As you may know Confucius was Chinese philosopher and thinker that lived about 2500 years ago and has had a big influence on life and thought systems in countries like China, Korea and Japan for a long, long time. His thoughts became the system of philosophy called Confucianism.
Here are a few of my favourite tips from Confucius that you may have heard many times before, perhaps attributed to him or someone else. You can of course read more about Confucius at wikipedia and other places online.
“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”
The Law of Reciprocity is strong in people. How you treat others, they are likely to treat you. So be honest and think about what you do to others and what they are doing to you. And think about how you can change and improve what you do to them.
The payoff may not be instant though. So delay your need for gratification and act in a way that you feel is right rather than quickly giving up doing positive things just because you didn’t get validation and positive feedback right away.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
This is a key piece of advice. It’s easy to confuse what you read in a book or see happen to someone else as having an idea of how it is to do or experience such a thing for yourself. Sometimes it gives you a good idea of what it is about. Other times it’s quite different than you thought it would be.
So while books and seeing someone doing something can be useful to learn, the key to really understanding what something is about is to do it for yourself. You can argue with yourself or others about an idea for years. Have logical discussions and theories. But until you actually try it for yourself you won’t understand it.
“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.”
The most important thing is to start and to try. You may fail, you may stumble. And that’s OK. You may not wind up exactly where you wanted to go. And that’s OK too. But if you never try nothing will ever get started. You can just spend days, months and years sitting around waiting for something to happen.
“The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.”
What you focus on, you will see in your world. Changing what you think about most of the time can change the world around you radically. Things you never noticed before comes into focus. Things you previously spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about seem insignificant and sink into the background of your world.
And your actions tend to align with your dominant thoughts. So if you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts then you will probably start to take more positive actions in your world – and more action in general since fear lessens within your mind – and so you world tends to become a better world. This can of course spread outside your own little world since people tend to treat other people as they are being treated. And so a positive, upward spiral of thought and action can grow.
“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”
“Things that are done, it is needless to speak about…things that are past, it is needless to blame.”
People can hold on to things that once happened long, long after they happened. It inflates the ego that tells you that “you must be a person of importance since people did these horrible things to you!”.
So you feel a sense of importance by bringing these past things up in your mind and perhaps by discussing or arguing with others about them. This may be seen as normal and something a whole lot of people do. But it is not useful. It is not necessary. So ask yourself: “what is in it for me?”
Is it really a lot of value in it for you to be thinking and feeling negatively for perhaps hours each week and days each year about things that is already in the past, things you can’t change anyway?
Now, just saying that you should drop negative stuff that happened to you in the past is easy. Doing it isn’t always that easy. These memories have a tendency to want to cling to you. Or jump out at you once again even though you thought you had moved past them. I suggest checking out products by Eckhart Tolle – books like The Power of Now and A New Earth and dvds like The Flowering of Conciousness – to learn more practical methods for handling the past, your mind and your ego.
“And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
It’s easy to get lost in the past or future. But you aren’t there now. You are right here right now. And that’s how it can be - if you allow it - pretty much all the time. Most of the moments you spend thinking and feeling about the past or future is simply you being stuck in an unnecessary habit and distraction from what is here now in front of you.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
The mind loves to think. So it thinks and thinks about things. Making them more and more complex than they ever really were. And so you bog yourself down with too many thoughts and perhaps a lack of action due to things just seeming too complicated and hard. Don’t get lost in details and unimportant things. Realize what is most important, discard what you don’t need. Spend more time on the important things in your life. And stop thinking so much (again, Tolle is a useful help for such compulsiveness).
“When anger rises, think of the consequences.”
Here is one time when it’s good to look into the future. It is easy to get lost in the anger and act from that. But is it worth it and what may happen if you do? When anger rises, take 10 breaths and think about it.
“When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.”
I haven’t really thought about things like this before, especially how you can turn inward and examine yourself when you met a person of contrary character. So don’t I have much to add, except that it sounds like an useful thing to do as you met people throughout your life. So I will try it out.
