里仁齊道 Li Ren Chi Dao - Inner Tone Harmony Way
(PD) 里仁齊道 Li Ren Chi Dao - Inner Tone Harmony Way — Li Ren Chi Dao on Golden Light Through Trees
(Wording and photograph enhancements by Larry Neal Gowdy.)
Copyright ©2018 August 20, 2018 - updated February 25, 2019
里仁齊道 Li Ren Chi Dao - Inner Tone Harmony Way
'Zi say: Junzi, him compared-to heaven below... even-if comfortable, even-if not... right-conduct him take-part harmonize.'
里仁 Li Ren — listed within the numerous volumes of the Analects — is a collection of Confucian quotes that primarily relate to a quality individual's inner qualities.
里 (li) commonly and roughly infers 'hometown, in, inside, liner, lining, native land, neighborhood, within'.
仁 (ren) commonly and roughly infers 'benevolence, compassion, generosity, humane, kindness, merciful, virtue'.
The title itself, is vague, and is popularly given the English words of Neighborhood Benevolence, although Inner Benevolence would be much more preferred because of the quotes relating to one's own inner qualities.
Also, within English, and many other languages, the ideas of 'benevolence' and 'virtue' are defined to be externally observed acts of kindness and generosity, and the words are not judged relative to an individual's own inner qualities. Although western science believes that all things in Nature must have a cause before an effect can occur, still western science and western philosophy judge all words from the external effects, while ignoring the inner causes. If western science and western philosophy judged inner causes, then there would exist words that point to the causes... the words do not exist.
Contradictions of Translations
Common English translations frequently interpret the book's words in one manner, and to then, on the very next sentence, give an interpretation that fully contradicts the previous sentence's words. The common English translations, are, simply, incoherent. The following is an example of a common English translation of one Li Ren sentence.
James Legge translation: "The master said: It is only the truly virtuous man who can love, or who can hate, others."
Legge's translation is absurd, but, apparently mirrored his own life and culture. Mistakes happen, but Legge's translation is not a mistake. All people who translate foreign languages must choose ideas that the translators are themselves familiar with. A foreign word cannot be understood if the translator does not first understand the idea in their own language. Legge obviously possessed no understanding of the topics within Li Ren, and his translations clearly expressed his absence of experience with the topics.
A vaguely more reasonable translation might be along the thread of: 'Zi say: Only quality man able (to be quality towards) good person, able (to be quality towards) evil person.' The wording is still much too weak to possibly be valid, but at least the wording possesses a plausibility of the original words having implied a similar concept.
Nevertheless, when the sentence is permitted to harmonize with Zi's common patterns of presenting ideas, the sentence then becomes overtly rational, quite good of accuracy, and the underlying concept also fully agrees with all other known Zi quotes.
里仁齊道 Li Ren Chi Dao - Inner Tone Harmony Way includes the sentence as presented within Zi's pattern, and, the whole of the book harmonizes... no contradictions.
Tone in Title
There do not exist words in the English language that point to inner qualities that enable external behaviors, and so, 里仁齊道 Li Ren Chi Dao - Inner Tone Harmony Way chooses 'tone' to be part-analogy and part-literal. It is not useful to attempt to explain inner ingredients when there do not exist English words that point to the ingredients, and so, therefore, the simple word 'tone' was chosen.
里仁齊道 (Li Ren Chi Dao) Inner Tone Harmony Way observes the original words, compares the individual words' meanings to what is real within a real person's life, and then chooses the English words that best harmonize and enable a meaningful modern English translation of the ancient Chinese texts.
里仁齊道 Li Ren Chi Dao - Inner Tone Harmony Way is not available online. Interested individuals can email for more information.