Confucius from the Heart

The wisdom of Confucius can help us to obtain spiritual happiness in the modern world, to get used to the daily routine of our lives, and to find the personal bearings that tell us where we are.

We might sometimes think that what we read lacks a rigorous logic. Very many of the sayings concentrate on a single issue, there are few passages of any great length, and almost everything we find is simple and short.

We will see how this absence of words is also a kind of teaching.

Confucius said: ‘What does Heaven ever say? Yet there are the four seasons going round and there are the hundred things coming into being. What does Heaven ever say?’ (Analects XVII) Confucius said: See, the heavens are above us, solemn and quiet, never speaking a word, yet the four seasons come round again and again, and all of nature increases and multiplies around us. Do the heavens need to speak as well?

What we will find in Confucius is a way of thinking, which is plain, simple and warm. It is exactly this attitude with which Confucius influenced his students.

Confucius had three thousand students, seventy-two of whom were men of exceptional wisdom and virtue. Each of these men was a seed, and each in his turn spread the seed of this wisdom and this view of life far and wide.

That is why in China we call Confucius a sage. The sages are those people who in their time on this earth are the most practical and capable, and possess the most personal magnetism. They bring us conviction, and a kind of faith. Such men can only be the product of natural growth, emerging from within our lives, not dropping down from heaven.

This sense of natural, balanced growth can be found in China’s creation myth, which tells of Pan Gu, who separated heaven and earth. This separation was not a sudden change, as in a Western creation myth, where Pan Gu might be expected to take a big axe and split them apart with a bang, whereupon a golden light might perhaps shine out in all directions, and the heavens, earth and everything in them all appear at once. That is not the Chinese style.

The type of story that Chinese people are used to is like that described in the San Wu Li Ji, our very early

Chinese history, which includes stories of how the world was made. Here we find that creation was a very lengthy process: calm, relaxed and full of anticipation:

Afterwards, heaven and earth split apart, not in the way that a solid body splits in two with a crack, but rather as a gradual separation of two essences; the light, pure yang essence rose up and became the heavens, the heavy yin essence sank and became the earth.

But that was not the end of the separation of heaven and earth. The process had only just begun.

Notice how Chinese people pay a lot of attention to changes. Look at Pan Gu, who in between the heavens and the earth went through ‘nine changes in one day’: just like a newborn baby, tiny, subtle changes were taking place every day.

There is a stage in the changes which the text calls ‘a god in the heavens, a sage on earth’ when Pan Gu had become a wise and powerful being in both realms.

For the Chinese, this idea of mastery in both realms is an ideal way of being, one to which we should all aspire: a heaven where idealism can spread its wings and fly freely, with no need to compromise with all the rules and obstacles of the real world; and the ability to keep our feet planted firmly on the ground, so that we can make our way in the real world.

People who have only ambition and no realism are dreamers, not idealists; those who have only earth and no sky are plodders, not realists.

Idealism and realism are our heaven and earth.

But Pan Gu’s changes are still going on and our story continues.

After the heavens and the earth had separated, every day the heavens became higher by ten feet, the earth gained ten feet in thickness, and Pan Gu ‘grew ten feet every day’, along with the heavens.

In this way another eighteen thousand years passed, until at last ‘the heavens were infinitely high, the earth was infinitely deep, and Pan Gu was infinitely tall’.

In other words, humankind is equal to the heavens and the earth: heaven, earth and people are referred to together as the Three Realms – the three equally great and important things from which the world is made.

Confucius viewed the world in this way: human beings are worthy of respect, and people should respect themselves.

When reading The Analects of Confucius we find that Confucius very seldom spoke harshly or sternly to his students, he usually talked things over with them in a relaxed, easy manner, giving them clues and hints so that they could work things out for themselves. We have all seen teachers scold their students, telling them not to do this or that. That is what happens when a teacher is not all he or she should be. A truly excellent teacher will be like Confucius, peacefully exchanging views with their students, together getting to the heart of how to make these Three Realms of heaven, earth and humanity all prosper and flourish together.

This relaxed, unhurried, assured spirit and modest, respectful attitude is something we should all aspire to. The Analects of Confucius is the embodiment of this ideal.

From it we can derive great strength, a strength that flowed from Confucius’s inner heart. It is this strength that Mencius, another of China’s great philosophers, who came after Confucius and further developed his ideas, described as ‘the noble spirit’.

