Illuminating Chinese Classics

In this episode we give you a brief introduction to the six books that the Three Character Classic (三字经) recommends you tackle when you’re done with the Analects of Confucius (论语者), the works of Mencius (孟子者), the Doctrine of the Mean (中庸), the Great Learning (大学), and the Book of Filial Piety (孝经). In this episode, we talk about the Book of Filial Piety (孝经), and give you some examples of the lessons its author believes are important in order to live a good life. And we discuss some of the differences between how the parent-child relationship is viewed differently in China now compared to back in earlier times. The三字经 was written by the Song Dynasty (宋朝) scholar Wang Yinglin (王应麟). This 1,134 character text was one of the first textbooks used by students, and provided lessons on education, morality and ethics, science, literature, and history.