"If you are a threesome, you must have my teacher", is a well-known saying of Confucius in the "Shu Er" chapter.
The original text is: Zi said: If you are a threesome, you must have my teacher. Choose those who are good and follow them, and change those who are not good.
It means that wherever there are people, there are my teachers.
Some people may think that it is a bit pretentious to say such things to the master who is rich in five cars.
In fact, even Confucius, who was full of wealth, was always very modest in his studies. He never thought he understood, let alone knew everything.
In the chapter of "Zihan", he said: "Do I know what to do?."Ignorance also. (Do I have knowledge?)No knowledge) with the great name of the Master, but he said that he was ignorant, I am afraid that few people would really believe it.
In fact, Confucius did not pretend to be modest, it was a very natural instinct. The more knowledgeable a person is, the more instinctively he shows modesty, no matter what the occasion, he will not be smug, this is a kind of cultivation. It is precisely because of the realization of one's own shortcomings that one can continue to absorb and enrich oneself.
Of course, Confucius knew that some people would question him when he said this, so he gave an example, saying, "When a contemptible husband asks me, it is empty." I knocked on both ends and exhausted. (A countryman asked me, and I didn't understand anything about what he was asking.) I have thought back and forth and thought about many things, and I can't answer this countryman's question.)
I don't know what kind of strange question this countryman asked, so that Mr. Kong, who is rich in five cars, can't answer. If some other hermit or Winter Gong or other character asked him a question, he didn't understand, but he was a countryman, a big old man. But Confucius was very honest, admitting that he didn't understand it, and he was not ashamed.
Although Confucius was a sage, he was not omnipotent, and it was impossible to know everything in the world, and it is not surprising that he could not answer the questions of the countrymen. As the saying goes, interlacing is like separating mountains? Although Confucius also engaged in heavy labor when he was young, after all, he mainly taught for many years, and it was normal for him to be unfamiliar with the knowledge of agricultural production. If you don't know how to pretend to understand, it's really annoying.
Confucius wanted to use this to illustrate the truth that everything in the world is full of learning, and if you read poetry and books, you may not be full of knowledge.