Only when the essences of Heaven, Earth and everything in between them combine within a person’s heart, can they be as powerful as this.

What do we mean by heaven and humanity becoming one? We mean humankind and the natural world in perfect harmony.

We are working hard to create a harmonious society, but what is true harmony? It is more than just harmony within a small housing estate, nor is it merely cordial relations between people. It must also include the entire natural world, harmoniously and happily living and growing together on this earth. People should feel reverence for the natural world and a willingness to follow its rhythms.

This is a kind of strength. If we learn how to temper this strength, and to draw on it, then we will be able to attain a breadth of mind like that of Confucius.

Confucius’s attitude was extremely placid, yet his inner heart was very serious. This was because he had a deep strength within him, rooted in the strength of his convictions.

His student Zigong once asked him what conditions were necessary for a country to be at peace, with a stable government. Confucius’s reply was very simple. There were only three: enough arms, enough food and the trust of the common people.

First, the internal apparatus of the state must be powerful, it must have enough military power to protect itself.

Second, it must have sufficient supplies, so its people can be well fed and clothed.

Third, the common people must have belief in the nation.

This student was always full of awkward questions. He said that three conditions were too many: Tell me, if you have to do without one of these, which one would you remove first?

Confucius said: ‘Give up arms.’ So we’ll do without military protection.

Zigong asked again: If you had to get rid of another one, which would you give up?

Confucius in all seriousness told him: ‘Give up food.’ We are willing not to eat.

He continued: ‘Death has always been with us since the beginning of time, but when there is no trust, the common people will have nothing to stand on.’

To do without food will certainly lead to death, but from ancient times to this day has anyone ever cheated death? So death is not the worst thing that can happen. The most terrible thing of all is the collapse and breakdown that follow when a country’s citizens give up on their nation.

On a material level, a happy life is no more than a series of goals to be reached; but true peace and stability come from within, from an acceptance of those that govern us, and this comes from faith.

This is Confucius’s concept of government. He believed that the power of faith alone was sufficient to hold a nation together.

In the twenty-first century we say that it is no longer enough to use the simplistic standard of GNP (Gross National Product) to assess the quality of the people’s life in different countries. You must also look at GNH: Gross National Happiness.

In other words, to evaluate whether a country is truly rich and powerful, you should not just look at the speed and scale of its economic growth, you should look more at the feelings in the heart of each ordinary citizen – Do I feel safe? Am I happy? Do I truly identify with the life I lead?

At the end of the 1980s, China took part in an international survey, which showed that at that time the happiness of our citizens was only around 64 per cent.

In 1991 we took part in the survey again. The happiness index had risen, reaching around 73 per cent. This came from an improvement in our standard of living, as well as all the reforms that were being carried out around then.

But by the time we took part for a third time, in 1996, the happiness index had fallen to 68 per cent.

This is a very puzzling business. It shows that even when a society is thriving materially and culturally, the people who enjoy the fruits of that society may nonetheless experience an extremely complex kind of spiritual bewilderment.

Let us travel back in time two thousand five hundred years, and compare what the sages and wise men were like in this less prosperous age.

Confucius was very fond of a student called Yan Hui. On one occasion he praised him: ‘How admirable Hui is! Living in a mean dwelling on a bowlful of rice and a ladleful of water is a hardship most men would find intolerable, but Hui does not allow this to affect his joy. How admirable Hui is!’ (Analects vi)

Yan Hui’s family was very poor. They never had enough to eat or new clothes to wear, and lived in a grim, run-down little alley. For most people, a hard life like this would be simply unendurable, yet Yan Hui could find happiness in what he had.

Perhaps many people would say: ‘That’s just the way life is, we all have to live, rich or poor, what can be done about it?’

What is truly admirable about Yan Hui is not that he could endure such rough living conditions, but his attitude to life. When everybody was sighing bitterly and complaining about how hard life is, Yan Hui’s optimism never wavered.

We see that only the truly enlightened can avoid becoming tied down by the material things in life and keep a calm, tranquil mindset from start to finish, indifferent to fame or personal gain.

Of course, nobody wants to live a hard life, but equally, we cannot solve our spiritual problems through a dependence on more and more possessions.

In modern China, our lives are visibly improving in a material sense, yet a great many people are growing more and more dissatisfied. Because we have a highly visible class of people who have suddenly become extremely wealthy, there is always something to make ordinary people feel that their lives contain unfairness.

