As we have discussed earlier. the celebrated Greek thinker Plato lived in ancient Athens around 2500 years ago. At around the same time, in ancient China, lived another thinker K’ung Fu Tzu.
This ancient Chinese master started one of the world’s most successful schools of thinking and his memes have spread around the world and infected even more people than Plato’s.
Master K’ung (or Confucius as he has come to be known in the West) developed positive memes on ethics, behaviour and relationships and devoted his thinking to finding better possibilities in the world. He was a great master of CVS to BVS thinking.
Self X10
Confucius had an insatiable thirst for knowledge of antiquity. In his sayings, he rarely used negative prohibitions but preferred to offer positive memes on how to find a BVS if you wish to behave as a chun-tzu or gentleman. What moved him was no lust for power but the will to attain true mastery. If you seek ‘self x10’ then understand your strengths and develop them with practise and mastery. But he was no abstract philosopher. He saw the need to be both a man of thinking and a man of action.
“I hear and I forget.
I see and I believe.
I do and I understand”.
– Confucius
His nature strikes us as smiling, open and natural. He was a man of the world and of the street who was driven to find ways to help improve the human condition. He founded a school for future statesmen. He edited the classics. And, most significant of all he is credited with beginning China’s great explosion of thinking in all its breadth and potentiality.
As a teacher Confucius was always encouraging his students to learn. He also believed in the importance of daily training and practise. The Master said: Is it not pleasant to learn continually and then to put it into practice?
Regardless of how the world treated him, Confucius could still maintain a positive attitude and go on learning and teaching.
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DFQ #067:
As a thinker, what is of most interest to you from this lesson?
What will you think more about today?
Why?
Positive thinking is not new!
I very much believe in positive thinking – it can be hard when other people aren’t but we are all different and have our own choices to make – there is always a choice