Ritual: Rules or a Tender Heart?

Reading it step by step

The last two pages, on sincerity and being alone, were about the inside. But we don't live only inside. At a wedding you raise a glass; at a funeral you wear dark clothes; at New Year you pay your visits. Are these rules put on us from outside, or do they grow from within?

First: Xunzi says ritual is a boundary drawn by wise designers. “Where does ritual come from?” he asks. People are born wanting things. If they can't get them, they pursue them; if the pursuit has no measure or limit, they fight; fighting brings chaos, and chaos brings ruin. The early kings hated the chaos, so they set down rites to divide things: to nourish people's desires, giving them a proper way to be met, and to sort out old and young, high and low, so each has a place. It's very practical. Queues, seating plans and taking turns to speak all exist so we fight less. But for Xunzi, ritual mostly comes from outside in: first the rule, then, slowly, the habit.

Second: Mencius and Confucius say ritual grows from a heart that can't bear it. Mencius tells a story about how burial began. Long ago, when someone's parents died, he threw the bodies into a ravine. Passing days later, he saw foxes gnawing and flies swarming. Sweat broke out on his forehead; he looked sideways, unable to face it. Mencius stresses that the sweat wasn't for anyone to see. It was what was in his heart reaching his face. He went home for a basket and a spade, and buried them. The first step of ritual was not design but the feeling of “I can't bear this.” Confucius is blunter: “If a person is not humane, what is ritual to him?”

Today: at the funeral of a friend's father, what you wear, where you stand and how you bow can simply follow custom. That is ritual's form. But what your friend remembers may be the message you send a few days later: “Are you sleeping at all?” New Year gifts, wedding toasts and thank-you cards are the same. Copy the format if you like. Add the bit of heart yourself.

Ritual clothes the heart. Don't let the clothes outgrow it.