Pan...

Pan...

Psygast.

Part two, the Analects.

So in last week's installment, we unpacked the life of Master Kung, and we spoke very briefly about the analects.

We mentioned it a couple of times.

So in this installment, we're going to really unpack some of the metaphysics and key beliefs of the Analects.

Before we do that, what is the analects?

Ollie, if you're going to explain to the Jack or Jill on the hill, what would you say?

Well, they would say, what are the analects? And I would reply, well, the Chinese word is Le Niu, which means selected sayings. So it is a collection of sayings from Master Kungfuzzi,

or Confucius, as we all know him as.

To quote the translation that I read, which was by a lovely academic called Anping Chin,

she says that the analects is, quote, simply the most important book in the history of China.

So I'd probably start with that, and that would give me a real wow factor before I give all the boring details. Yeah, I'm glad that wasn't in the nursery rhyme. With the translation of the book as well, I've seen it more co-ocally translated as conversations. Yeah. It could just be discourses. Yeah. And so I think that's the perfect. Just picture when you're, if you were to read it, just a group of people sat around having a discussion or them coming to Confucius saying, what do you think about this, Master Kung? And he would give them his views and then they'd go off to reflect about it. And now you're thinking, oh, great, I'm going to pick up a copy of the Analects and I'm going to read it. Well, it's not the easiest text to read in the world because it contains references to at least 30 of his individual disciples, as well as at least 40 historical figures, which means it can be quite tricky to get your head around in terms of there's lots of names of people.

And obviously, if you're not an expert already in Confucianism or the history of China, you might be a little bit lost onto who these people are. It's also quite cryptic and written not in a very logical manner. It's not chronological. It's a collection of aphorisms and sayings. So it's not a narrative, like the Bible, for example. But again, I still personally, when I was reading it, I don't know how you guys felt about it, but I actually found it quite compelling to read.

Actually, I actually enjoyed a lot of the sayings and felt that actually viewing it kind of like the Dow Dijing in terms of reading a saying and then thinking about it for any time between a day or an hour or a few minutes.

I quite enjoyed that approach to it.

Also worth saying as well that it's not

just the analects themselves that are important, the sayings of supposedly Confucius, but there is

a rich tradition of Chinese scholars commenting on the analects, interpreting it, and trying to figure

out what Confucius is saying, and that this tradition goes all the the way back pretty much to the origin of the book in about 400 BC.

It's interesting with Jackie said you weren't thrilled with the way it's written.

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