Understanding Confucius Teachings with Eckhart Tolle

Are you able to give your fullest attention to the doing, or are you so consumed by the desired outcome that you create continuous stress in the doing of it? And here we come to a new word that we need to. It is a shameful matter to be poor and humble when the way prevails in the state. Equally, it is a shameful matter to be rich and noble when the way falls into disuse in the state. Here Confucius uses the term the way, which in Chinese, of course, is the dao. The Tao. Now, the Tao doesn't. Confucius doesn't mention it very often. The dao, of course, is the that which cannot be named or explained. And yet I'm attempting to do it right now. The dao is that that which. The organizing intelligence, the intelligence that underlies all physical or other phenomena that underlie the entire world. Something that is transcendent to the appearances, that is beyond appearances, but is that which always brings things back into balance and harmony. It's an underlying vast intelligence, the dao, which emanates, as I say, I said it emanates from God and God is the ultimate source of everything. So the Tao emanates. The Tao underlies everything, the entire. It's the intelligence behind phenomena. It exists in many. In many. It's called different things in different traditions. One could say you could. In Christianity, it could be the Holy Spirit. That is. There you have it. In Egypt, in ancient Egypt, they have a beautiful personification, a visual, pictorial personification of that very thing, the underlying principle behind things. And that's. It's a good. The God is called Maat. M a A t. Maat in ancient Egypt. And I've shown you here, I think it might still be on my iPad, the pictorial representation of it. Oops. Oh, Technology is very difficult. Oh, yeah. This is a. This is ma. The wings. Vast wings that enfold the entire world. This is what protects the entire world from destruction and collapsing. So this is the organizing intelligence, the. The intelligence limits. It's. When you call it intelligence, you can say it's the love behind it all that holds it together. That's the. That's ma. The wings represent that power. That's the dao. And now he is talking about a country or state. It is a shameful matter to be poor and humble. When the whale prevails in the state, the whale is the dao. When a state, humans are, relatively speaking, in alignment with the underlying harmony of it all, then things go well. And then he says it's to be poor and Humble. When there's connected. When you are in an environment where the Dao is recognized and humans live in accordance as much as possible in accordance with that underlying harmony, then why be poor? Then you should thrive. But it is a shameful matter if you are rich and noble when the way falls into disuse in the state, in other words, when there is corruption and all kinds of destructiveness in the state you to live in, if you are, then if you are rich and if you are rich and noble in a state that is corrupt, that is shameful. So if you get very successful in a corrupt environment, that must mean you are corrupt too. If you. But you should be successful in a state where there is. That is more aligned with the dull, then there's no reason to be poor. Again, there's nothing wrong with being poor. But you basically saying if you're. Well, if you're wealthy and powerful in a corrupt country, then that's shameful. If you still remain poor in a country where the collective is aligned, which is very rare, the collective is aligned with the underlying dao, then you might as well do well. If you're not, I wouldn't totally agree with him. It's shameful not to do well, because it may be your choice not to participate too much in the country and just live in your little hut with rice and water. That's fine too. So very often spiritual teachings seem to stress different points according to who this. Who is speaking to at any particular time. So who was asking him this question and who is he speaking to? So you often. You need to take that into account when sometimes certain teachings may seem to be contradictory. Who, who is the teacher speaking to at that point? We don't know that because all the disciples was. They wrote down what he. And again, the teachings of Confucius are very much to do with using your life here as the spiritual practice. He's not very much in favor of totally withdrawing from society and living just being in meditation and becoming a hermit, you learn more. Interacting with other humans is the most important element of your spiritual practice. And basically the teaching is to use your interaction in society with other humans, with your next of kin and etc. Everybody as spiritual practice. That's. And beyond that, he does not talk about metaphysical things. He does not talk about, as I said, doesn't talk about God. And here when somebody asked him, Zhilu asked how the spirits of the dead and the gods should be served. The master said, you are not. You are not able even to serve man. How can you Serve the spirits. And then somebody asks him, may I ask about death? And the master says, you do not understand even life. How can you understand death? So he doesn't get into how to serve the spirits or the gods. Serve man. You learn by, through your interaction with other humans, not some other worldly thing. And think there that if you practice sacrifices to the gods, your superior human being, and nothing changes in your interaction with your fellow human beings. So what? The criterion for inner change is your interaction with other human beings. That's the ground for practice. That's Confucius. Not, it's not otherworldly at all. It's using this world in order to become more conscious, a fully developed human being. Oh, here