It is never possible to agree with someone in everything; it is just as impossible to disagree on all, but I believe Confucius would have been himself, also if born in a republic.
(Select wisdom of Confucius in a story by Teresa Pelka, ■link to the source text; we may compare Thomas Paine, Age of Reason or Agrarian Justice, and Benjamin Franklin’s ivory book; he describes it in his Autobiography).
Honeybee was an admired and famous philosopher. He remains reputed to have schooled three thousand students, five hundred of whom became of notable merit to the country. