Speaker 1: Pushkin. The COVID nineteen pandemic has taught many of us
Speaker 1: a lot about what we need to do to live
Speaker 1: a happier life. And the biggest thing that many of
Speaker 1: us have missed is all the social stuff, those little
Speaker 1: family friendship and relationship traditions, going bowling on your boyfriend's birthday,
Speaker 1: or that monthly sit down dinner at Grandma's or Friday
Speaker 1: night drinks with your work buddies. Many of us have
Speaker 1: also missed all those public events that were obliged to attend.
Speaker 1: They've all been changed or canceled. I've seen this firsthand
Speaker 1: as a professor and head of college here at Yale.
Speaker 1: Those time honored Ivy League commencement rituals that have been
Speaker 1: practiced for hundreds of years, they all got axed last year.
Speaker 1: If you had asked me before the pandemic, I might
Speaker 1: not have thought of that as such a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, graduation rituals can be a bit dorky. But
Speaker 1: what have many of us realized over the last year.
Speaker 1: It turns out we really miss this stuff. Now. I
Speaker 1: am not a pomp and circumstance kind of person, but
Speaker 1: these rituals have a way of making you feel more connected,
Speaker 1: like you're a real part of family or community, like
Speaker 1: you're a bitless out of step with life. But another
Speaker 1: reason I started to appreciate all these formal rituals was
Speaker 1: because of a class I stumbled on during COVID. Can
Speaker 1: you sing that song? I cannot sing it as well
Speaker 1: as you can, but always shall we sing it together?
Speaker 1: Chan Joe Chin had San Jo Chin had swayn so
Speaker 1: sweet song. It's a free online class from my Almam
Speaker 1: Watt to Harvard called China X, taught by the amazing
Speaker 1: Peter Bull, the Charles H. Carlswell, Professor of East Asian
Speaker 1: Languages and Civilizations. Let China sleep, the mighty Napoleon is
Speaker 1: supposed to have said in a cautious moment at the
Speaker 1: turn into the nineteenth century. But when China awakens, she
Speaker 1: shake the world. As I listened to Peter's China X lectures,
Speaker 1: it became clear that my present day situation was also
Speaker 1: the preoccupation of a great Chinese thinker, one who lived
Speaker 1: more than two thousand years ago, Confucius. And so welcome
Speaker 1: again to happiness lessons of the ancients with me, Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos, I can't recommend Peter Bull's China X class enough.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge Peter Bull fan girl. I was totally
Speaker 1: blown away when he told me he'd taken the time
Speaker 1: to go back through the teachings of Confucius to see
Speaker 1: what the great philosopher had to say about my field
Speaker 1: of study, happiness. It's hard to overstate how important Confucius
Speaker 1: is in China, but his ideas are less well known elsewhere.
Speaker 1: So I asked Peter to start us off with Confucius
Speaker 1: one oh one. So let's place him in time, which
Speaker 1: is around five which is also around five hundred years
Speaker 1: after the founding of the Joe dynasty. In Chinese history
Speaker 1: is organized by dynasties. When there's a particular ruling house
Speaker 1: on the throne, and at a moment when all of
Speaker 1: the smaller states that the dynasty supposedly is in charge
Speaker 1: of are beginning to fight with each other and make
Speaker 1: claims on each other, and the nominal king, Joe King,
Speaker 1: has lost power and so the local lords are after it.
Speaker 1: And of course, once the lord of your state is
Speaker 1: after power, these are the other states. Then his underlings
Speaker 1: are seeking power from each other, and it just goes
Speaker 1: all the way down that's the world Confucius. We know
Speaker 1: of no thinker, no one who's thinking about values, who's
Speaker 1: thinking about the human condition in the same way before Confucius.
