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Reflections on Things at Hand

Name: Reflections on Things at Hand
Author: Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian (compilers)

Jinsilu (近思錄)

Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian (compilers) · 1175 · Medium (150–350 pages)

4.5 from 2 reviews · 49 views

Virtue & character Chinese Neo-Confucianism

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What it is

An anthology compiled by Zhu Xi with his friend Lü Zuqian, gathering some six hundred passages from four Northern Song thinkers: Zhou Dunyi, Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi and Zhang Zai. Arranged in fourteen chapters, it was designed as an entry point to their teaching and became a core textbook of Neo-Confucianism in China, Korea and Japan. The first chapter sets out the metaphysics: the Supreme Ultimate, yin and yang, principle (li) and vital stuff (qi), and human nature as principle. The following chapters turn to practice: the method of learning, the investigation of things, preserving the mind through reverent seriousness, correcting faults, the family, serving in government, teaching others, guarding against the teachings of Buddhism and Daoism, and the dispositions of sages and worthies. The title echoes a line of the Analects about reflecting on what is close at hand.

Why read it

It is the best single doorway into Neo-Confucian thought, chosen and ordered by Zhu Xi himself to show how metaphysics and daily self-cultivation belong together.

Where to start

Read chapter 1 quickly for orientation, then settle into the chapters on learning and on preserving the mind, in Wing-tsit Chan's translation.

Original text in the public domain

Reviews

Ji-woo Park Jul 2026

Joseon scholars studied this book closely, and it shaped Korean Neo-Confucianism, so I read it to understand Toegye. The chapter on preserving the mind and reverent seriousness explains much of the Ten Diagrams. I found the chapter on heterodoxies uncomfortable, as an ethics teacher whose students include Buddhists, but it is honest about what the tradition thought it was fighting.

Lin Pei-shan Mar 2026

My students memorise lines from the Cheng brothers without knowing where they come from. This anthology is where. Zhu Xi chose the passages, so it is already an interpretation, and reading it next to Wang Yangming shows exactly what Wang was rebelling against. Chan's notes are worth the price alone.

Ji-woo Park Jul 2026

Joseon scholars studied this book closely, and it shaped Korean Neo-Confucianism, so I read it to understand Toegye. The chapter on preserving the mind and reverent seriousness explains much of the Ten Diagrams. I found the chapter on heterodoxies uncomfortable, as an ethics teacher whose students include Buddhists, but it is honest about what the tradition thought it was fighting.
Lin Pei-shan Mar 2026

My students memorise lines from the Cheng brothers without knowing where they come from. This anthology is where. Zhu Xi chose the passages, so it is already an interpretation, and reading it next to Wang Yangming shows exactly what Wang was rebelling against. Chan's notes are worth the price alone.