John Lennon "Imagined" Ancient China

I assigned a couple dozen passages from the Analects to my students, inviting them to choose nine of them to respond to "in whatever creative way you choose." I’ve enjoyed reading those responses, overall. So many interesting connections: Confucius and Freud, Confucius and Obama, Confucius and Rabinadrath Tagore, on and on.

Maybe it’s them – and student Kelsey particularly, because she mentioned liking the Beatles in her Analects webcam discussion – that led me to my own new connection today. It’s this: John Lennon’s classic song, “Imagine,” pretty much describes ancient Confucian and Taoist wisdom:

Verse 1: 

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today 

This is ancient Chinese through and through: nature is nothing to fear, and neither is death. But since death seems like it might be final (in a natural, “that’s the way the Yang Yins” sort of way), today certainly is something to cherish. The ancestors wish they were still here, after all – that’s why we offer them the earthly things we love – food, flowers, incense, family love and respect. To me it’s obvious: in China, earth is heaven. And it doesn’t last forever, which only adds beauty in a bittersweet way.

Verse 2:

All Carrots, No Sticks -- But Still Read and Treasured

The Analects and Zhuangzi are, like the Jewish and Christian Bibles and their cousin, Islam’s Qur’an, ancient religious texts still read today. But something important separates the Chinese texts from their monotheistic counterparts: there is no threat of angering a god and burning forever in Hell if you don’t read the Chinese texts. Fear plays no part in winning readers for them. The Chinese texts seem to have lived so long because they’re worth reading in themselves, with no strings attached. They’re all carrot and no stick.

That says something worth thinking about.

Dreams of Master Kong

 

It’s time for me to start writing my own creative responses to China. It’s been my life-love, after all, for several years now (see my "Love Letter to China" for proof). It's like my favorite band or TV show, with this difference: it's got 3,000 years of "episodes" in art, music, literature, philosophy, and -- compared to every other major civilization in the world (in my view, India comes in a close second place, and Islamic and Western civilizations bring up the rear) -- all of these "episodes" are refreshingly sane and civilized. I'll die before finishing reading and otherwise exploring this vast and deep sea. That's sad and wonderful at the same time. I'll never be bored or wishing I had something interesting to do.

"At Fifty, I Knew the Mandate of Heaven"

I feel like a love-sick teenager in my attraction to China’s history -- and  Confucianism is a large part of that attraction.

I totally get Confucius saying “I’m getting old. It’s been so long since I dreamed of the Duke of Zhou.” Like me, he saw the beauty too, and literally fell in love with it so deeply that it invaded his dreams. Leaders who know they're out of a job (and possibly a life) if they don't take care of all the people, and not just the powerful; people who know that harmony in the family -- two-way harmony -- is the First Duty in life; politics that say trust and food are more important than armies; values that say wisdom and education mean more than studying how to make more money than the next greedy schmuck up the ladder from you; taste that says manners and music and people should be naturally beautiful and refined (I love that ritual has nothing to do with religion or heavens, and everything to do with honoring this heaven called Earth, and "doing unto others" on a daily -- not just a Sunday morning -- basis); "success" defined as being hired to help others with your talents, and not to help yourself to more self-indulgent toys than the next soulless sap; religion that says "We don't pretend to know what can't be known, so we choose to focus on how to live well while here on earth." On and on. I get why he dreamed about it. He saw how beautiful life could be if things still worked that way in his time. I see the same thing now, as I look at the youths in my age obsessed with digital heroism, gangster poetry about "bitches and whores," and the worship, if we're honest, of money for its own sake.

Things could be much more beautiful.