Speaker 1: He's the first. And yet he is not somebody who's
Speaker 1: born to power. He is from the lowest levels of
Speaker 1: the nobility. And he talks about this as well, you know,
Speaker 1: I could be a chariot drive, I could be a
Speaker 1: steward for a noble family, I could go into the army.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't do any of those things. He becomes
Speaker 1: a teacher. That's extraordinary because it's not as if there
Speaker 1: were people out there who were being teachers, who were
Speaker 1: engaging in this thing that he called a shred Chinese
Speaker 1: that we translated into learning. Somebody who made his life
Speaker 1: through learning. He says at one point, at fifteen, I
Speaker 1: set my heart on learning. And of course, if you're
Speaker 1: going to spend your life learning, you're going to have students, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's not only a life of learning, it's
Speaker 1: a life of teaching. And that immediately raises a problem
Speaker 1: because this students say to him, Master, you know, don't
Speaker 1: you want to go out serve and become an important person?
Speaker 1: And so to give him in an analogy, they say,
Speaker 1: suppose you had a jewel in a box at home,
Speaker 1: would you take it to the market and sell it?
Speaker 1: And Confucius said, but of course I would, but only
Speaker 1: for the right price. I'm willing to myself to the
Speaker 1: right ruler, but they have to pay my price, not
Speaker 1: me their price. He has things to teach and he
Speaker 1: has a vision of the past, because if the world
Speaker 1: is in bad shape, now where do we turn to
Speaker 1: find proper models? And his answer, We're going to turn
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the Joy dynasty five years before,
Speaker 1: and we're going to see at that point, under those
Speaker 1: founding kings, the world worked right. And that's what he's
Speaker 1: loyal to. He's not loyal so much to the states.
Speaker 1: He goes from state to state. He's loyal to the
Speaker 1: idea of a Joe dynasty, and he has an interpretation
Speaker 1: of what made that dynasty successful, what made it a
Speaker 1: moral world at the beginning. And so what's amazing is
Speaker 1: he's had such an influence over at Chinese history in
Speaker 1: China today. But like, we don't actually have a lot
Speaker 1: from Confucius himself in terms of writing. It's just this
Speaker 1: one book, right, nothing we have quotations of him that
Speaker 1: must come from other people who are quoting him, and
Speaker 1: who sometimes put some of their own quotations in as well.
Speaker 1: But we don't have any writing by him. We have
Speaker 1: Confusus of the Analects. This one book we have, which
Speaker 1: is a series of quotations from Confucius, and often very enigmatic.
Speaker 1: Confusus says one of that when he's talking about the
Speaker 1: kind of student he wants, because you know, I want
Speaker 1: people are really committed, who really put their energy into it,
Speaker 1: he said, And when I lift up one corner, they
Speaker 1: have to come back with the other three, otherwise I
Speaker 1: don't go on teaching them. The great difference between the
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers who are so wordy, who keep writing stuff right,
Speaker 1: so low quacious, and there's Confusus giving us these enigmatic
Speaker 1: sentences like I lift up one corner, you come back
Speaker 1: with the other three. That's what learning is all about.
Speaker 1: What is this? What is this right? What he does
Speaker 1: gives us, in some sense sayings that we have to
Speaker 1: figure out. We have to think the problem is we
Speaker 1: have Confusus of the Analects, but we have many confususes.
Speaker 1: Because later on Confusus being somebody who turns to antiquity,
Speaker 1: who looks to the text of antiquity, who apparently knows
Speaker 1: about some text of niquity, gets credited with being the
Speaker 1: editor of what are called today the Confusian Classics, which
Speaker 1: are to a large extent about state building. So you
Speaker 1: have many different kinds of Confusus. And so every period
Speaker 1: in Chinese history where we see a major shift in
Speaker 1: intellectual values involves a new interpretation of classics, and there's
Speaker 1: yet another one taking place in the present. Right, So,
Speaker 1: think of Confusus as both a moral philosopher, a sage,
Speaker 1: a model of ethical state building, and so on, can
Speaker 1: be all those things, but in the end he begins
Speaker 1: as a teacher. In some ways, it's kind of ironic
Speaker 1: to be including Confucius in the series that we have
Speaker 1: on Wisdom of the Ancients, because I feel like if
Speaker 1: anyone was going to be really supportive of talking about
Speaker 1: the wisdom of the Ancients, it probably would have been Confucius, Right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, we think of Confucius himself as being ancient,
Speaker 1: but you know, if he had a podcast, he'd probably
Speaker 1: have a whole series of episodes on the Wisdom of
Speaker 1: the Ancients, right, indeed, and yet in some ways the
Speaker 1: ancients don't speak. He sees the ancients through their actions,
Speaker 1: through the records of their past, perhaps through some of
Speaker 1: the poems of the Book of Poems that he knows.