译文:
最爱的9条孔子的人生哲理
众所周知，孔子是中国的哲学家和思想家，大约生活在2500年前。他对中国、韩国、日本等很多国家的人生观和思想体系都产生了重大深远的影响。他的思想形成了一种哲学体系，被称为儒学。
这里我想列举一些我最爱的儒家思想，你也许听过很多遍，亦或是你也觉得他的思想十分受用。在维基百科或其他一些网站上你可以读到更多。
"己所不欲,勿施于人。"
互惠主义的原则在人群中是十分受用的。你怎么对待别人的，别人也会这样对待你。所以真诚待人，想想你是怎么对待他人的，再看看他们是怎么对你的。然后思考一下，怎样做可以使你在为人处事上有所改进。
然而，效果可能不是立竿见影。因此，做你所认为对的，不要期待即时的感恩，不要仅仅因为没有得到即时的肯定和积极的回应就放弃做正确的事情。
"不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之。学至于行之而止矣。” （译者注：这段文字出自儒家的重要代表人物荀子《荀子·儒效》，并非直接出自于孔子）
这是一条很重要的建议。从书中读到的事情，或是看见的发生在别人身上的事情，与亲身经历这件事情的感觉是很容易被混淆的。有时候,你会因此而更好地理解这件事情。但其他时候，事情实际上完全不是你所想的那样。
所以，虽然看书和他人的经验能够帮助你学习，但是想要真正了解食物的本质关键还是要亲力亲为。你可以花上几年时间和自己或别人争论一个观点，也许有理性的讨论和分析，但你不实践就永远都无法真正理解它。
“如果你的目标是群星，结果射中的却是月亮。这不要紧。你已经努力尝试了，而很多人都没有尝试过。”
最重要的是动手去做。你可能会失败，你可能会受挫，这都不是问题。你也许最终未能到达自己原先想去的地方，这也不要紧。但是，如果你从不尝试，那么什么都不会发生。你只是夜以继日地坐在那里傻等。
“人之所思多良善有益者，其生活及所处之世界亦多美好矣。”
你的想法决定了你的世界。通过改变长久以来的想法，你可以彻底地改变的世界。先前从未注意到的事情可能会变成你关注的焦点。而之前你长时间考虑牵挂的事情则可能变得不那么重要，进而从你的世界消逝了。 你的所作所为常为你的主要想法所支配。因此，如果用积极的想法取代消极的想法，你的行为很可能会变得更积极。
因此，如果你用善良的想法取代邪恶的想法，你很可能开始行善（由于心里恐惧感减少了你会做更多的善事），你的世界也会因此变得更美好。这种微妙的变化当然会影响到你周围的世界，因为人们常常遵循别人怎么对待他他就怎样对待别人的原则。所以，积极向上的思想言行是可以传递的。
“人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎?”
“成功的事情无需谈论……失败的事情无需耿耿于怀。”
人们可能对很久很久以前发生的事情仍旧耿耿于怀。这些往事使自尊心膨胀，不断提醒他们“你必须成为人上人，不要忘记别人曾经对你犯下的错！”
你将这些往事牢牢地记在脑海中，或是就这些事情与人争论，这么做使你感到自己是个大人物。这样的做法可能很普遍，很多人都这么做。但这毫无用处，也无任何必要。问问自己：“这么做有意义吗？”
因为老是想着这些已经过去，无法改变的事情而消极沮丧，每个星期总有几小时心情低落，每年总有几天郁郁寡欢，这样做真的有价值吗？
只是嘴上说你应该抛弃不愉快的记忆，这当然很简单。然而，要付诸行动可并不容易。这些记忆往往会紧紧地缠着你不放。即使你认为自己已经摆脱它们了，它们仍会时不时地冒出来。我建议你求助于艾克哈·托耳的作品，像《当下的力量》和《全新的地球》这些书籍，以及他的碟片如《开花的人的意识》，以学习更多处理过去、思想和自我的实用性的方法。
“记住：无论你去往何方，你就在那个地方。”
人们很容易迷失在过去或是将来。但是你现在既不在过去也不在将来。你活在当下。情况确实如此，如果你纵容自己迷失，你会发现自己总是迷失在过去或是将来。多数时候你想着感受着过去或是将来，这表明你正被困在一个不必要的习惯中，使你的注意力从现实生活转移开去。
“生活很简单，但我们却总是把它弄得很复杂。”
大脑喜欢思考。所以它不断考虑事情，把事情想得比实际情况复杂得多。于是，你陷入太多的想法中，或者由于想得太复杂太艰难了而不去着手做事情。不要让自己迷失在细节和无足轻重的事情里。认清楚什么是重要的，摒弃你不需要的东西。将更多的时间花在生命中重要的事情上。不要想这么多（在这方面，托尔也可以提供很大的帮助。）
“三思而后行。”
这一次考虑到将来是有益无害的。人们很容易因为愤怒而丧失理性，鲁莽行事。但这么做真有必要吗，这样做会导致怎样的后果？怒火中烧的时候，做10次深呼吸，权衡一下。
“见贤思齐焉，见不贤而内省也。”
之前，我从未真正想过这样的事情，尤其是当遇到与自己性情不同的人时，该如何反省自己这一点。因而，我没有太多想补充，只想说这不失为一种受用的做法，因为我们的一生中会遇到形形色色的人。我想我会付诸行动的。