The teaching of Confucius
Boon Kuan Chung’s answer to Do you think that religion is necessary for the mindset of a human?
Boon Kuan Chung’s answer to How is inner peace attained according to Confucius?
The teaching of Confucius is not only still applicable in contemporary society but essential. The value system of the people, East and West, has gone upside-down. People value monetary wealth and sensual pleasure so much so to the negation of their happiness and health. The worth of a person is measured by monetary wealth instead of his happiness level. In other words, people have gone insane.
The number of teens who felt useless and joyless – classic symptoms of depression – surged recently and teen suicide attempts increased. It is a huge problem to the teens themselves, and it is also a problem to society. One doesn’t really have a life if he is not happy; he will be like a zombie who walks around, doing something but not happy doing it and not knowing why he continues doing it. He may harm himself, and he may also harm innocent people without any reason, hence is a time-bomb to society.
Confucius had no religion and he didn’t create a religion. From the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty around 1000 BC, China has become a secular country. The ruling class and scholars had no more faith in gods. They prayed to the Heaven 天 but not to gods; and no more human sacrifices were allowed (although some nobles secretly continued their primitive religious practices). Even the use of straw human figures in burial services was considered cruel as far as Confucius was concerned. The Heaven 天 is like the Spinoza’s God. “Heavenly laws” or Dao 道 are like physical laws; One who hits the wall will feel an equal force in the opposite direction, which is action and reaction. Based on an understanding of Dao from Yi Jing, the Court of Zhou government developed a complete set of moral codes 礼 to be followed by the people. The Zhou government also encouraged people to like music 乐, for the happiness and inner peace of the people.
During the time of Confucius around 500 BC, the value system went upside-down, like what happens today. It led to very serious wealth inequality and moral decadence. The country became very chaotic due to non-stop civil wars and annexation of smaller States by bigger States. The big States also fought each other for hegemonic power. People completely disobeyed the Zhou moral codes and indulged in music for sensual pleasure instead of inner peace. Confucius wanted to save the country from collapsing. He went around the country advising the Dukes of various States to bring back sanity. Of course, insane people don’t know they were insane. Thus, the ruling classes rejected the teaching of Confucius. They did agree with Confucius on the urgency to restore peace but they didn’t agree with the methods proposed by Confucius. They were not wrong because the “medicine” of Confucius was too mild; the “late stage cancer” required much stronger “medicine” like Sun Zi Art of Wars. Pacifist States would be conquered by neighboring States. Only violence can stop violence. In an insane world, only the sane was insane. Everybody was forced to become insane if he wanted to participate in the competition for honors of successes and avoid humiliations of defeats. Thus, the teaching of Confucius which emphasized compassion and inner peace was not popular.
Today, there are a lot of misunderstandings about the teaching of Confucius due to the damages done by Neo-Confucianism. Compassion (仁) and righteousness (义) are some of the important advocacies of Confucianism. They look like good things; therefore, most people love the concepts. They become precious things. Unfortunately, like all precious things, they are rare. People want them, like the way they want diamonds. Some people want to be known as noble persons who stand on moral high-ground. They hate to have any “dirt” on their reputations; thenceforth, they will put on an angry look like the fighting cocks, to tell everybody that they hate the lack of compassion and righteousness. They exhibit hatred towards people who lack compassion and righteousness in order to condition the mind of everybody to think that the holy men will do no wrong. They can then pretend that they are the good leaders whom everybody needs. They compete with other ambitious politicians like themselves to win the prize of being made the supreme leader of all leaders. Very often, they win by being generous in giving or promise to give everybody benefits, so as to show their great compassion to the people. They don’t see there is anything wrong to rob the rich and give the heist to the poor. They don’t see there is anything wrong to trade promises for votes/supports, they think they have the right to ask for reciprocations, they see compassion as a win-win business, they see the lack of reciprocations as morally wrong or lack of righteousness. Ironically, they believe in selfless giving but at the same time they expect repayments. Ironically, the people love the benefits and promises; therefore, they love individuals who exhibit compassion and righteousness. They love the win-win business, so they do the same to their children, parents, families and friends. They make it an unspoken social-contract. Lack of reciprocation is equated to lack of gratitude, and it is politically-incorrect to talk about self-interest but not wrong to actually be selfish so long as you deny the notion about you being selfish. There is always a way to weaponize compassion and righteousness as the tools to defend yourself or to attack others (for being lacking compassion and righteousness).