Speaker 1: And yet he says of himself, he says, I transmit.
Speaker 1: I do not innovate. Now we look at that and say,
Speaker 1: you know, when you transmit your selectives, so you're innovating
Speaker 1: by selecting. But he wants to make that claim that
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't I transmit, I transmit the past.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on and said, I like antiquity,
Speaker 1: and I'm clever at seeking it, or I'm diligent and seeking.
Speaker 1: And so Confucius talked about so many things as learning
Speaker 1: in your China Xe class, but one of the things
Speaker 1: he didn't talk too much about, interestingly was happiness per
Speaker 1: se Right in Confucius's time, when you think about sort
Speaker 1: of the Confucian Chinese, like, what would be the concept
Speaker 1: of happiness, what would be the terms they you used
Speaker 1: to talk about it. There's some passing references to happiness, right,
Speaker 1: or joy or taking pleasure in something, but it's not
Speaker 1: a big and central concept. It seems to me that
Speaker 1: there are two other related concepts which are going to
Speaker 1: help us get at that or get it something that
Speaker 1: you've been concerned within your work and in these podcasts.
Speaker 1: And the first is the idea of ritual and living
Speaker 1: a life within the context of ritual. And the second
Speaker 1: is the notion of the Chinese word is run and
Speaker 1: it's been translated as benevolence, goodness, humaneness, or we'll stick
Speaker 1: with humaneness. And it seems to me that that combination
Speaker 1: of the idea of ritual and then after discussing that
Speaker 1: the idea of humaneness gets us to something that I
Speaker 1: think you're going to say, but that's happiness. But it's
Speaker 1: not as if this is the term that's chosen by
Speaker 1: Confusus to hammer away at. The reason why I want
Speaker 1: to begin with ritual is because, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: something that we today don't value very much. Right. We
Speaker 1: tend to say, well it being authentic is important, speaking
Speaker 1: your mind is important, Ritual behaviors is ritualistic. It's just false.
Speaker 1: It's not authentic. And what Confucius does when he looks
Speaker 1: to antiquity, he says, well, what made them successful? He
Speaker 1: says the answer is ritual, and we look at that
Speaker 1: and saying, well, how could that be? But if you
Speaker 1: start to think about ritual, it's many levels of meaning.
Speaker 1: Let's begin with a ceremony, and ceremonies accomplished things right.
Speaker 1: A wedding ceremony does something, a graduation ceremony does something
Speaker 1: right if they uplish these things. Just like language accomplishes things.
Speaker 1: Ceremonies do things, but ceremonies bring people together in ways
Speaker 1: that bind them together around common activity. So ritual is doing,
Speaker 1: not thinking, not speaking. Ritual is doing. If we extend
Speaker 1: that to everyday experience, we're teachers, we have students. There
Speaker 1: are ways in which teachers are expected to act, and
Speaker 1: there are ways in which students are expected to act,
Speaker 1: and we expected of each other. Well, the same confusus
Speaker 1: says the same thing. You know, how a ruler acts
Speaker 1: towards his officials, and how officials actors rulers let them
Speaker 1: act as they're supposed to act. Let the parent act
Speaker 1: as a parent should act, that child as a child,
Speaker 1: and so on. So everything from this perspective can be
Speaker 1: seen within the contents of ritual that they're ways of
Speaker 1: right behavior, and these are very effective. One of the
Speaker 1: challenges these days of teaching about ritual is that everyone
Speaker 1: thinks rituals are kind of hockey. It's hard to see
Speaker 1: the power in what they can help us achieve. But
Speaker 1: you actually use use a technique with your students, a
Speaker 1: demo where you sort of show them the power virtual right, right,
Speaker 1: So any of you can do this, and it's called
Speaker 1: Confucian magic. And this magic is so strong that you
Speaker 1: will not notice it, and yet it will take place.
