Quiet means self-cultivation and frugality means quiet means self-cultivation and frugality means moral cultivation.
Quiet to cultivate one's morality, frugality to cultivate one's morality is a poem in the Book of Commandments, which was a letter from Zhuge Liang, a politician in the Three Kingdoms period, to his son Zhuge Zhan before he died. The article expounds the profound truth of cultivating one's morality and being a man. From the article, we can see that Zhuge Liang is a noble and knowledgeable father, and his earnest teachings and infinite expectations for his son are all in this book.
The language of the full text is fresh and elegant, and the reasoning is approachable. The author uses intelligent, rational, concise and precise words to express very deeply the love of fathers all over the world, making this family letter a famous work for students of later generations to cultivate themselves and be selected as a Chinese textbook for compulsory education in China.
The writing background of "The Book of Commandments":
This article was written by Zhuge Liang to his eight-year-old son Zhuge Zhan in his later years. Zhuge Liang devoted all his life to his country and died. He worked day and night for the national cause of Shu Han, and neglected to educate his son personally, so he wrote this letter to warn Zhuge Zhan.
The Book of Commandments is a kind of book with the nature of family education and family instruction. This kind of family education and lessons, as a unique ancient book in China, are based on the traditional ethics, with the help of the authority of elders, and the moral constraints on the grandchildren. It is the carrier for the ancients to spread to future generations the ideology and culture of managing the family, being a man and teaching children for learning.
The emergence of family education has a long history. China's ancient society thrived in a semi-closed warm temperate continent, with agricultural economy as the basic means of survival and the patriarchal clan system left over from clan society. These factors make China culture patriarchal, and the characteristics of patriarchal clan culture are to attach importance to blood relationship and emphasize the order of ethics.
Family education is the inevitable product of this patriarchal society, and its significance is emphasized in "University". Those who want to govern their country should first get their families together, and those who want to get their families together should first cultivate their bodies. This logical thinking of self-cultivation, family harmony, governing the country and calming the world from the inside out makes family harmony in a very important position in this link.
The rise and fall of a family is of great importance, so the ancients attached great importance to family education. The Duke of Zhou taught his son not to be alone, and Confucius called his son Bo Yu to learn poetic rites. These were just oral family education, which was very random, while the family education in the form of documents appeared in large numbers in the Han Dynasty.
During the Han Dynasty, the newly-emerging noble families expanded their social influence through close family ties, and made family or family rules and regulations one after another. It was under this cultural background that Zhuge Liang's Commanding Book came into being.