Tao Yuanming (352 or 365-427), named Yuanliang, also known as Qian, had a private nickname of "Jingjie" and was known as Mr. Jingjie in the world. A native of Chaisang, Xunyang. A great poet and poet from the late Eastern Jin Dynasty to the early Southern Song Dynasty. He once served as Jiangzhou Jijiu, Jianwei Army Joiner, Zhenjun Army Joiner, and Pengze County Magistrate. His last official career was as Pengze County Magistrate. He abandoned his post after more than eighty days and retired to his countryside. He is China's first pastoral poet and is known as "the sect of reclusive poets in ancient and modern times". Tao Yuanming's handed down works include 125 poems and 12 essays, which were compiled by later generations into the "Collected Works of Tao Yuanming". Please enjoy one of the songs:
"Drinking Part 5"
The house is in a human environment, without the noise of cars and horses.
How can you do this? The mind is far away from itself.
Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, you can leisurely see the Nanshan Mountain.
The mountain air is getting better day by day, and the birds are flying back and forth.
There is a true meaning in this, but I have forgotten to explain it.
Appreciation:
It expresses the author's thoughts and feelings of being tired of official corruption, determined to return to the countryside, and pursue transcendent worldliness.
When people live in the world, they must always find the value of life, otherwise people will be anxious and uneasy. Society always has a set of recognized value standards, and most people use this as the basis for settling down and settling down. Take Tao Yuanming's era as an example, power, status, and reputation were the main measures of value. But Tao Yuanming has deeply understood through his own experience: to get all this, he must work hard to gain ground, fight for it, put on airs, brag and flatter horses, observe people's words, and turn the clouds and rain over and over, all of which are indispensable. There is no dignity to speak of here. Since he is willing to withdraw from officialdom, he must deny the socially recognized value scale and find a new explanation for his life.
The first four sentences express an attitude of escaping from the world, that is, the denial of power, status, fame and fortune. At the beginning, I said that although my residence is built in an environment where people come and go, I can't hear the noise of cars and horses. The so-called "noise of carriages and horses" refers to the scene where people of high status are crowded with people. Tao Yuanming was said to be a descendant of a noble family, but he had little contact with people living in the secular world, and the front door was very deserted. This is a bit strange, so ask yourself in the next sentence: How can you do this? Then it comes down to the core of these four sentences, "the heart is far away and the place is biased." Mentally, we have adopted an alienated, detached, and indifferent attitude towards this world of fame and fortune, and the place where we live will naturally become secluded. "Being far away" means breaking away from the track of social life, which will inevitably lead to breaking away from the people who are running on this track.
So, if society’s value scale is excluded, where can people establish the basis for survival? This involves Tao Yuanming’s philosophical thought. This philosophy can be called "natural philosophy". On the one hand, it emphasizes the self-cultivation and self-feeding, frugal and ascetic lifestyle, and on the other hand, it values ??the unity and harmony between man and nature. In Tao Yuanming's view, people not only exist in society and in the relationship between people, but even more importantly, every individual life, as an independent spiritual subject, exists facing the entire nature and the universe. . From its origin, human life is a part of nature. It is only because people separate themselves from nature and compete and pursue illusory power, status, fame and wealth that have no real value, that life is full of joys and sorrows of gains and losses. The anxiety and contradiction of impermanence. Therefore, perfect life can only be found by returning to nature.