📖 Meaning
A Confucian rule of mourning: while grieving for a deceased parent one may become emaciated with sorrow, one must not let that grief endanger one's own life. It expresses the Confucian middle path of filial piety — grief should be deep but measured, since ending one's life would violate the duty of continuing the family line. It is equivalent to the idiom 毁不灭性.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase comes from the Confucian ritual tradition recorded in the Book of Rites (礼记), compiled during the Warring States to Han period from the teachings of Confucius and his disciples. In the chapter on mourning rites (檀弓), the sages prescribe how a filial child should grieve: sorrow may waste the body away, but it must not threaten life itself. Confucius held that a filial child's body is a gift from parents, so destroying it entirely is unfilial; the rites therefore temper grief with restraint.
💡 Example Usage
居丧须尽哀，然毁不危身，方为孝之正理。
One should mourn one's parents with full sorrow, yet grief must not endanger one's own life — that is the true principle of filial piety.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 毁不危身
- Pinyin: huǐ bù wēi shēn
- Literal Translation: destroy, not, endanger, body
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4