The Seventh Wave, Episode 25

(Now it's Confucius... and we are at the halfway point...)

Episode 25

The I Ching is in her backpack, bumping against her as she runs. It isn’t easy for Confucius to keep up with her. She slows down just a little. Confucius has long droopy eyebrows, a beard hanging down like a curtain from a soft and jowly jaw, a smiley face, and a non-athletic body, like the Fat or Laughing Buddha, who is someone else entirely, of course. He’s not accustomed to running. He wants to sit under a willow tree, drink a little tea, and discuss the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by. But she’s not stopping for anyone, not even the great Kong Fuzi.

“Just one question, great one,” she says. “The word is you wrote the Ching as well as the rest of the Five Classics, though nowadays people argue about that. So, maybe you wrote it, maybe you didn’t, but ever since then your followers haven’t been able to agree about what it is exactly. In the eleventh century Cheng Yi thought of it as a work of high philosophy, a guidebook leading humanity towards virtue, which governments should use to help them govern wisely. A hundred years later Zhu Xi said no, it’s not a work of moral philosophy, it’s just a kind of fortune cookie factory, like astrology, or like trying to predict the result of a horse race, a handbook for gamblers. Would you care to resolve the argument?”