People of principle (#81; Topic A)

People in China, over the millennia, follow teachings of Kong Qiu (or reverentially, Kong Fu-zi; in the west, he is better known as Confucius, a Latinized transliteration by Jesuits when his teachings were excerpted and published as Confucius sinarum Philosophus in 1687). Confucius's teachings, despite attempts by western missionaries to obfuscate by referring to them as Confucianism -- so as to bringing his teachings down to the level of religion -- is not a religion. In Confucius's time (551-479 BCE), China had no religion -- religion, either as a concept or as a word, did not exist in China until the invasion of Buddhism in the 1st century CE and of Christianity in the 17th CE (a renegade version of the latter, to escape prosecution in its homeland, found safe harbor in China in the 7th century CE). Being an old man out of China, I follow Confucius's teachings. I hasten to add that I envy people who are members of faith, any faith -- envy, because, I apparently lack genes conducive to accepting the supernatural without question. This does not mean, however, that, ipso facto, I admire them -- I admire them when, in addition to proclaiming being members of faith, they conduct themselves according to teachings of that faith -- just I expect to be judged by whether I have conducted myself according to Confucius's teachings. Thus, I find the following, from yesterday's Washington Post, revolting: "Two centuries after profiting from the venture, the Church of England [in a meeting on 2/8/06] has apologized for its role in the global slave trade, which included running a Caribbean island sugar plantation and branding the blacks [with the word society on their chests]." So much for Christianity in action.
Posted at 11:14 am, Sunday, February 12, 2006