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Knowing enough — learn where to stop止足

Yanshi Jiaxun (The Family Instructions of Master Yan) 顏氏家訓 · Yan Zhitui · Late 6th century · 3 passages · 326 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min

Yanshi Jiaxun (The Family Instructions of Master Yan) Complete in one volume Twenty chapters of family instruction left to his descendants by Yan Zhitui, a scholar of the end of the Northern and Southern dynasties. He was born under Liang and survived as a wanderer through four states — Western Wei, Northern Qi, Northern Zhou and Sui — and he wrote, in his own words, "to set the household in order and to wake the sons and grandsons." It runs from teaching children, brothers, a second wife, the ordering of a house, bearing and speech, learning, writing, name and reality, and knowing when one has enough, on to the examination of characters and books, the sounds of speech, the many arts of calligraphy and painting and archery and divining and the zither and go, and at last to his last charge on how his own burial was to be conducted. The passage where he sees the sons of the noble houses of Liang, of whom the proverb ran, "If he can climb into a carriage without falling out, he can be a court compiler," left after the troubles to plough the fields and tend horses, and says that "a thousand myriad piled up in goods is not so good as a small skill about the person"; and the passage that "he who learns while young is like the light of the rising sun, and he who learns when old is like a man walking at night with a candle in his hand," both come from here. Every book of family instruction after it takes this one for its ancestor.

1"Let office not pass two thousand piculs, and do not covet a house of power in marriage"

禮云：『欲不可縱，誌不可滿。』宇宙可臻其極，情性不知其窮，唯在少欲知足，為立涯限爾。先祖靖侯戒子侄曰：『汝家書生門戶，世無富貴；自今仕宦不可過二千石，婚姻勿貪勢家。』吾終身服膺，以為名言也。

The Li ji says, "Desire must not be let loose; the will must not be filled full." The universe can be reached to its farthest edge, but feeling and nature do not know their end. It rests only in wanting little and knowing enough, and in setting a boundary for oneself. My forebear the Marquis Jing warned his sons and nephews, "Your house is the gate of scholars, and for generations it has had no wealth or rank. From now on let office not pass two thousand piculs, and in marriage do not covet a house of power." All my life I have held this to my breast and taken it for a famous saying.

2A house of twenty mouths — twenty servants and ten qing of field

天地鬼神之道，皆惡滿盈。謙虛沖損，可以免害。人生衣趣以覆寒露，食趣以塞饑乏耳。形骸之內，尚不得奢靡，己身之外，而欲窮驕泰邪？周穆王、秦始皇、漢武帝，富有四海，貴為天子，不知紀極，猶自敗累，況士庶乎？常以二十口家，奴婢盛多，不可出二十人，良田十頃，堂室纔蔽風雨，車馬僅代杖策，蓄財數萬，以擬吉凶急速，不啻此者，以義散之；不至此者，勿非道求之。

The way of heaven and earth and of the spirits hates a thing filled full. Be humble and empty and giving way, and you can escape harm. In a man's life clothing need only cover him from cold and dew, and food need only stop his hunger. If even within the body a man may not be lavish, shall he drive pride and excess to their end outside his own person? King Mu of Zhou, the First Emperor of Qin, and Emperor Wu of Han were rich in the four seas and honored as sons of Heaven, and because they knew no bound they brought ruin and burden on themselves. How much more the gentry and the common people? Take always a house of twenty mouths. However many servants there may be, let them not pass twenty. Good field, ten qing. Hall and rooms just enough to keep off wind and rain. Carriage and horse just enough to stand in place of a staff. Stored wealth of some tens of thousands, laid by for the sudden turns of good fortune and ill. What overflows this, scatter it by what is right. What falls short of it, do not seek by ways that are not the way.

3Office in the middle rank is plenty

仕宦稱泰，不過處在中品，前望五十人，後顧五十人，足以免恥辱，無傾危也。高此者，便當罷謝，偃仰私庭。吾近為黃門郎，已可收退；當時羈旅，懼罹謗讟，思為此計，僅未暇爾。自喪亂已來，見因托風雲，僥幸富貴，旦執機權，夜填坑谷，朔歡卓、鄭，晦泣顏、原者，非十人五人也。慎之哉！慎之哉！

Office that can be called at ease goes no further than a place in the middle rank. Look ahead and fifty men stand before you, look behind and fifty men come after you; that is enough to escape shame and disgrace, and there is no toppling danger in it. Higher than this, a man should lay it down and decline, and take his rest in his own courtyard. Not long ago I was made a gentleman of the Yellow Gate, and I could well have gathered myself and withdrawn. At that time I was a sojourner and feared to draw slander, and though I thought of this plan I simply had no leisure for it. Since the years of death and disorder I have seen men who leaned on wind and cloud and came by luck to wealth and rank, who held the secret power in the morning and filled a ditch by night, who on the first of the month made merry like Zhuo and Zheng and by the month's end wept like Yan and Yuan. They are not five men or ten. Take care. Take care.

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