The Analects of Confucius

The Analects of Confucius. Confucius lived about 2500 years ago in China. His Analects or sayings, have been repeatedly translated over the last 25 centuries because they embody ideas that transcend time and apply to human behavior in all societies.The sayings of Confucius cannot be considered a religion in the strictest sense but are more of a philosophy for peaceful and harmonious living within society. The emphasis is on social interactions as opposed to the worship of God.Overall, Confucius tries to define how a good person should behave in society. Personally, I do not like to use the term "good person" because it indicates that some people are bad or evil.I personally believe that making distinctions of good and bad tend to empower righteousness and righteousness promotes judgment; the cause of conflict and war. If we are to foster peace within ourselves and peace among ourselves, we must see ourselves as one with each other and refuse to judge each other.Peace and harmony are neutral words that are essentially free of judgment. So if I were to say, "a good person does not steal", it indicates the righteousness of that person. But if I say, "a person who flows in peace and harmony does not steal", it indicates a non-judgmental state ofpeace and harmony within that person.Therefore, in this book in place of the word good, I have for the most part used the words peace and harmony; peace in truth being a function of harmony. In other words, if a person is in harmony with other people, she will tend to be at peace with herself and at peace with others.The goal of any translation is to not only, as concisely as possible, convey thoughts from one language to another but to also make the translation as readable and understandable as possible.Scholars tend to use words that are precise even though they are sometimes archaic. I am not a scholar and I did not actually translate the saying of Confucius from the original Chinese pictographs. What I did was to try to find a consensus among several translations. Therefore, what I have written is more of an interpretation than a translation.Further, I have not seen fit to interpret the most mundane sayings or the ones I considered inapplicable to contemporary society.My goal was to write a book that promotes peace and harmony in contemporary society as opposed to a literal translation of something that was written 2500 years ago. In essence, I have striven to bring the sayings of Confucius into the Third Millennium.In reading this book, it is important to keep in mind that this is my personal perspective of the sayings of Confucius and is not meant to demean in any way his sayings or to confront those who feel connected with other translations of the Analects. My only objective was and is toattempt to help manifest a higher level of peace and harmony on our planet.