#ko hung

Ge [Hong] embodies within himself several of the characteristic elements of late Han and Three Kingdoms philosophical and religious tradition. He did not identify himself as belonging exclusively to any one school of philosophy or religion. He was eclectic and practical, seeking to draw what he believed to be useful for his purposes from any tradition. He was Confucian in matters of public morality, Legalist in issues of law and power, and Daoist in terms of personal cultivation and private morality. He chopped logic with the later Mohists and drew upon examples from the School of Names to illustrate points. He showed sympathy for the lower economic classes and the oppressions that they must bear, yet at the same time argued for the necessity of executing them should they dare revolt. He pointed out that the basis of morality lay in observing Confucian ethics, yet at the same time proposed that if one wanted to become fully developed, more than only Confucian ethics had to be practiced. In other words, Ge was a multi-faceted and complex thinker, and to pin him down to one school or another would be both inaccurate and partial. In this characteristic Ge is very much in tune with the dominant intellectual currents of his day, when it was common for the scholar-official to draw from a variety of intellectual and religious traditions in carving out his own lifeway

Now the three rulers did not copy the same music and the five emperors did not perform the same rites. Despite this, they still changed customs, and in putting the ruler at ease and ruling the people well their accomplishments were the same. Sometimes there were changes, and sometimes they followed the past. Either way, they abolished the bad and increased the good. Why must one use a boat to climb a mountain or spur on a horse to ford a stream? ... If one says that the ways of the past should never be changed, then coffins should not have replaced burial in piles of straw and clothing is not so appropriate for people as nakedness

Contentment

He acts in true freedom. What can competition for honors mean to him? What attraction can anxiety and greed possibly hold? Through simplicity he has Tao, and from Tao, everything.