Actually, what we focus on can work in two ways: one is outward-looking, infinitely broad, expanding our world; another is inward-looking, delving infinitely deep to explore the inner heart.

We always spend too much time looking at the outside world, and too little looking at our hearts and souls.

Confucius can teach us the secret of happiness, which is how to find the peace within us.

A student, Zigong, once asked Confucius: ‘ “Poor without being obsequious, wealthy without being arrogant.” What do you think of this saying?’ Imagine somebody who is very poor but doesn’t grovel to the rich, or someone who is very rich and powerful but not haughty or arrogant. What do you think of that?

Confucius told him this is pretty good, but it is still not enough. There is another, higher state: ‘Poor yet delighting in the Way, wealthy yet observant of the rites.’

The higher state requires that a person must not only accept poverty peaceably, and not go crawling and begging for favours, but they must also be possessed of a calm, clear inner happiness, the kind of happiness that cannot be taken away by a life of poverty. Neither will power and riches make such a person haughty or self-indulgent: they will still be refined and courteous, with a cheerful, contented mind. Such a person can both avoid being led astray by a life of wealth and plenty, and can keep their self-respect and inner happiness. Such a person can truly be called a junzi.

The word junzi, which appears more often than any other in The Analects of Confucius, describes Confucius’s ideal person, who any one of us, rich or poor, has the potential to become. To this day, in China, we still use the word as a standard for personal integrity, saying that such and such a person is a real junzi. As Confucius’s ideas were passed down the generations, they shaped the many great-hearted junzi who appear throughout our history and whom we can learn from as we strive to become junzi in our own lives.

Tao Yuanming, the great poet of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was one such figure. For eighty-three days he held a minor official post of Magistrate of Pengze, until one very small thing led him to reject his post and return home.

He was told that his superiors were sending someone to inspect his work and that he should ‘tie your robes with a belt to greet him’, just as today you would wear a suit and tie to show respect to visiting leaders.

Tao Yuanming said: ‘I can’t bow low like a servant for the sake of five measures of rice.’ In other words he was not prepared to grovel for the sake of an official’s tiny salary. And so he went back home, leaving his seal of office behind.

When he got there, he wrote down what he felt.

He said: ‘Since my heart has become the slave of my body, I feel melancholy and grieved.’ He felt that just in order to eat a little better and have somewhere slightly better to live, he had no choice but to abase himself, grovel and curry favour.

He was not willing to live such a life – ‘I know that I cannot return to my past, but I know my own future and can pursue it’ – and so he returned once more to his beloved countryside.

Zigong again asked Confucius an extremely important question: ‘Is there a single word which can be a guide to conduct throughout one’s life?’ Can you give me one word that I will be able use until the end of my days, and always derive benefit from it?

Confucius replied to him in a conversational tone of voice: ‘If such a word exists, it is probably the word shu, or “forbearance”.’

But what do we mean by this? Confucius went on: ‘Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.’ That is, you mustn’t force other people to do the things you don’t want to do yourself. If a person can do this throughout their life, that is enough.

And this is what is meant by ‘With half a book of The Analects of Confucius I can govern the Empire.’ Sometimes learning one word or a couple of words is enough to last us a whole lifetime.

Confucius is a true sage – he won’t give you so very much to remember, and sometimes a single word is all you need.

Confucius’s disciple Zengzi once said: ‘The way of the Master consists in doing one’s best and in using oneself as a measure to gauge others. That is all.’ The essence of Confucius’s teaching can be distilled into just the two words ‘faithfulness’ and ‘forbearance’. Put simply, you have to be yourself, but at the same time you must think about others.

By forbearance, Confucius means that you mustn’t force people to do things against their will, nor must you do things to hurt others. By extension, he means that if other people do things that hurt you, you must do the best you can to treat them with tolerance.

But this is often easier said than done. Often, when something unfair or unjust happens, we can’t help brooding, going over it constantly. And by doing so, we are hurt over and over again.

There is an interesting tale in Buddhism.

Two monks came down from their mountain temple to beg alms. When they reached the bank of a river, they saw a girl, who was upset because she was unable to cross it. The old monk said to the girl: ‘I’ll carry you over on my back.’ And he gave the girl a piggy-back across the river.

