“Know
thyself,” said the temple at Delphi.
Only you can peer into your heart and know what you truly love, but
others can see your actions and see your commitments. These are related. Love empowers commitment; commitment sustains
love.
What
are the loves and commitments of Confucianism, the Ru Jia? To become a noble person I believe one starts
by loving humanity. The love of humanity
leads to a love of virtue. The love of
virtue leads to a love of culture. The
love of culture leads to a love of learning.
And the love of learning leads to a love of order.
I
believe the first commitment of a noble person is to family. The commitment to family enables a commitment
to self-cultivation. The commitment to
self-cultivation enables a commitment to community. A commitment to community enables commitment
to a state. And a true commitment to a
state should enable commitment to world peace, because no state is truly secure
unless all states live in harmony.
A
love for humanity empowers a family. A
love of virtue empowers self-cultivation.
A love of culture empowers community.
A love of learning empowers a state.
And a love of order empowers world peace.
World peace sustains
order. A successful state sustains
learning. Successful communities sustain
culture. Successful self-cultivation
sustains virtue. And successful families
sustain humanity.
These are the five loves and five commitments of
Confucianism.
This is my contribution to the growth of the Confucian tradition.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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