To "spread the Way of the Sages across all realms and propagate its norms through pedagogy" inevitably confronts the issue of "ren bu zhi" (人不知)—"others lacking wisdom." If all already understood the Way, there would be no need for norms or teaching. Walking the Sage’s path is arduous: easy to "know" in theory, harder to practice, and harder still to truly know.
Most interpretations reduce "ren bu zhi er bu yun" (人不知而不愠) to platitudes like "understanding万岁" ("long live tolerance"), mistaking "zhi" (知) as mere "knowledge" or "awareness." Here, however, "zhi" is the ancient form of "zhi" (智, wisdom). Thus, "ren bu zhi" means "others lack wisdom"—specifically, the wisdom to hear, see, study, and practice the Sage’s Way.
The greater error lies in misinterpreting "yun" (愠). Post-Analects commentaries uniformly define it as "anger" or "resentment." Yet "yun" has two pronunciations: the fourth tone (去声, yùn) denotes anger, while the third tone (上声, yǔn) signifies "stagnation" or "pent-up malaise," as seen in the Kongzi Jiayu: "The gentle southern wind disperses the people’s stagnation (愠)." Here, "bu yun" (不愠) means "to dissolve stagnation"—referring to those trapped in ignorance ("ren bu zhi").
In traditional Chinese medicine, all illness stems from "yun"—emotional and energetic stagnation. A household, nation, or world dominated by the "wisdomless" inevitably festers with grievances: marital strife, civil unrest, wars. Thus, a harmonious, "Great Unity" society (datong) must first eradicate "yun." Practitioners of the Sage’s Way act like the "gentle southern wind," dissolving stagnation by transforming the "wisdomless" into the "stagnation-free."
The phrase "ren bu zhi er bu yun" reflects a world yet to fully embrace the Sage’s Way—a world where most lack the wisdom to engage with it. The junzi’s (君子) duty is to permeate this ignorance, not through force, but through the nourishing influence of "studying timely" and "phoenix-like companions arriving from afar." The ultimate test of the Sage’s Way lies in achieving "bu yun": social harmony, global unity, and governance in accord with cosmic order. Only then can one truly be called a junzi—a bearer of the Sage’s transformative legacy.