again, this looks a bit complicated, but significant. Somebody asks him about benevolence. Again, what is benevolence? The master said, love your fellow men. And what about wisdom? What is wisdom? Master said, know your fellow men, love your fellow man. That's benevolence. Know your fellow man is wisdom. I wouldn't use wisdom. It's practical intelligence. Again, so you love the other, the human, because if you recognize that, that in them, that it is beyond the merely human, the being beyond the human, as I put it, because you recognize the being beyond the human that you are as consciousness right now. But you also, you know the other on the level of their personality. Also you can see, for example, the conditioning of their personality. You recognize, for example, that perhaps maybe this person is dishonored and dishonest and wants to treat you and, and you recognize the conditioning in the other. You see it that's, you know, you know him as a person, but you still love him as a being beyond the person. You can have the two levels. You don't become totally naive when you in the state of loving kindness to us other human beings. And then you get taken in by everybody who wants to manipulate you or use you for their own egoic purposes. Say, oh yes, yes, you're not naive and you love, you know the difference between the conditioning that operates in the other as the person and that which is beyond the person, which is maybe latent. The other doesn't know it in him or herself, but you can sense it in the other. That's the loving kind. In that sense, even if somebody wants to defraud you, you can still be in that state of benevolence towards that person. And, but you recognize, you see the conditioning of the personality, which may be quite obnoxious. Many persons, many personality are really obnoxious and toxic, but don't confuse that with the essence of that other of the other, the so called other. And here we had this looks complicated, but I'll read it. It's not really. Somebody asks him, may I ask about the exaltation of virtue, the reformation of the depraved and the recognition of misguided judgment. And that seems to be difficult question. So you're asking about three things. The recognition he's asking, first of all, the exaltation of virtue. The master said, what a splendid question. To put service before the reward you get for it. Is that not exaltation of virtue? He often phrases his teachings as questions, but he means, yes, it is. So to put. To put exalt. To put service before the reward you get for it is not exaltation of virtue. So you are virtuous as human if you put the service before the reward you get for it. Now that's an important principle that is also part of the perennial philosophy. This does not just apply to a particular service you give to another or includes that it means whatever action you perform, not place excessive emphasis on the result that you want to achieve through your action, as it's called in the Bhagavad Gita, the fruit of the action you do not. You perform an action without excessive attachment to the expected outcome. This is what he calls the reward. And that, that is a conscious action which implies that you give your fullest attention to the action itself. You give it, you do it fully, you focus your attention fully. You are not distracted by where you want to what. What you want to get or achieve through the action. Yes, of course the action has a purpose. Anything you do has a purpose. And the purpose necessarily is in the future. You want to achieve this or that through what you do. But if there's an excessive emphasis in your mind on the future thing that you want to arrive at or attain, then the action is no longer given fullest attention. In fact, that's where stress and anxiety arise. Because your mental focus is on where you want to be already or the reward you want to achieve through what you are doing. This is the one point in the future. This takes attention away from the doing. It diminishes the quality of your action. That's very important when you interact with human beings and you, let's say you're a salesperson and you want to sign the deal with other now, how if that. If you're. If you're in your mind, the you give undue importance to the result, which is to sign the deal. So that you get your commission through the sale, maybe you're a realtor, whatever, or your car salesman or whatever. Then the quality of your interaction with the human diminishes. And the other human actually can feel that unconsciously or consciously, that you are only interested in them as a means to an end. And the end is the getting the reward for redoing. And because the quality of your interaction diminishes, the quality means you're not giving your fullest attention to the other as a human being. The other is only a means towards an end. And the other can sense that he or she is only a means to you. It's only a means towards an end. And you are actually much less likely to to get the deal signed because the other does not feel fully recognized. He feels you're only interested in using him or her to arrive at the reward, the fruit of your action. But if the reward is very much secondary, yes, you know you want it, you would like to your car salesman, you would like to sell this car, it would be nice. But you give your fullest attention to the interaction as you talk to the human being. The fruit is secondary. That means that is a more conscious way of dealing with things. And it doesn't even necessarily imply other human beings. It could just be you are engaged in creating something with your hands or intellectually. Are you able to give your fullest attention to the doing? Or are you so consumed by the desired outcome that you create continuous stress in the doing of.