Confucius says...

I have not been blogging much lately. Between business travels to China, catching up at home, & trying to finish up my Philosophy of the Human Person course with Franciscan U, I have had precious little time. I've not failed in thinking about blogging, just the doing.

On my last business trip, the owner of the company with whom I'm working gave me a book of the writings of Confucius in Chinese/English, because we spent a little time discussing some of the philosophical differences between East & West. This contrast is very enlightening, because a totally alien culture can shed much light on one's own. However, there are certainly points of similarity, because, people are people wherever you go.

The Confucian writings are like proverbs, each one disconnected from those around them. Some are parts of a dialogue where the beginning & end of the conversation are missing! So, it can be quite challenging to make sense of them. One has to read a large number of passages, then compare them against each other. There is not really an external "law" to them, like there would be in the Christian religion (that being the Faith itself, which preceded the written Scriptures); whatever enlightenment they possess can only be intuited from within them, though I am sure there are various schools of understanding & application (similar to some ultra-Scriptural-fundamentalist Christian groups).

I hope to share some of these interesting writings with you from time to time, with or without commentary. Here is the first:

Zeng Zi said, "Every day I examine myself on three counts. In what I have undertaken on another's behalf, have I failed to do my best? In dealings with my friends have I failed to be trustworthy in what I say? Have I failed to practice repeatedly what has been passed on to me?"
...