I recommend you to read Mr. Nan Huai Jin's book. Heather's book is the key to unlock the treasure of traditional culture. If possible, read all the books of heather at least once. I recommend you to read the Book of Changes first. The Book of Changes is Confucius' experience in learning the Book of Changes. After reading this book, we may have a general understanding of traditional culture.
Then read the Book of Changes. This book doesn't talk much about the Book of Changes, but most of it is an outline. After reading this book, you can judge whether other books in the Book of Changes are good or not. Only by understanding traditional culture can we roughly judge who speaks well. I ching is too complicated. If you really want to study it, you may have to devote your whole life to every aspect such as theory, image and figures, but you may not achieve much. Because the Book of Changes talks more about "use", and the change of "use" is endless, and "everything is born".
If you only want to read the Four Books and the Five Classics, you can bypass reading of the analects of confucius and Mencius and take the original university notes. Heather's The Doctrine of the Mean has not yet been published, but there is a recorded version on the Internet.
Next, you can look at Historical Experience, Heather History and Life, New and Old Generation, China Culture Pan Yan, South Lecture, Talking about China Culture, Huangdi Neijing and so on. These are relatively simple, maybe they are novels.
The Taoist School includes Old He Zi's Theory and its sequel, Zhuangzi Nanzhen and I Call Me Childish. There are many Buddhists. You can see which one you want first.
Looking at this era, I don't know who else really understands the traditional culture of the Chinese nation except heather (this is only my personal experience, if you don't agree, please skip it directly. Everyone has the right to express their views, don't they? Because our traditional culture is a practical system, it would be self-deception if we only stay in theory without our own real argument. In other words, our traditional culture needs to be gradually upgraded from one realm to another. For example, as Zi Si said in "University", Zhi Zhi can decide later, decide later and be quiet, be quiet later and be safe later, be safe later and think later, and then get it. Stop, settle, be quiet, be safe, worry and gain are all different realms. Getting started means stopping. Stop is the foundation. If there is no "stop" state, then everything is impossible. But around the world, how many people can "stop"? Talking big can fool others, but not yourself. I'm still a layman, just talking about my own experience. I have to read books that really understand people by myself. What is the realm of "stop"? How to quickly enter the realm of "stop"? The book Zen and Life Cognition is very clear. I think this book is very important, especially for beginners.
"cultivate one's morality, keep one's family in order, govern the country and level the world"; "Easy-going, harmonious, healthy, born, virtuous, master, emperor" are all gradually improving realms, and it is impossible to reach heaven in one step. To seriously study the different realms of the whole process, we can look at the first theory of Bodhi Daoji. I haven't read this book yet.
Let me briefly talk about my understanding of traditional culture.
The traditional culture of China is mainly composed of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. These three schools all talk about the same thing, but with different starting points and different targets. This thing is the core of China's traditional culture-"Tao". Only by understanding Tao can we understand traditional culture. Confucius said, "Metaphysics refers to Tao, and Metaphysics refers to utensils". The tangible, visible and tangible world is called the equipment world, which is what we now call the scope of three-dimensional space. Those who are above the tangible are invisible and intangible, which is called "Tao".
In other words, if expressed in modern language, "Tao" is a category that transcends time and space. In other words, the focus of our traditional culture research is the category of time and space. Only by understanding this point can we understand traditional culture.
Simply put, the meaning of "Tao" is the ontology of the universe and its operating rules, including conventional space-time and hyperspace, especially the invisible hyperspace, which is the focus of research. Because only by breaking through the conventional time and space limitations of human beings, reaching a higher level and standing at a higher level can we see human beings clearly.
In other words, "Tao" includes two aspects, one is her "noumenon" and the other is her "application", that is, body and use. Body is the internal operating law of Tao; Use is application, which embodies the role of human beings between heaven and earth. Confucius said: Man's function is to "cultivate heaven and earth by counselors". There is a defect in the operation of heaven and earth, and man's function is to make up for this defect. Lao Tzu said, a big country has a vast territory and abundant resources, and there are many people.
