Confucius on Finding Truth
What is Truth? I would say truth is an abused word. I have my own truth, thank you so much. You can have yours. Everyone can believe what they wish. A human right and freedom that many in the past never knew and many today feel is threatened. The Truth that Confucius looked for was different. Confucius looked for the Truth that can’t be avoided, whether we accept or not, or admit or not. The truth that drove him, his world, and ours. The truth we take for granted.
Confucius said, “Truth does not depart from human nature. If what is regarded as truth departs from human nature, it may not be regarded as truth. The Book of Songs says, ‘In hewing an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.’ Thus, when we take an axe handle in our hand to hew another axe handle and glance from one to the other, some still think the pattern is far off. Wherefore the moral man in dealing with men appeals to the common human nature and changes the manner of their lives and nothing more.”
Do we make things harder than they must be? We try to optimize every aspect of our interconnected lives. Families script the careers and trajectories of their children’s lives. Governments made mainly (but by no means all) of well-meaning people become a tangle of laws and bureaucracy that stumbles from crisis to crisis. Is this our nature? Or does this happen because we keep trying to “fix” human nature? Wanting to connect everybody to everyone else. Commenting and caring about each event that happens, anywhere, and anytime. I don’t think I was made to take all these cares on. We get spread too thin, and listening to everyone else, and nobody talking about us, we lose the thing that is close at hand, ourselves.
I sound like I don’t care. Believe me, I don’t like the state of things either. Closing your eyes and taking care of yourself is hard. Letting my kids take risks and gain their own experience is so difficult. Looking at the leaders of government and industry that we must live with, and some of us elected, is heart-wrenching. Knowing what is coming and you can’t stop it is the toughest. We can only do so much. In its infinite diversity, Nature covers the spectrum of creation, playing all the numbers. Just possibly, if we each take care of ourselves, declining to chase every distant outrage, we might make connections that have impact. Connections with ourselves, with those closest to us, and by tenuously extending these branches of compassion and self-respect further and wider, these islands of consciousness might pay off this experiment Nature is playing at.
If you look at human history, what we are experiecning now is not much different. People struggle with greed, lust, pride, wrath, envy, gluttony and sloth. There is really nothing new in the world. That's why the teachings of Jesus, Bhudda and Confusias still applies today.
A friend of mine shared a book from a Japanese author. I told her that the oroginal concept is from the Bible 😅.
This topic has actually been on my mind quite a lot lately.
Everyone has their own version of truth. Two versions of the same truth may very well be accepted. People may have valid intentions. But, that doesn't mean there is no right or wrong. There are still facts. There is still what is human and what is moral.