The young monk was too shocked to do anything more than gape in astonishment. He didn’t dare to ask any questions. They walked on for another twenty leagues, and at last he could bear it no longer, so he asked the old monk: ‘Master, we’re monks, we’re supposed to be celibate, how could you carry a girl across the river on your back?’

The old monk said coolly: ‘You saw how I got her across the river and then put her down. How come you have carried this thought with you for twenty leagues and yet you still haven’t put it down?’

The moral of this story is exactly what Confucius teaches us: when it’s time to put things down, put them down. By being tolerant of others, you are in fact leaving yourself a lot more room.

There is a third word, besides faithfulness and forbearance, at the very centre of Confucian theory: ‘benevolence’.

Confucius’s student Fan Chi once respectfully asked his teacher: ‘What is benevolence?’ The teacher answered in two words: ‘Loving people.’ Loving other people is benevolence.

Fan Chi asked again: ‘What is this thing called wisdom?’ The teacher said: ‘Knowing people.’ The understanding of others is called wisdom.

To love and care for others is benevolence; to understand others is wisdom. It’s as simple as that.

So what is the best way to be a person with a benevolent, loving heart?

Confucius said: ‘A benevolent man helps others to take their stand in so far as he himself wishes to take his stand, and gets others there in so far as he himself wishes to get there. The ability to take as analogy what is near at hand can be called the method of benevolence.’ (Analects vi)

If you wish to raise yourself up, immediately think of how to help other people raise themselves up too; if you want to realize your own ambition, think at once of how to help other people to realize their ambitions. This can be done starting with the small things near to you, treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. This is the way to live according to benevolence and justice.

In life, any one of us may experience sudden unemployment, marriage breakdown, betrayal by a friend, or abandonment by someone close to us, and we may regard it as either something serious or something minor; there is no objective standard.

For example, if you get a cut, perhaps an inch long, does this count as a severe injury, or a minor one? A delicate, sensitive young girl might make a fuss about something like this for a whole week; but a big, tough young man might simply not notice, from when the cut was made to when it healed by itself.

So, whether we take on the role of a delicate ‘young girl’ or a strong ‘young man’ is something that is entirely up to us.

If you have an infinitely broad mind, you will always be able to keep things in their proper perspective.

I remember a story from my university English coursebook, about a king who spent every day pondering three ultimate questions: Who is the most important person in this world? What is the most important thing? When is the most important time to do things?

He put these three questions to his court and his ministers, but nobody could give him an answer and he was very downhearted.

Afterwards, one day he went out dressed as a commoner and walked to a remote place, where he took shelter for the night in an old man’s house.

In the middle of the night, he woke with a start to hear a racket outside, and he saw that a man covered in blood had rushed into the old man’s home.

That man said: ‘There are men after me, they’re going to arrest me!’ The old man said: ‘Then take shelter with me here for a while’ and hid him away.

The king was too frightened to sleep, and soon he saw soldiers come running up, hot on the trail. The soldiers asked the old man if he had seen anyone come past. The old man said: ‘I don’t know, there’s nobody else here.’

Afterwards the soldiers went away. The man they had been chasing said a few words of gratitude and left. The old man shut the door and went back to sleep.

The next day the king said to the old man: ‘Why weren’t you afraid to take in that man? Weren’t you afraid of causing terrible trouble? It might have cost you your life! And then you just let him go like that. Why didn’t you ask who he was?’

The old man said calmly: ‘In this world, the most important person is the person in front of you who needs your help, the most important thing is to help them, and the most important time is right now, you can’t delay, not even for an instant.’

It all suddenly became clear to the king: those three philosophical questions he had been pondering for so long were solved in that instant.

This story can also be used as a footnote to reading Confucius.

What is most significant about people like Confucius or any of the other great thinkers from China and abroad, past and present, is that they drew from their own practical experiences of life, truths and principles that everybody can use.

These truths are not found in the pages of massive volumes of the classics and ancient records, the kind you need a magnifying glass and an enormous dictionary to read and that will take you a lifetime’s laborious study to understand.

The true sages wouldn’t put on airs or speak with a stern, forbidding face. They have passed down to us their living, breathing experience of human life, through all the great, sweeping changes the world has gone through, so that we can still feel its warmth. From a thousand years ago, they are smiling on down us, watching us in silence as we continue to reap the benefits of their words.

Confucius offers us simple truths that will help us develop our inner hearts and souls and allow us to make the right choices as we go through life’s journey. The first step on this journey is having the right attitude.