Speaker 1: So imagine the class, all these people in the class,
Speaker 1: and ask one person go over to one person one
Speaker 1: side of the room and whisper to them. Go over
Speaker 1: and to the other person, right, who's gonna walk up
Speaker 1: to the stage and put your hand out and shake
Speaker 1: their hands. That's all you have to do, right, So
Speaker 1: they do that, and of course the other person, who
Speaker 1: doesn't know what's going to happen. This is why it's magic,
Speaker 1: the other person says, oh hello, They shake hands and
Speaker 1: be saying you see, look at that, and everyone in
Speaker 1: the class goes, huh, what was that? You promised us
Speaker 1: something great? We promised you something great. And it's the
Speaker 1: greatest of all things, the ability through your own behavior
Speaker 1: to bring out the behavior of others. And you can
Speaker 1: do this. Of course, the next step is to say
Speaker 1: you could do this for evil, and you could do
Speaker 1: this for good. That's our choice, and to bring out
Speaker 1: good behavior and others that's virtue. And virtue is the
Speaker 1: ability to perform Confucian magic. And you know, a psychologists
Speaker 1: talk about this confusion magic because it's easy to miss it, right,
Speaker 1: It's easy to miss how powerful ritual is in making
Speaker 1: us feel connected and kind of giving us a routine, right,
Speaker 1: which just reduces the choice that we face. Right, But
Speaker 1: even the small things we do, from you know, saying
Speaker 1: God bless you and someone sneezes to you know, shaking
Speaker 1: hands back when people put their hand out, like, these
Speaker 1: things are affecting our social connection. They're affecting our sense
Speaker 1: of community, They're affecting our sense of order, all of
Speaker 1: which are so important for our happiness. They are they are,
Speaker 1: that's ritual. That's the greatness of ritual. One of the
Speaker 1: amazing things when I heard about the importance of ritual
Speaker 1: for Confucius is to realize is that this is like
Speaker 1: the big topic and modern science for improving happiness, that
Speaker 1: if you really want to boost your well being and
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, you actually need to pay attention
Speaker 1: to ritual. You know, it is the thing that we
Speaker 1: kind of think like, oh, this is clunky, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to wear this coat to dinner. I
Speaker 1: don't want to put my fork here. This seems stupid.
Speaker 1: But psychologically, it turns out ritual is doing so much
Speaker 1: for us. This actually comes from your colleagues Harvard and
Speaker 1: Mike Norton and Francesca Gino. They've found that using rituals
Speaker 1: can cause people to feel less grief after a sort
Speaker 1: of traumatic event. It can make families feel closer, that
Speaker 1: can make partners feel more commitment to one another. It
Speaker 1: can make teams perform better. And what I thought was
Speaker 1: particularly interesting is there's all kinds of work showing that
Speaker 1: ritual can give you back a sense of control when
Speaker 1: things feel out of control in your life. Ritual can
Speaker 1: make things feel like they're back and ordered and kind
Speaker 1: of going well. And I thought this was particularly important
Speaker 1: for Confucius, right because he's saying rituals are super important
Speaker 1: at a time in Chinese history when everything must have
Speaker 1: felt out of control, right exactly, And yet and here
Speaker 1: we get to the problem. I think ritual is really
Speaker 1: key to so much of life, and we don't see
Speaker 1: it until we look, and then we start to recognize
Speaker 1: that it's actually part of us. And of course Confusius
Speaker 1: keep saying, you have to accept this, you need to
Speaker 1: really think about it, you need you need to enacts.
Speaker 1: But then he says, and this is a line I
Speaker 1: bet you've heard of. He says, you know this family,
Speaker 1: this noble family in my state, they have eight rows
Speaker 1: of dancers in their courtyard. And then he says, if
Speaker 1: this can be born, if this can be accepted, what
Speaker 1: can't be accepted? You read that and you say, what's
Speaker 1: he talking about? Until you realize that having eight rows
Speaker 1: of dancers was a privilege reserved for the king. And
Speaker 1: so what this noble lord was doing was claiming a prerogative,
Speaker 1: a ritual prerogative of the king and enacting it himself.
Speaker 1: And so he was using it out of total self
Speaker 1: interest to advance himself. And that, of course is the
Speaker 1: problem of ritual. Very often we do things in order
Speaker 1: to be self aggratising. We do things that look proper
Speaker 1: that are really about serving ourselves. And what do you do? Then?
