Source: Zhu Zi's Family Instructions by Zhu Yongchun in Ming Dynasty.
Original text (excerpt):
It is not easy to think about a porridge and a meal. It is difficult to keep thinking about material resources. It is better to prepare for a rainy day than to dig a well when you are thirsty.
Translation:
For a porridge and a meal, it is hard to think about it; For half-silk or half-thread clothes, we should always remember that it is very difficult to produce these materials. Everything should be prepared first, such as repairing the house before it rains, instead of "cramming" the Buddha's feet like digging a well when he is thirsty.
outline
Zhu Yongchun (1627 ~ 1698) was born in Kunshan, Jiangsu in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. A famous philosopher and educator. Ming people, who lived in seclusion in the Qing Dynasty, taught and educated people in rural areas, and devoted themselves to their studies. Based on Cheng and Zhu's Neo-Confucianism, they advocated that knowledge and practice should go hand in hand.
Zhu Yongchun deeply felt that the education method at that time made it difficult for students to learn real knowledge, so he wrote Stop it, which was quite painful. For teaching, I wrote dozens of textbooks in plain code. He was quiet and strict with himself all his life, and regarded himself as a courtesy to the officials and gentry who were willing to associate with him at that time. He is the author of "Running a Family", "Integrity and Cleanliness Collection" and "University Doctrine of the Mean".
Father Zhu was a scholar in the late Ming Dynasty. In the second year of Qing Shunzhi (1645), he resisted the Qing army and defended Kuncheng. The city was breached and he threw himself into the river. Zhu day and night wailed and was in pain. When his brother used white brocade, he was still young. He was from a business background. He served his mother at the upper level and raised his siblings at the lower level. It was extremely difficult to prepare for the move. Don't go back to your hometown until the situation stabilizes a little.
Wang Pou, who worships twenty-four filial piety, never sat in the west in memory of his father Wang Xiu, and climbed the Babel on his father's grave and changed his name to White Deer. Zhu Yongchun has never been an official. He has been teaching in the countryside all his life, attending primary schools for scholars, recording recent thoughts and so on. For teaching, I wrote dozens of textbooks in plain code.
He devoted himself to the study of Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism, advocated that knowledge and practice should go hand in hand, and put it into practice. Kangxi, Xu Fang and Yang are also known as "Three Masters in Wuzhong". In the thirty-seventh year of Kangxi, before he left, he said to his disciples, "Learning lies in life, and career lies in loyalty and filial piety."