Confucius knew the negative side of promoting compassion. He said: “I have never seen a person who really likes compassion but hates people who lack compassion. A person who really likes compassion sees it as an extremely precious/rare thing and high standard which is very hard to achieve; therefore, not expecting many people to be able to achieve it. For a person who hates lack of compassion, his show of compassion is merely to prevent himself from being grouped among the people who lack compassion. Will he ever use all his energy to practice compassion?” (我未見好仁者，惡不仁者。好仁者，無以尚之；惡不仁者，其為仁矣，不使不仁者加乎其身。有能一日用其力於仁矣乎？) If compassion is easy for everyone to achieve, it will cease to be a precious thing. Individuals should cultivate themselves to have true compassion towards others, but not weaponize “compassion” to demand the same high-standard from others.
While the teaching of Confucius is still applicable to contemporary society, distorted teaching of it can possibly do more harm than good; just like religious teaching does. One must always refer to the original Anelects of Confucius to avoid being misled by Neo-Confucianism. Daoism and Buddhism can also provide some balances to prevent oneself from becoming a fundamentalist or extremist.
A thug leader, Dao Zhi (盗跖), has many followers because he has morals and ethics. His prior homework and intelligence enables him to predict the wealth and its location within a house. His courage to enter the house first is very inspiring. After the heist, he is the last one to leave so that his followers can flee safely; he shows great brotherhood righteousness. He has the intelligence to make the right decision on the time and place to make the heist. After each job, he has the compassion to divide the heist equally with his followers. If he didn’t have the morals of knowledge, courage, righteousness, intelligence and compassion, he wouldn’t have so many followers and he wouldn’t become a big thug leader. He would be just a small thief. The morals and ethics he learned from school make him a great leader.
Dao Zhi (盗跖) had nine thousand followers. A Confucian wanted to give him some advice. At first, Dao Zhi was very angry and didn’t want to see him. He told a soldier to tell the Confucian: “Stop manipulating right and wrong in the name of the past noble emperors, and confuse the present kings. Stop deceiving the ministers, in the name of compassion and righteousness, in the pursuit to become an honorable adviser to the king. He has terrible sin to cause so much suffering to the people. The government used his ideas and caused so much inequality that the people have no food to eat and the kings keep going to war with neighboring countries, all in the name of compassion and righteousness. He better leaves now or I will eat his heart and liver for lunch!” The Confucian refused to leave. He told Dao Zhi: “The three highest qualities of a person are, first: strong body; second: intelligent, able to differentiate right and wrong; third: courage to make decisions, able to rally for huge public support, and lead an army. I want to congratulate you for having all three qualities. Unfortunately, it is a pity that you choose to be a thug leader. If you agree, I will persuade the king to build a castle for you and make you a general of the king’s army. You don’t have to be a thug leader anymore.” Dao Zhi laughed and said: “If a person can be lured by personal benefits, he is as common as a common person. As for the castle you mentioned, can it be larger than the world I live in right now? The emperors in the past possessed the world. Where are their successors now and do they still possess the world? Everything in this world that has great benefit will have great danger at the same time. As a thug leader, the people I kill are limited. If I become a general of the king’s army, the people I kill, in the name of compassion and righteousness, will be countless and it will be a disaster to the world. What you told me today is the rubbish that I threw away long ago. It is so far away from the real truth!” The Confucian didn’t have ill intention to deceive anybody. He was just a dreamer who thought that he was awake and had a clear conscience of what was morally right or wrong. He didn’t know there were great dangers hiding behind the definitions of right and wrong. “Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.” They operate with the false belief that they can fix things.
RESILIENT KID 