Speaker 1: I think another thing that Confucius realize is that you
Speaker 1: can use ritual to maintain order in a society in
Speaker 1: this really important way, right, And that's an alternative to
Speaker 1: a different way we think about maintaining law and order,
Speaker 1: which is through punishment. Right. So Confusus takes this up directly.
Speaker 1: He said, well, can you govern through punishment, Yes, but
Speaker 1: you'll have to keep controlling people. If you govern through ritual,
Speaker 1: people will have a sense of shame and they'll control themselves.
Speaker 1: They will govern themselves. And that's the ideal government, because ritual,
Speaker 1: after all, is about how I act and how you act,
Speaker 1: and how we act together. And it follows then for
Speaker 1: Confusus that one who is and this is the place,
Speaker 1: one of the places where he uses the word cultivate themselfs.
Speaker 1: You cultivate yourself, You learn in order to cultivate yourself.
Speaker 1: And is that all, person? Oh no, he says. And
Speaker 1: also to bring peace and security to others? Is that all?
Speaker 1: And he says no, no, taking a step further for everybody.
Speaker 1: So if Confucius ledge in the world where people sort
Speaker 1: of know that the right thing to do is to
Speaker 1: act according to the rituals and the rules, then how
Speaker 1: do you get people to do it for the right reasons?
Speaker 1: So The benefits of ritualized behavior are clear. They help
Speaker 1: us bond, they save us from making endless, tiring choices,
Speaker 1: and they can help us process both positive and negative emotions.
Speaker 1: But as Confucius realized thousands of years ago, the motivation
Speaker 1: behind our rituals needs to be right. Using rituals solely
Speaker 1: to impress other people, or worse, to oppress them, can
Speaker 1: remove many of the benefits. So after the break, I'll
Speaker 1: have or explain what Confucius said about the right way
Speaker 1: to use ritual. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 1: As you heard in the first half of the show,
Speaker 1: Confucius is a teacher who makes his students work. If
Speaker 1: he lifts up one corner, you as the learner, have
Speaker 1: to pick up the other three. So we're going to
Speaker 1: have to work a bit to understand Confucius's nuanced insights
Speaker 1: into the importance of ritual as a way to enrich
Speaker 1: our lives. Confucius said that ritual is good for us.
Speaker 1: It can bring us peace and joy, but only in
Speaker 1: certain circumstances. So what are those circumstances? Well, even to
Speaker 1: his disciples, Confucius never gave a complete answer. He says,
Speaker 1: to one of his students. He says, do you think
Speaker 1: I know a lot? Is that it? You think I'm
Speaker 1: just I study a lot, know a lot? And yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't that it? And he says no, He says, my
Speaker 1: way has one thread running through it. And so we're
Speaker 1: sort of left with the conundrum, which is, if there's
Speaker 1: one thread that runs through all this, what is it?
Speaker 1: Is it ritual? But ritual has problems, and so maybe
Speaker 1: it's not just ritual. Maybe there's something more. And that's
Speaker 1: where we get Confusius is great discovery. And so his
Speaker 1: great discovery was this idea of ren? So what is
Speaker 1: this concept of wren? So Confusus gets asked that a
Speaker 1: lot by his disciples This morning. I went through the Analects,
Speaker 1: and it looks at all the places where a disciples
Speaker 1: says Confusus, hey is so and so run and Confusius
Speaker 1: as well. He'd be good at managing military levies, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can call him run. He'd
Speaker 1: be good as the steward of a town, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can call him run. He could
Speaker 1: be a good at conversion with guests at court, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could call him run. And
Speaker 1: somebody says, well, how about saving the world, give to
Speaker 1: the common people, help everybody, and confused says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: even sages have couple with that, but that's not red.
Speaker 1: So that gets us this problem for its n He says,
Speaker 1: the wise take joy, happiness, joy in water, the ren
Speaker 1: take joy and mountains. The wise are active, the ren
Speaker 1: are tranquil. The wise enjoy the rent endure. So wisdom
Speaker 1: versus red, water versus mountains, activity versus tranquility, enjoyment versus endurance.