Therefore, our traditional culture can be divided into two parts according to the body use of Tao: the first part is about body, about how to practice Buddhism and realize Tao; The second part is for teaching. I can summarize it into several parts: medicine, numerology, geography, strategy and so on. To sum up a word, it is "medicine":
1. medicine, in short, is to adjust people's state, correct people's physical and social defects, and make people and society healthier.
2. Numerology is to study the fate of people and nations and adjust the defects in fate.
Seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. As we all know, many innate qualities that people are born with have a great influence on the running track of people's life. Destiny actually includes two meanings: one is fate, which is a part brought by nature; The other part is luck, which refers to the collection of time and space points experienced by people in their lives. Generally speaking, innate life is hard to change, and the time on the way is unchangeable.
Because in our universe, one-way time can only flow from yesterday to today and then to tomorrow, and it is impossible to jump directly from yesterday to tomorrow. So generally only spaces can be changed.
3. Geography, that is, geomantic omen, is to study the environment in which we live, adjust the environment, and make the environment more conducive to people's physical and mental health.
4. Strategy: the strategy of governing the world and bringing order out of chaos, and treating the diseases of the country and society.
To put it simply, China's traditional cultural system is people-oriented, taking people as the experimental object, studying how to enhance and improve people's energy and grasp people, the world and the universe at a higher level; The current scientific system, which originated in the west, takes matter as the research object, divides it into finer and finer points, and deeply understands it from the microscopic point of view.
Both people and external things exist in the form of energy. Although the energy field of energy is invisible and intangible, it exists objectively, just as electricity has an electric field, magnetism has a magnetic field, and the human body also has a human body field. The energy field of healthy people is bright and vivid, while that of weak people is dim, and the diseased organs and parts are dark gray. The energy field colors of different organs of human body are also different: the energy field of heart is red, the lung is white, the liver and gallbladder are green, the spleen and stomach are yellow, and the kidney is black. The energy fields between different organs are interrelated and influenced each other, and their communication channels are meridians.
Therefore, in order to enhance physical fitness and keep healthy, it is necessary to continuously enhance the energy of the human body field. To enhance energy, two factors should be considered: in addition to constantly replenishing energy, we should also minimize energy loss. For the human body, intense emotional fluctuations consume a lot of energy. Foreign scholars have done experiments and found that tens of seconds of intense excitement consumes the same energy as a marathon. Moreover, violent mood swings will also produce a lot of harmful substances in the human body. Therefore, to enhance human energy, we must first reduce the loss of energy, keep a calm mind and not have too much emotional fluctuations. Looking at Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, no matter what kind, the first thing to practice is to be calm. But people always have secular desires. How can we keep calm? There is a lot of content involved in this. Another factor is how to replenish energy. In addition to paying attention to reasonable nutrition in diet, reducing impurity intake and continuously purifying energy, the ancients also found ways to directly enhance the energy field of human body and organs. The ancients found that the energy fields of human organs are connected day and night through meridians, and the flow of energy in meridians is regular and periodic. The ancients called the constant energy flow in the meridians "Qi". The flow of qi keeps the energy between organs relatively balanced. If this regulation can be enhanced in a certain way, then the energy field of each organ can also be enhanced accordingly, which is refining gas. On the other hand, there are many acupoints on the meridians, and the energy flow of the meridians can communicate with the outside world through the acupoints, and even absorb the external energy through certain methods. The human body is a small universe, and there is a holographic correspondence between the human body and the big universe. A considerable part of traditional cultural classics is about adjusting mentality.
And refining gas.
The ancients divided people into three classes according to their wisdom or quality differences, that is, the upper, middle and lower classes. Confucianism, aiming at most inferior people, starts with people's daily behaviors such as walking, sitting, standing and lying down, and puts forward that "standing like a pine, walking like the wind, sitting like a bell and lying like a bow"; Taoism starts with human physiology and refines qi, aiming at a few middle classes; Buddhism starts with people's psychology, cultivates the mind and nourishes the nature, and aims at a few noble people with intellectual roots. Heart, invisible and intangible, is not something that ordinary people can understand.
Culture is the core and source of a nation's survival and development. The reason why the Chinese nation has tenacious vitality is because it has a complete, complete, broad and inclusive traditional culture.
The traditional culture of the Chinese nation adheres to the principle of keeping China soft.
But how many people really know their own culture now?