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.


And while I don’t dream about ancient China, I do daydream about it. When my mind is unoccupied – walking to and from the MRT, sitting at home, free times like that – my thoughts almost always swim there.

I’m old enough now to have fallen in love with many things – Europe and America, Western religion and philosophy, Western history – and later to have lost that love after discovering the dirty or otherwise ugly history beneath the attractive surfaces. I keep wondering if my love of China is ever going to break my heart by similarly proving false. So far it hasn’t, and I’ve spent the last 2 years obsessively digging beneath its surface.

The only part of China’s history that has broken my heart so far is that Europe basically raped and killed it when Europe went capitalist. But that’s not the victim’s fault. And thankfully, that won't come up until the last few weeks of our course.

Screenshot from the film Confucius, 2010