This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series, which was the Guardian’s book site of the week and mentioned on the Penguin blog. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

The First Ten Books
by Confucius (551-479 BC)

Memorable Line
“The Master said, ‘If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.’”

The Skinny
A sampling of the sayings and wisdom of Confucius, some of it universal and some particular to his times.

Relevance? Argument?
Growing up in Fiji my sister and I used to visit a little Chinese grocery store that sold all kinds of treats. One of these was a continually changing mystery candy wrapped in paper that had words written on it. Sometimes these words were random, almost as if the paper had been recycled. Sometimes they seemed to make sense, to be the equivalent of a fortune cookie fortune. Every once in awhile, the words would be profound–which for us, at that age, meant we didn’t understand them at all.

Reading Confucius is like having a thousand of those mystery candies on the floor in front of me, and slowly unwrapping each. Each has the potential to be profound, mysterious, banal, or even funny.

I’m not sure if the “funny” is intended or not, but I found a little off-kilter humor in “The Master said, ‘When housing his great tortoise, Tsang Wen-chung had the capitals of the pillars carved in the shape of hills and the rafterposts painted in a duckweed design. What is one to think of his intelligence?” At the same time, it seems to reflect the genius of Confucius: he sets out a situation and then asks an open-ended question. In a modern context, this question has at least two answers. Either Wen-chung is wise for creating an aesthetic pleasing to the human eye or foolish for creating artifice that has no relevance to the tortoise’s well-being.

I found several of Confucius’ sayings particularly memorable, but especially these three:

Book V, #10: Tsai Yu was in bed in the daytime. The Master said, “A piece of rotten wood cannot be carved, nor can a wall of dried dung be trowelled. As far as Yu is concerned what is the use of condemning him?” The Master added, “I used to take on trust a man’s deeds after having listened to his words. Now having listened to a man’s words I go on to observe his deeds. It was on account of Yu that I have changed in this respect.

Book VII, #11 (when asked who he would take into battle): The Master said, “I would not take with me anyone who would try to fight a tiger with his bare hands or to walk across the River and die in the process without regrets. If I took anyone it would have to be a man who, when faced with a task, was fearful of failure and who, while fond of making plans, was capable of successful execution.

Book IX, #31:

The flowers of the cherry tree,
How they wave about!
It’s not that I do not think of you,
But your home is so far away.

The Master commented, “He did not really think of her. If he did, there is no such thing as being far away.”

I like these three in particular because they comment on, respectively, what we cannot control in our fellow human beings and how we should identify a good person; what courage really looks like; and what love should do to memory.

In contrast, some other sayings have a smallness that makes them akin to a bumper sticker or a reminder note on a kitchen fridge. “While your parents are alive, you should not go too far afield in your travels. If you do, your whereabouts should always be known” might translate onto a bumper sticker as “Honor your parents” or a post-it as “Going to Tucson. Remember to tell ma and pa.” Still, their very smallness gives these teachings a practicality that can be applied to everyday life.

As might be expected, many of these aphorisms use the cultural context of the time to make a larger point, such as this one: “Tzu-kung wanted to do away with the sacrificial sheep at the announcement of the new moon. The Master said, ‘Ssu, you are loath to part with the price of the sheep, but I am loath to see the disappearance of the rite.’” Because of this context, the text leans more heavily on footnotes than any Great Ideas book thus far. Many of these footnotes explain hierarchies or history. Several are necessary, but some could have been eliminated with a less literal translation.

It seems not unrelated that the specific term “benevolence” is much on the mind of Confucius in this selection of his teachings. The word appears repeatedly throughout the text, when compassionate, considerate, generous, or helpful would have made welcome alternates. It made me wonder about the translation, which seems stiff to my ear. Either it’s literal, trying to preserve a certain stiffness in the original text, or it’s a quirk of the translator–or “benevolence” has a very specific cultural meaning.*

Book X changes the narrative approach, in that suddenly “The Master” has become “Confucius” and the reader is given specific observations of Confucius’ behavior: “In the local community, Confucius was submissive and seemed to be inarticulate. In the ancestral temple and at court, though fluent, he did not speak lightly,” or “In the presence of his lord, his bearing, though respectful, was composed.” After nine books of teachings–I imagined Confucius sitting cross-legged on a mat–this change in tactics has the effect of making Confucius into an action hero. Suddenly, he is living the life described in the prior books. We see him in motion, which almost always makes the two-dimensional three-dimensional.

This is in its quiet way as startling an effect as if the words on the wrappers of our store-bought candies had become literal–suddenly in and of the world.

* I’d be willing to bet on the literalness of the translation, as this aphorism with footnote seems to indicate (although it most directly reflects on the translator’s desire to be accurate):

The Master said, “Wealth and high station are what men desire but unless I got them in the right way I would not remain in them. Poverty and low station are what men dislike, but even if I did not get them in the right way, I would not try to escape from them.”*

* This sentence is most likely to be corrupt. The negative is probably an interpolation and the sentence should read “Poverty and low station are what men dislike, but if I got them in the right way I would not try to escape from them.”

Conclusion
The Master says, “The wo/man who cannot stand still long enough to receive my words will likely trip and fall when performing even simple tasks.”

Question for Readers
What is your favorite pithy saying?

Next up, Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War…