my best to write them in the order of first easy and then difficult, and when writing this classic, I will try to connect with the classics to be written below to warm up.

"Three Rites" is the theoretical form of the ancient Chinese nation's ritual and music culture, which has made the most authoritative record and explanation of etiquette and etiquette, and has the most far-reaching influence on the ritual system of all dynasties. "Zhou Li", also known as "Zhou Guan", talks about the official system and political system; "Etiquette" describes the etiquette system of crown ceremony, wedding, funeral, sacrifice, village ceremony, court ceremony, dowry ceremony, etc.; The Book of Rites is an anthology of Confucian treatises on various ritual systems since the Qin and Han dynasties, which includes not only descriptions of ritual systems, but also expositions on the theory of etiquette and its ethics and morality.

Why is China called the country of etiquette, do you want to know what the coming-of-age ceremony is all about? The Three Rites will give us an explanation of the source.

3. The official of heaven and earth in spring, summer, autumn and winter

Lao Tzu said that heaven and earth are not benevolent, and all things are used as dogs. It means that heaven and earth are devoid of emotion and love, and everything is a dog in front of them. A dog is a dog made of grass during ancient sacrifices. From Lao Tzu's point of view, God will not be partial to anyone, and the ultimate good or bad of a person depends on himself. Buddhism says that everything in the world is the result of the harmony of karma, good karma bears good results, and bad karma bears bad results. Human causes are embodied in all human thoughts and actions, which we can first summarize by the word "karma."

What Lao Tzu means is that God is very busy and does not have time to punish and save people, so it gives people the right to punish and save people. Whoever we put our karma on will give us the reward, and good karma will naturally have good rewards, and bad karma will naturally have evil rewards. Judging from the Confucian doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven, Heaven will not treat those who abide by the way of Heaven badly, because God has its own salvation and punishment.

Therefore, if we look at Confucianism and Taoism, they themselves are one, and they interpret the way of heaven from different levels. Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, from being a human being, to the world, to cultivating the mind, they are ascending step by step, and the combination of the three is a complete exposition of the truth about human beings. If they had to be ordered, then Confucianism should be the foundation, and Taoism and Buddhism should be high-rises.

Okay, let's learn "Weekly Rites" first!

1. Man is the law of the earth, the earth is the law of the sky, the heaven is the law, and the Tao is the nature

"Zhou Li" is based on the ideal country of human law and heaven as the ideological program, and "law" probably means imitation, that is: people should do things according to the rules of heaven. During the time of Emperor Jing and Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu De, the king of Hejian, collected a number of ancient books from the people, one of which was called "Zhou Guan".

Here we introduce Liu De a little. He was a bibliophile of the Western Han Dynasty and the second son of Emperor Liu Qi of the Han Dynasty. In 155 B.C., he was crowned King of Hejian as a prince, in today's Xian County, Hebei. The preservation and continuation of the precious cultural heritage of ancient times are inseparable from the contributions made by Liu De. Liu De has been king for 26 years, and he has never been involved in the political whirlpool of the kings' regimes, but has devoted his whole life to the collection and sorting of ancient books of Chinese culture. Later, Liu De became depressed because of the suspicion of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and died in 130 BC in the feudal state. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty remembered his merits, so he gave him the nickname "Offering the King". Now it has been handed down to future generations, and the great influence is "The Book of Songs" and "Zuo Chuan", which is probably the credit of Liu De.

In the original book of "Zhou Guan", there are six articles of heavenly officials, earth officials, spring officials, summer officials, autumn officials, and winter officials, among them, the articles of winter officials have been lost, and the scholars of the Han Dynasty chose the "Examination of Work Records" of similar nature as a fill. During the Wang Mang period, because of the request of the scholar Liu Xin, "Zhou Guan" was listed as a scholar and renamed "Zhou Li". At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zheng Xuan, a master of scripture, made an excellent commentary on the "Zhou Li". Due to Zheng Xuan's high academic prestige, "Zhou Li" became the first of the "Three Rites" and became one of the brilliant canons of Confucianism.

"Zhou Li" is a work that expresses the plan of governing the country through the official system, and the content is very rich. The division of labor among the six officials in the "Zhou Li" is roughly as follows: the heavenly officials are in charge of the court, the local officials are in charge of civil affairs, the spring officials are in charge of the clan, the summer officials are in charge of the military, the autumn officials are in charge of punishment, and the winter officials are in charge of construction, which involves all aspects of social life, which is really rare in ancient documents. The system of rituals recorded in the "Zhou Li" is the most systematic, including national ceremonies such as sacrifices, pilgrimages, feudal countries, hunting patrols, funerals, etc., as well as specific regulations such as the use of the tripod system, the hanging system of the bell chime, the chariot riding system, the clothing system, the ritual jade system, etc., as well as the records of the grades, combinations, shapes, and degrees of various ritual vessels. There are many institutions that can only be seen in this book, so they are extremely valuable.

The author of "Zhou Li" is Zhou Gong, and we have introduced Zhou Gong in detail before. Zhou Gong was not only an outstanding politician and military strategist, but also a versatile poet and scholar, and some of his remarks can be found in the Book of Shang.

At the beginning of the publication of "Zhou Li", I don't know what the reason was, even some high-status Confucian scholars were hidden in the secret mansion before they had time to see it, and no one knew about it since then. It was not until the time of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty that Liu Xiang and Liu Xin rediscovered this book and recorded it when they were in the collection of documents in the school secretarial mansion. Liu Xin highly admired "Zhou Li" and believed that it was made by the Duke of Zhou himself, which was a true portrayal of the peaceful and prosperous era of the Zhou Dynasty. In the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Xin's disciple Du Zichun began to teach the knowledge in the "Zhou Li", and many Confucians admired the "Zhou Li".

It is such an important work, but it is impossible to determine which dynasty and which era it is. The title of the book is "Zhou Officials", and Liu Xin said that it was the official system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, but there is no direct proof in the book. Confucian classics such as "Zhou Yi", "Book of Songs", "Book of Songs", "Book of Rites", "Spring and Autumn" and other Confucian classics established in the Western Han Dynasty have a teacher-student relationship that can be verified, and "Zhou Li" was suddenly discovered in the Western Han Dynasty, and there is no clue at all, and this book is not mentioned in the literature of the pre-Qin Dynasty, so its authenticity and the age of the book have become a major public case that has been litigated for thousands of years.

The Zhou Rite shows an ideal, perfect system of state, in which everything is orderly and philosophical. For example, in the administrative planning of the country, the choice of the location of the national capital is determined through Tugui. Tugui is a tool for measuring the length of the sun's shadow, and by measuring the length of the sun's shadow displayed by Tugui, the place that is not east, west, south, or north is found, which is the so-called middle of the earth.