"This rain is so strange! He Meng Meng, dark, like a huge black cloth, surrounds the world ... The black rain seems to be still unwilling, and it is raining harder, always whirring and becoming particularly vicious and terrible. It seems to destroy this newly built yamen and shake the pulse of this dying nation. "

Teacher Tang paid homage to Wen's death with an imaginary black rain.

Presumably, in Tang's view, Zeng Guofan's death also indicates that the Qing Dynasty is about to perish.

In eastern culture, death sometimes doesn't seem terrible. It is an art, a concrete experience, and a supplement and perfection to "living art" or "living art".

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Confucianism: If you listen to Taoism, you will die at night.

Advanced Analects of Confucius;

Lu Ji asked about ghosts and gods. Confucius said, "If you can't serve people, how can you serve ghosts?"

Yue: "Dare to ask death."

Yue: "If you don't know life, how can you know death?"

In fact, this book only records Confucius' avoidance and Lutz's talk about death. Before that, there were several paragraphs about Yan Hui's death. Yan Hui died, and 62-year-old Luz suddenly felt that he was dying, so he asked to die. Confucius' avoidance of Lutz is actually a comfort to Lutz.

In fact, Confucius did not shy away from talking about death. The word "death" appeared 37 times in The Analects of Confucius, among which these two sentences are the most famous.

Confucius said, "Listen in the morning and die at night." -"The Analects of Confucius, Establishing Man"

If you have a perfect life, why worry about death? If you were born knowing the way, then the perfection of death is enough. Since natural death is inevitable, it is not a problem worth discussing. The only valuable question about the "death" of nature is: what have we prepared for the inevitable moment, or whether we have packed our bags when the time comes to leave, instead of leaving things in this life.

Another sentence is:

Confucius said, "Benevolent people don't live, but die." -"The Analects of Confucius Wei Linggong"

"Suicide" means "to die". Many times, it is not enough not to kill yourself. At that time, death was our pursuit, our blessing and an opportunity that we must seize.

It can be seen that in Confucius' view, death is not a passive, helpless and inevitable sad ending of life. Many times it is a necessary process to achieve life, the last glory of life, and the last success.

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Taoism: don't take life as pleasure, don't take death as sorrow.

Compared with Confucian rationality, Taoism and Taoism develop life and death to the fullest. Death is no longer a shocking and unreasonable nightmare. When Zhuangzi's wife died, she sang. The Taoist view of life and death is more remote and ethereal than the Confucian theory of soul. Life and death are the same, only when you die can you live. This is the dialectics of life.

Life is just an orderly process from inanimate to living, from intangible to tangible, from inanimate to living, and death is the return of this evolution.

The way of nature transcends everything, and man can never compete with force of nature. "Being born as a human being is undeniable, but it is unstoppable." Life and death are the limits of life problems, so it's better to take it easy. Feeling is pain, being ruthless can be "suspended" and be free. Deep down, we still feel that behind its optimism, a pessimistic and helpless wind is blowing.

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Buddhism: ringing the drum of eternal life

In the sixth century BC, an enlightened prince in India declared, "I will ring the drum of eternal life in the darkness of this world." From then on, life is no longer the shadow of chaos, and causality will be the universal principle to explain all life in this life and the afterlife.

The word "reincarnation" is so beautiful that an immortal soul can move to another body to be reborn. "Karma" is the law that determines the appearance and essence of regeneration.

The Buddha silently observed the phenomenon of reincarnation of life and death, put forward the so-called "four noble truths" of suffering, gathering, extinction and Taoism, and systematically expounded the main conclusions of his theory and practice.

The first truth is "bitterness". Survival includes pain, and the most painful thing is the impermanence of life.

The second truth is that "gathering" is the root of suffering, suffering comes from greed for life, greed comes from affection, affection comes from touch, and so on. This is the "Twelve Karma Law". It can be seen that we were born in this world because of our ignorance in our last life and our desire to be reborn when we were dying, and we had to blame ourselves.

The third truth is "extinction", which is the negative form of the law of twelve factors. "Without greed, there would be no extinction. If it is not destroyed, it will be destroyed, and if it is destroyed, it will be annihilated. "

The fourth truth is "Tao", that is, the way to eliminate pain-"eight right paths": right view, right thinking, right words, right career, right life, right diligence, right thinking and positive definition. This is the only way out and the immortal law.

Confucianism reveres destiny and cultivates self-cultivation; Taoist unity of life and death; The cause and effect of Buddhism are not empty. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism seem to define life and death from different angles, expound their different understandings of the world, and point out different paths for us, but from the perspective of the liberation of the road to "eternal life", they are all the same.

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