Speaker 1: That's one way of getting it red. Then he says,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want ren is right here, right here,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is want it right. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? The ren find peace in being red.
Speaker 1: That person will be free of evil. The person who
Speaker 1: is ren can deal with poverty, adversity and never be upset.
Speaker 1: The person who is ren has no anxiety. So I've
Speaker 1: puzzled over this a long time. He kept thinking, well,
Speaker 1: it's something. Clearly, it's very very important. And there are
Speaker 1: lots of passages in the Analects. If you think about
Speaker 1: passage in the Analects to talk about things, there's lots
Speaker 1: of passages on learning, on ritual on ren, and yet
Speaker 1: he can't really define it positively. What's the direct translation
Speaker 1: of it? Is it? Does it have a direct translation? No? No,
Speaker 1: there if we look at ancient graphs before the modern
Speaker 1: Trandese writing. The most ancient graphs, the word comes with
Speaker 1: the character for person and then the character for two,
Speaker 1: the number two together. There's another one which seems to
Speaker 1: be showing the heart, showing on a body or something.
Speaker 1: That's why there's so many translations for it. Can I
Speaker 1: give you my favorite passage? Yes? Please? This is called
Speaker 1: what he calls the message, the method of rend. I'm
Speaker 1: happy this as a way of gaining insight. And so
Speaker 1: his disciple says to him, if there was a person
Speaker 1: who gave extensively to the common people and brought help
Speaker 1: to the multitude, what would you think of him? Could
Speaker 1: he be called red? And Confusus says, well, it's no
Speaker 1: longer a matter of men. With such a person, you
Speaker 1: could probably call him a sage. But even the sage
Speaker 1: is Yallenger. The most ancient rulers who created civilization through
Speaker 1: government and the highest antiquity, even they would have found
Speaker 1: it difficult to accomplish that much. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: he says, a run person helps others to take their
Speaker 1: stand in so far as he himself wishes to take
Speaker 1: his stand, and he gets others there so far as
Speaker 1: he himself wishes to get there, and there. It seems
Speaker 1: to me to get to that ancient style of the
Speaker 1: character a person with two the number two, that the
Speaker 1: attitude of ren is one where we recognize not idea
Speaker 1: of sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others, but that
Speaker 1: we are in it together. And of course when you say,
Speaker 1: but that's ritual, right, yes, that's ritual. But there's a
Speaker 1: passage where a Confuciucy makes this challenge, how can you
Speaker 1: be human and not be red to make ritual effective?
Speaker 1: Ritual without red is in humane. It's just it just rules.
Speaker 1: It's dead. So it's the attitude we bring to our
Speaker 1: conduct of the rituals we have with each other, it
Speaker 1: makes all the difference. So it seems like what Confucius
Speaker 1: is saying is that the importance of ritual isn't just
Speaker 1: that you're kind of doing these rules. It's the ritual
Speaker 1: is really a process of kind of building up your community.
Speaker 1: It's a way that you become in sort of tunus
Speaker 1: as a human right. It's it's it's the thing that
Speaker 1: we most care about in modern psychology of happiness, which
Speaker 1: is social connection. Right, the biggest feature is that we're
Speaker 1: kind of getting along as ACiE, you know, we're doing
Speaker 1: for others. We're sort of part of a common humanity.
Speaker 1: These are the kinds of things to sort of build
Speaker 1: up our well being, I think in ways that Confucian
Speaker 1: sort of really support. Indeed, this is why I think
Speaker 1: that ren is Confusus is great discovery, because he recognized
Speaker 1: that in a world where there's a lot of ritual,
Speaker 1: where ritual is highly defined, where is also fits to
Speaker 1: social ranks and things like this, where ritual involves ceremonies
Speaker 1: and sacrifices and going to the ancestral temples and doing
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, that for people to have the
Speaker 1: proper reverence and sincerity and acting, they needed to bring
Speaker 1: an attitude to bear on their contact of ritual. And
Speaker 1: he's trying to figure that out. And that's where I
Speaker 1: think ren comes in that that's what he figured out
Speaker 1: that we need to bring this attitude of concern for
Speaker 1: self and other to our conduct of daily life and
Speaker 1: to the rights than rituals of daily life, and if
Speaker 1: we don't do that, then ritual will simply be an encumbrance,
Speaker 1: a constraint, will limit our humanity rather than enable our humanity.
