PNTV: The Analects of Confucius (#066)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less time. Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do an episode on Confucius analects. Awesome book, one of 10 old school classics we cover. As I've mentioned in the other ones we do, out of the hundred notes, ten old school ones. Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, this one, the Dhammapada, the Stoic philosophers, Nietzsche, Emerson. These are some of my favorite books. Old school wisdom is some of my favorite stuff. Let's go ahead and jump in because this book is packed with goodness. This note has a lot of big ideas and the 10 minutes is going to go like that. We shall start with the first big idea. The not surprisingly, Confucius was asked in this book, if you had to summarize all of your teachings, what would you say? And he said, if I had to summarize it, I would say, let there be no evil in your thoughts, end quote. That's how he would summarize his entire teaching. Let there be no evil in your thoughts. That's really, really powerful. We just did the Dhammapada. The first lines of the Dhammapada, your life will be shaped by what you think. Those are the first words, something to that effect. Everyone talks about it. We now know that how we think, how we respond to a given situation with our thoughts is going to determine the bulk of our well being. It's the first principle In Optimal Living 101, the philosophy that I'm developing and program and book and all that good stuff, optimism. We've got to be able to shape the contents of our consciousness. As Confucius says, let there be no evil. And your thoughts, we can talk about that forever. We're going to move on there. He's got so much other good stuff. He goes off like we do, like we do. Often he talks about the fact that we've got to practice what we preach and don't preach something until you're practicing it. Really big idea. I mentioned in the note, Debbie Ford talks about the fact that oftentimes when we're pointing at people and we're telling them what they need to do, there are three finger. There always are three fingers pointing back at us, right? Remember that the next time you're lecturing someone. I'm remembering that right now. Am I living this stuff? And as I live it more and more and more, my confidence in sharing it grows. Anyway, when you find yourself particularly Triggered. Look and see three fingers pointing back. Attend your own lecture. Whatever it is you're telling someone they need to do more of, make sure you're doing it. Attend your own lecture. Confucius talks about the fact that seeing our own faults, seeing where we're not living up to our potential, is very, very, very, very rare. He says, in vain I have looked for a single man capable of seeing his own faults and bringing the charge home against himself. It's easy to see other people's faults. It's much, much, much more challenging to see our own faults. It doesn't mean we need to fall into shame and guilt and despair and all that stuff. And it means we need to see what's not working and step into what we need to do to get our lives in order. It's a very, very challenging thing to do, one that I trust you're embracing and going out and rocking more and more. So what else do you want to see? He's got a great idea here. He says that the Master doesn't worry about being recognized for his performance, right? And receiving certain honors or whatever.

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He doesn't worry about those external accolades. What the Master worries about is doing the things that make them worthy of those accolades. Whether or not they come, they really don't care. They're more concerned about doing the work, embracing the process of mastery, which George Leonard talks about by a book of the same title that we cover in the Notes. The Master is the one who so loves the process, they're not even thinking about the results that income from it. Russell Simmons, the author of the book do youo awesome? Hip Hop Mogul Vegan Yogi. Really cool dude. And his book is awesome. He says the same thing. He says, so many people say, don't take your eye off the prize. He says, I disagree. If you keep your eye on the prize, you're going to keep on bumping into things and stumbling. What you need to do is focus on the path, focus on the next step. That's how we hold the tension between where we want to be and where we are. The not. By visualizing this incessantly, if we had 100% of time, maybe spend 10% of your time imagining this ideal and the other 90% imagining what you're going to do today, this moment, to live in integrity with your ideal, then we hold the tension. We still have an idea of where we want to go, but our dominant focus is the next step. Our dominant focus, as Confucius says here, is to do the things that will make us worthy. The success, the accolades, the byproducts that will come from worthy and extraordinary performance. Really big idea. Really cool. One of the things from this book, I didn't count how many times Confucius used the word learn and learning, but it was a lot. He goes on and on and on about how passionate he is about learning. He says this, when you're in the presence of a good person, you have an opportunity to learn what you can do to become more like them. When you're in the presence of a person who isn't quite as good, awesome, you have an opportunity to learn. You can see how you still have some of the characteristics that you find so annoying in that person, and you can learn and embrace them and become a better person. So when you're in the presence of two people, you always have the opportunity to learn something. If it's good and bad, learn from the good, learn from the bad, and embody them in your own lives. Really cool stuff. And again, Confucius talks about learning all the time. He says, look, I may not be the wisest person, I may not be the smartest person, I may not be this or I may not be that, but you're going to have a hard time finding someone who's more passionate about learning than I am. That was the thing he prided himself most on, his passion for learning. He says this about it. He says, we should learn as if we were following someone who we didn't want to lose, we didn't want to lose track of, and they're running, and we've got to keep up with them. That's the level of passion we've got to approach our learning with. Sri Rami Krishna says. Ramakrishna says, do not seek enlightenment unless you seek enlightenment, like a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond. So imagine that your hair is on fire. How would you go after a pond? Not passively. You wouldn't go after it. Oh, maybe I'll find it one of these days, kind of soon, and moonwalk to it. You'd run to it. You'd run to the pond. He says, go the same way with your learning as you move to actualize and become a more extraordinary version of yourself and live a more authentically awesome life. You got to go at it passionately. Emerson says, we did him just a few episodes ago. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. You got to get fired up. Get fired up to learn and to expand and to open. Good stuff. He has a great section in here about taking 50 years to Master Something he says, look, you know, I figure in about 50 years I'll start to really get the hang of it. And he says, you know what, it's going to be really hard though, to find someone who's willing to go three years without a promise of reward. We've got to get everything instantaneously. If we can't lose the belly fat in two days, we give up. It's not going to work old school style. We take the time to develop ourselves diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully and develop the mastery. Really cool idea. Joseph Campbell has a great idea on that too. He says when he used to teach at a boys school, kids would come to him and say, do you think I can be a writer? And he'd tell them, well, if you're willing to work for 10 years, work really hard for 10 years without any reward, without any promise of any reward, if you're willing to do that, then you might have a shot at becoming a great writer. But if you think you're going to get results or you need to get results in six months or a year, even two years or three years, you're probably not going to make it because things don't tend to work like that. We're going to talk more in some future episodes about the whole idea of 10,000 hours. Putting in 10 hours all the people we admire, from the Beatles to Bono to Bill Gates to whoever it is that you admire, Obama. These people put in an extraordinary amount of time, Oprah, into their craft to become as good at what they're doing as they are. It's really cool on that front. Confucius says, look, just keep on moving. Even if you're going really slowly and you feel like you're backpedaling, just scoop another basket full onto the mound. As long as you're continuing to move forward, one step forward, one step forward, no matter how small. You're making progress, but when you stop, you stop. You want to keep on moving. Finally, he says two more final ways. One, he says, the three great armies can lose their commanding officers, but even the common man cannot afford to lose his purpose. We got to live with purpose. We talk about that all the time. And finally he says, the way of the master has one common thread. Always do your best. That will change moment to moment to moment, as we learn from the four agreements. But always do your best. So that wraps up a quick look at Confucius. Hope you dug it. Here's to doing our best, learning and rocking it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day.

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