The encounter between Zilu and an old man carrying a basket for weeds turns a brief roadside meeting into a debate over whether withdrawal can be morally justified when public principles have failed. The old man’s practical life and eventual disappearance stand against Zilu’s insistence that political duty remains binding even in a disordered age; the Master identifies the man as a recluse, but the episode leaves Zilu’s argument, rather than a reconciliation, as its final word.

Meeting on the road

Following the Master, Zilu fell behind and came upon an old man bearing a basket for weeds across his shoulder on a staff. He asked whether the man had seen his master. The old man answered by challenging the question itself: Zilu’s limbs, he said, were unaccustomed to toil, and he could not distinguish the five kinds of grain. On that account, the old man questioned who Zilu’s master could be. He then planted his staff in the ground and went on weeding.

The encounter places a practical rebuke before any explicit argument about government. Zilu approaches the man as a traveler seeking information; the old man answers by invoking labor and agricultural knowledge, matters the questioner appears not to share. His continuing work gives the exchange a physical setting and an immediate contrast: Zilu is looking for the Master, while the old man turns back to his own task.

Hospitality and return

Rather than leave after the rebuke, Zilu joined his hands across his breast and stood before the old man. The account records no further words from him at this point. The old man then kept him overnight, killed a fowl, prepared millet, and gave him a meal. He also introduced Zilu to his two sons. The sharpness of the first exchange is thus followed by a concrete act of welcome and by an introduction into the old man’s household.

The next day, Zilu resumed his journey and reported the encounter to the Master. The Master recognized the old man as a recluse and sent Zilu back to see him again. By the time Zilu reached the place, the old man had gone. The return journey therefore produces no second conversation: the Master’s recognition arrives only after the hospitable host has disappeared, leaving Zilu to deliver his judgment to the family.

Zilu’s case for public duty

Speaking to the family, Zilu argues that refusing office is not righteous. He reasons from one human relationship to another: if the proper distinctions between old and young cannot simply be neglected, then the duties between sovereign and minister cannot be set aside either. In his view, the recluse’s wish to preserve his own purity comes at the cost of allowing a greater relationship to fall into disorder.

Zilu’s answer does not depend on believing that political service will succeed. He says that a superior man takes office in order to perform the righteous duties attached to it, while knowing that right principles may fail to advance. The distinction is between the outcome of public action and the obligation to undertake it: anticipated failure does not, in Zilu’s account, cancel the duty. His speech is the episode’s last reported act, and the old man’s absence leaves this argument unanswered within the scene.

Withdrawal and the episode’s tension

The old man’s withdrawal is conveyed through actions rather than a developed explanation: he weeds, offers a night’s lodging and a meal, introduces his sons, and is gone when Zilu returns. The Master supplies the classification of recluse; Zilu supplies the ethical criticism. The account does not state the old man’s reasons for leaving or whether he heard Zilu’s words to the family, so it does not settle the dispute through his reply.

Instead, the narrative holds hospitality and political disagreement together. The recluse has shown care toward Zilu in his household, yet Zilu regards withdrawal from office as a failure of public obligation. The encounter’s close preserves that contrast: the old man is absent, but the question raised by his absence remains, and Zilu’s position is that righteous service consists in performing one’s duty even when the political order gives little prospect of success.