When fasting for ritual purification, one must wear a special clean garment made of plain cloth. During the fast, one must change one’s usual diet and also move to a different place to sit or sleep.
The Master said:“Who but King Wen could be truly free from worry?He had King Ji as his father and King Wu as his son –his father initiated the enterprise, and his son carried it forward.”
Mencius said: “There are three forms of unfilial conduct, and the gravest is having no descendants.Shun married without informing his parents precisely to avoid this greatest unfilial act.Therefore, the noble person considers it as if he had informed them.”
Zhou Xiao asked: “Did the gentlemen of ancient times take office?”
3.11 Someone asked for an explanation of the Ancestral Sacrifice. Confucius said, “I do not know. Anyone who knew the explanation could deal with all things under Heaven as easily as I lay this here”; and he laid his finger upon the palm of his hand.
3.10 The Master said, “At the Ancestral Sacrifice, as for all that comes after the libation, I had far rather not witness it!”