Speaker 1: And he was really interested in this idea of enabling
Speaker 1: our humanity in part because you know, he had this
Speaker 1: belief that I think the science shares, which is, we
Speaker 1: not only can self cultivate and become a better people,
Speaker 1: but we need to self cultivate and become better people.
Speaker 1: This was really central to his philosophy right. Indeed, indeed,
Speaker 1: so this notion of cultivating the self is become such
Speaker 1: an important part of Confucian learning. I went back and
Speaker 1: look this. Confucius actually use that term. He does once
Speaker 1: used himself cultivate. He says, those who learned in antiquity
Speaker 1: learned for themselves. Today today, in this fallen world we
Speaker 1: live in, people learn for the sake of others. So
Speaker 1: what does this mean? It means that do I learn
Speaker 1: in order to get a grade, to make my teacher happy,
Speaker 1: to gain attention, for myself, to get a better job.
Speaker 1: Of these are always in which we learn, of course,
Speaker 1: but the highest form of learning is to learn for oneself,
Speaker 1: to develop oneself. And there's no assumption with the Confucius
Speaker 1: that who you are is who you always will be
Speaker 1: if you make the effort, if you set out on
Speaker 1: the process, you can become a noble person. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a very Chinese term student's which actually
Speaker 1: means the son of a lord, which means nobility, and
Speaker 1: Confucius redefines that nobility is something you gain through your behavior,
Speaker 1: not what you're born as. And so he's taken it
Speaker 1: directly to the nobility and said, no, no, your claims
Speaker 1: to privilege and rightness don't wash unless you make the
Speaker 1: effort to become a noble person. So nobility from birth
Speaker 1: to nobility of merit and nobility of moral merit is
Speaker 1: really his concerned. I mean, this is so cool because
Speaker 1: you know, this is a topic that we talk about
Speaker 1: a lot on the Happiness Lab. You know, this idea
Speaker 1: that what you need to do is you need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to your own happiness levels, but you need
Speaker 1: to recognize that you can also change. We actually don't
Speaker 1: devoted our whole first episode of the podcast to this
Speaker 1: idea that you can change over time. Sonya Lubermerski, the
Speaker 1: psychologist we interview, says, you know, we recognize that most
Speaker 1: good things in life take a lot of work, you know,
Speaker 1: just like learning the piano or you know, raising a child,
Speaker 1: this is going to take a lot of work. But
Speaker 1: cultivating your happiness, cultivating your flourishing, cultivating you know, maybe
Speaker 1: in some sense, your ren right, that's going to take
Speaker 1: a lot of work too, and we have to recognize
Speaker 1: that and put the work into And it feels like
Speaker 1: Confucious would have resonated with this idea. Oh, I think.
Speaker 1: I think entirely he sees people who who misbehave and
Speaker 1: he thinks make him get to the point of behaving well.
Speaker 1: And of course that's why he's a teacher. That's the
Speaker 1: assumption behind being a teacher and believing that learning matter,
Speaker 1: and his own character characterization of himself that at fifteen,
Speaker 1: I set my mind on learning, and then that established
Speaker 1: my will and then got to the point that I
Speaker 1: could follow my desires. That overstepping the bounds is a
Speaker 1: story of self cultivation. So do you follow that Confucian
Speaker 1: tradition yourself? So I think that the way in which
Speaker 1: we care about other people is something we have to
Speaker 1: do in all our work. My work is teaching. When
Speaker 1: I set out to learn about China. I was young.
