Not Yet Knowing Life

If someone asked you what happens after death, would you answer, or ask how they are living now?

Original

季路問事鬼神。子曰：「未能事人，焉能事鬼？」曰：「敢問死。」曰：「未知生，焉知死？」

In plain words

Zilu asked how to serve the spirits. Confucius said, “You can't yet serve the living. How could you serve the spirits?” Zilu said, “May I ask about death?” Confucius said, “You don't yet understand life. How could you understand death?”

Key words

事shìTo serve: the respect owed upward, to parents, rulers, spirits.
鬼神guǐ shénThe dead (mostly ancestors) and the guardian powers of hills and rivers.
敢問gǎn wèn“May I venture to ask”: a humble way of asking.

Reading it step by step

On the last page Confucius said “I'm with Dian,” and praised an evening of singing your way home in the spring breeze. Now we begin the final theme: between heaven and humanity. Every life meets three hard questions: suffering, wrongdoing and death. We will talk about the first two. The third we would rather avoid. How did Confucius face it?

First: this is not a dodge. It is teaching fitted to the student. Many readers take “not yet knowing life” to mean Confucius refused to talk about death. Yet “death” turns up in the Analects more than thirty times, and “life” in the sense of being alive only a dozen or so; we just tend to skim past the word. And as a young man Confucius helped run funerals for a living. He knew the subject. He was reading the person in front of him. In the Book of Rites, when Zai Wo asks about the spirits, Confucius answers at length. A good question from the wrong student gets sent back in one line. Zilu was quick, practical, focused on governing well; his question about spirits was mostly curiosity. Confucius brings him back to the ground he is standing on.

Second: look at the word “serve”. In old usage, 事 means serving upward: serving parents, serving a ruler, serving the spirits. The answer runs in one line. If you can treat the living with sincerity and courtesy, you will meet the ancestors and spirits on the same principle. There is no special technique for the spirits that lets you skip being honest with people.

first question

serve the livingthe people beside you

then the spiritsancestors and gods

second question

know lifehow to live

then deathwhere life ends

Near before far: one principle runs through both, sincerity.

Third: knowing life is the doorway to knowing death. About funerals Confucius said: better real grief than a perfectly managed ceremony. About ritual: better too plain than too lavish. Both point to the same root. What is sincere inside is the ground of everything outside. Once life is clear to you, death stops being a fog you cannot see into.

One teacher tells of an old friend who had been a college president for twenty-five years. After retiring, the friend admitted quietly: I've taught all my life and I'm still afraid of dying. The teacher said: not dying would be the frightening thing. Everyone else gone and only you left? You'd be some kind of monster. The friend laughed. Old films closed with a big “THE END” across the screen, and “end” means two things: a finish, and a purpose. Death is a natural finish; it need not swallow us in fear. For Confucians it should also be a purpose fulfilled. So death asks one question: what did this life accomplish?

We rarely talk about death directly. We research insurance, pensions and wills, yet seldom ask: if I had one year left, how would I treat my parents, my friends, the people I work with? Writing down that answer is already the start of knowing life.

Learn to live well first. The lesson about death opens from there.

One line to carry

Understand life, and death stops being a fog.

Today's question

If you had one year left, which three people would you most want to serve well? What could you do for one of them this week?

Quick check

Why did Confucius answer “You don't yet understand life”?

Next pageSacrifice as if PresentPage 25

IV · Between Heaven and Humanity — Facing death, knowing heaven's mandate, a life made whole

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