Confucius: The Analects

September-October 2006

CAMI

Cami said: "A gentleman reads those that have come before him, even if they say the same things he finds everywhere else." That is my summary of Confucius. Although I have underlined and written in the margins more in this book than any yet, I found this has been the least "enlightening" so far! Maybe it was the lack of journey, of analogy, of character. We're just supposed to read and ponder these tidbits of truth? And while, yes, many are true, I found few to be profound. . . . This all makes it sound like I hated it--on the contrary, I couldn't put it down. . . . Maybe it was because the truth I found in it was familiar and comfortable.

So anyway, I cam away with what I found to be truth, and let slip out of my mind those things which I did not need. I think the master would approve.

JANICE

I was glad to learn that the man we know as Confucius was Kung Fu, if I understand corrrectly, who taught the ancient arts of self-defense and meditation and oriental philosophy, for want of better terms. . . . I think this was a very wise man with very idealistic and correct ideas in the eternal scheme of things, but not religious. He did not believe that man is fallen and in need of redemption. He believed man was essentially good. He taught people to strive for the loftiest human potential and acto out of the noblest motivations possible. He taught uncommon sense and uncommon goodness, and for that we can be grateful, but he did not teach devotion to or reliance on God.

Nevertheless, I am grateful for Confucius and the like because here we have proof that a standard of goodness has existed for millennia, a standard which is relatively suddenly being uprooted by a few lucky people with influence and power, and replaced with a new standard based only on the whims and proclivities of one generation . . .

JULIA

Reading Confucius was a calm and welcome respite after the bloody battles of The Iliad and the harrowing adventures of The Odyssey. As I read, I was amazed at the desire by C.'s followers to record all those ideas on how to be a good person. Do very many people care about that anymore? Just the idea that these suggestions and rules were important to the ancients gives me hope that all civilizations have had good and virtuous people striving to be better. It made me want to be better.

I got the idea that actually living these virtues was more of a goal than a reality. It was like reading distilled scripture without the parables, the cast of characters, the geography and the long chpaters. . . . May we all try for this enlightenment and perhaps make up our own 5 good and 4 bad rules.