Speaker 1: I was a high school student. And the reason I
Speaker 1: learned about China was because I thought we in America
Speaker 1: were ignoring it. We pretended as if it didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And this is back in the nineteen sixties. And how
Speaker 1: could we be a truly great country and not recognize
Speaker 1: a fourth or fifth of humanity. And so my goal
Speaker 1: and learning about China was actually to get to the
Speaker 1: point where we learned something that we would outside of
Speaker 1: China learn to care about too. So learning to care
Speaker 1: about others is certainly fundamental. So I'm not just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how we can take advantage of China
Speaker 1: or how we can have great power of politics. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in how we understand other people. But I'm also
Speaker 1: interested in reminding ourselves in and reminding our colleagues in
Speaker 1: China who believe those of them who believed that power
Speaker 1: is everything, and who have this philosophy to make China
Speaker 1: great at the expense of the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: or make China great again at the expense of the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, that China also had a tradition
Speaker 1: of humaneness and a ritual and of justice, and that
Speaker 1: this is also part of Chinese civilization. Yeah, but have
Speaker 1: I fallen off the way, Yes, many many times. Staying
Speaker 1: on the dao on the way it is hard work.
Speaker 1: But you know, one of the things about this word,
Speaker 1: the Chinese word tao the way, is we know certain
Speaker 1: things about it. It goes somewhere, right, and so I
Speaker 1: am maybe here, but I know the way it goes somewhere.
Speaker 1: I know it's been walked before. I'm not it's not
Speaker 1: unique to me. I'm not one and well, you know
Speaker 1: in China, if you're one in a million, there are
Speaker 1: a thousand other people just like you. But it's not
Speaker 1: unique to me. And the other thing is I can
Speaker 1: tell whether I'm on the way or not, whether I've
Speaker 1: strayed in the path or not. So yeah, there's I
Speaker 1: guess that's all about self cultivation. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: just being a teacher, you know, given the status of universities,
Speaker 1: we have to build in ritual to do what we do.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to teach you everyone about Confucius,
Speaker 1: but you need to have exams and they need to
Speaker 1: have problem sets, and we need to kind of you know,
Speaker 1: give degrees and diplomas. So I guess the path of
Speaker 1: teaching the way these days comes with a certain amount
Speaker 1: of ritual too. This comes out in a passage Confusus says,
Speaker 1: you know you was broaden learning that. He said, you
Speaker 1: have to tie it together. You have to constrain it
Speaker 1: with ritual. It's not going to be enough to know
Speaker 1: a lot. You also have to have a threaded through it.
Speaker 1: So I think what we've talked about is that Confucius.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we found a single thread, but I
Speaker 1: think we've found threads, threads of antiquity, a ritual of humaneness,
Speaker 1: of nobility that all intersect, and they're all weaved together.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways in the Confucian tradition through
Speaker 1: Chinese history that's been talked about is this notion of
Speaker 1: weaving threads together, re weaving them when they've been torn apart,
Speaker 1: fabric of society has been torn apart. It was an
Speaker 1: absolute honor to talk with Peter Bull. You should really
Speaker 1: check out his online class on the history of China,
Speaker 1: which you can find at edex dot org. Now I
Speaker 1: know from reading all our reviews that many listeners really
Speaker 1: value the clear and practical happiness takeaways that we try
Speaker 1: to include in every episode. Confucius wasn't the kind of
Speaker 1: teacher that liked to give away simple conclusions. But I
Speaker 1: can tell you what I've taken away from Peter's explanations,
Speaker 1: and that's that ritual. From the simple handshakes to the
Speaker 1: elaborate commencement ceremonies, they all really matter. But we also
Speaker 1: have to approach these events with a sense of community
Speaker 1: and share to humanity. Doing so is one path to
Speaker 1: achieving wren, that elusive and important virtue that allows us
Speaker 1: to feel like we belong and that we're making a
Speaker 1: difference in the lives of the people around us. There's
Speaker 1: only one more episode in this season of Happiness Lessons
Speaker 1: of the Ancients, and we'll be staying in China to
Speaker 1: examine an old philosophy, one that balances out the self
Speaker 1: improvement push of Confucius. It's a school of thought that
Speaker 1: suggests we take it easy and go with the flow Taoism.
Speaker 1: That's next time on the Happiness Lessons of the Ancients
Speaker 1: with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co
Speaker 1: written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show was mastered
Speaker 1: by Evan Viola, and our rigual music was composed by
Speaker 1: Zachary Silver Special Thanks to the entire Pushkin crew, including
Speaker 1: Neil LaBelle, Carlie mcgliori, Heather Fine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and meet doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Sanchos