ChineseStudy

3. Cosmos, Relations, and Common Knowledge

Contents

Text

English translation

The Three Powers are Heaven, Earth, and Humanity. The Three Lights are the sun, moon, and stars.

Numbered categories help children hold basic knowledge in memory before they are ready for fuller explanation.

The Three Bonds are righteousness between ruler and minister, affection between father and child, and harmony between husband and wife.

This is a traditional ethical formula rooted in an older social order. A modern reader should understand its historical setting while considering its concern for responsibility within relationships.

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter are the four seasons; they revolve without end.

The line teaches natural rhythm through the most familiar pattern of time: the changing seasons.

South, north, west, and east are the four directions; they are understood in relation to the center.

The line gives basic orientation while reflecting the older habit of thinking from a central reference point.

Water, fire, wood, metal, and earth are called the Five Phases; their ordering follows a pattern of number and relation.

The Five Phases belong to a traditional system used to connect nature, seasons, directions, and human affairs.

Benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness are the Five Constant Virtues; they should not be confused.

These are central Confucian ethical terms, naming care, rightness, proper form, judgment, and reliability.

Rice, millet, beans, wheat, broomcorn millet, and panicled millet are the six grains that people eat.

Primer learning includes ordinary life. Food crops are part of the child’s first map of the world.

Horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs, and pigs are the six domestic animals raised by people.

The list reflects agrarian life, where animals were tied to work, travel, food, and household security.

Joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, dislike, and desire are the seven emotions found in human beings.

The line recognizes emotional life. Self-cultivation begins not by denying emotion, but by knowing it.

Gourd, clay, hide, wood, stone, metal, silk, and bamboo are the Eight Sounds, a traditional classification of instruments by material.

The Eight Sounds belong to ritual music culture. They teach musical knowledge and its link with rites.

From great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather, and father down to oneself; from oneself down to son and grandson.

The line teaches kinship by placing the child within a chain of generations.

From children and grandchildren down to great-grandchildren and beyond, these make up the nine degrees of kinship, part of human relations.

The idea reflects clan-based society. Today it is useful for understanding how older texts organize kinship and duty.

Father and child are joined by care; husband and wife by harmony; elder brothers should be kind, younger brothers respectful.

This is traditional family ethics. A modern reading can retain care, respect, and responsibility while recognizing the older hierarchy behind the wording.

Elders and juniors have their order; friends and companions should be trustworthy; rulers are to be respected and ministers loyal.

The line joins family, friendship, and political duty within an older ethical order. It should be read in that historical frame.

These duties in human relations should be understood by all. In teaching the young, they must be explained carefully.

The line turns from categories to method. Early learning should not be empty recitation; meanings need to be made clear.

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