So what is a good style? What should you teach your children and pass on to future generations so that they can benefit from it throughout their lives and your family will continue to prosper?
A person who does evil will bring harm to his descendants, but a person who does good will bring blessings to his descendants
"A house that accumulates good deeds will be blessed; a house that accumulates bad deeds will have disaster." From the "Book of Changes" Kun Gua. What the hexagram Kun says is exactly "the terrain is kun, and a gentleman carries things with great virtue".
The general meaning of this sentence is: People who often do good things will have many things to celebrate, while people who often do evil things will have many disasters waiting for them.
Why is the Confucian morality of benevolence, love and dedication beneficial to life? After all, unethical behavior can be beneficial for a while, but it is difficult to sustain in the long term. For example, with the word "faith", fraud may be able to make short-term profits, but in the long run it will definitely become infamous. Although those who are honest sometimes suffer losses, they can gain widespread credibility and trust, and their careers will grow bigger and bigger.
In real life, we can often see that those who are virtuous may not be blessed, and those who enjoy happiness may not be virtuous. How to resolve this contradiction? Confucianism does not have the concept of ghosts and gods who do good deeds and go to heaven and do evil deeds and go to hell. Some people often do good deeds but are poor, and some do many evil deeds but have good fortune and longevity. To explain this situation, the Confucian answer is: family.
A person's good deeds may not improve his own situation, but he will definitely accumulate "bad virtue" for his descendants; a person who does many evil deeds, even though he can be a prostitute and ride a horse, his debts will be borne by his descendants. repay. By introducing the two factors of family and time, Confucianism successfully resolved the apparent contradiction between virtue and happiness.
So, is this really the case in reality? The rise of cities takes a short time and is not easy to detect, but it often happens in rural areas.
I often hear older and more experienced village elders say that any family that is currently developing well and those who are promising now have mostly kind-hearted ancestors. We have seen those long-standing aristocratic families, such as Fan Zhongyan, Zeng Guofan and other families, with numerous talents and long-term blessings. This is because they condensed their profound cultural heritage into excellent family education traditions and cultivated the excellent character of generations of descendants.
This can also be regarded as empirical proof of the theory of "people who accumulate good deeds". Therefore, the ancients also said: "The virtuous will gain."
The quality of family habits will be passed on to the next generation
Why is it said that "a house that accumulates good deeds will be blessed; "A bad house will always be in trouble"? Because in most kind and virtuous families, parents do not do things that harm others and benefit themselves. They educate future generations with words and deeds of benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, and trustworthiness. These good moral qualities are the blessings left to future generations. .
Some parents are selfish and have the habit of stealing, cheating, cheating, gambling, and drug abuse. They are not filial to their parents-in-law and often complain about the lack of property given by their parents. These bad qualities will also be passed on to future generations. of. Therefore, there are common sayings like "Look at your mother to know your daughter half" and "Like father, like son".
The good and bad habits of a family are contagious. Parents care about their children and must be thoughtful, vigilant and cautious.
Taking this as the criterion for how we behave in this life, our thoughts and words will naturally be restrained and restrained. Knowing how to seek good fortune and avoid misfortune, how to avoid evil and practice good deeds, this is the teaching of sages, this is called education.
Therefore, the ancients often passed down loyalty to the family, passed on poems and books to the next generation, and taught their descendants the etiquette, urging them to make progress and do good. This is truly for the sake of future generations.
When a person fights for property, his failure in this life has already been revealed
Lin Zexu once said: "If my descendants are like me, what will they do with money? If they are virtuous and rich, they will suffer losses. His ambition. If my descendants are not as good as me, what should I do if I am too stupid to make more money? "It is more useful to leave good family rules to future generations than to leave money." If the family tradition is not upright, resulting in poor character in the children and grandchildren, no matter how large the family fortune or property is left to them, it will only damage their aspirations, make them indulge in enjoyment, indulge in depravity, and ultimately harm themselves and the family.
Fan Zhongyan, a famous prime minister in the Song Dynasty who "worried about the world first, and rejoiced after the world's happiness", his family has been prosperous for 800 years, and the reason is family tradition.
Fan Zhongyan was born in a very poor family. He was extremely poor when he was young and lived a difficult life. Later, when he became prosperous, he became the prime minister, and one person was subordinate to ten thousand people.
However, he has set up a desire to help the poor since he was a child. After becoming developed, his lifestyle has remained the same as that of a poor scholar in the past, and has not changed much.
Once he bought a house to live in Suzhou, and a Feng Shui master praised the house for its excellent Feng Shui and that his descendants would surely be ministers. Fan Zhongyan thought, since the feng shui of this house can make future generations noble, why not turn it into a school and let the children of the common people in Suzhou City enroll. In the future, everyone's children will be virtuous and noble. Wouldn't it be more beneficial than having the children of his own family become noble? So he immediately donated his residence and turned it into a school.
He had a lot of income, so he thought of many poor people and used his income to help those poor people. Looking at his biography, I learned that he had fed more than 300 people. If a person's income supports more than 300 people, you know that more than 300 people can only make ends meet, and everyone, including himself, lives a very poor life. This is a great sage among us Chinese.
Later, Fan Zhongyan's four sons grew up, all of them were intelligent and talented, and they were promoted to prime minister, minister, and minister. From then on, the descendants of the Fan family were all virtuous and distinguished, and they continued in an endless line. Until the early years of the Republic of China, the descendants of the Fan family were able to maintain the family tradition. Descendants of the Fan family are still prospering in Suzhou.
The Fan family has not declined for eight hundred years. They have done a lot of good deeds, accumulated a lot of virtue, and truly practiced and practiced! If you can share your blessings with others to enjoy, and others will treat you kindly, your blessings will be endless.
What about your current family? There is a saying in China that "wealth cannot last more than three generations." Why not only three generations? Because after he got rich, he didn't know how to care for others. Instead, he looked down on others because of his wealth, which damaged his moral character and damaged his blessings.
Not only three generations, but now even one generation cannot pass. What ideas are we passing on to the next generation now? It's selfish and only thinks of yourself. Many parents also say that he teaches with all his heart, but they don't know why he teaches like this. The crux is actually here.
The Chinese sages were very wise in creating characters. How to write the word "money"? Gold is paired with two Ge (that is, knives), so the more money there is, the more conflicts there will be. With these two swords, conflicts between countries and conflicts between brothers in the family are all because of money.
In fact, when the brothers are fighting for property, his failure in this life has been exposed. It is impossible for him to manage his life well, because his current behavior has done the worst for his next generation. example. What he demonstrated to his descendants was that brothers can turn against each other for money.
We always hope that our children will learn sophisticated things, but what we lose is tutoring and family style, as well as common sense and bottom line of being a human being. Therefore, self-cultivation is important, virtue is important, and family tradition is important. Remember, do it!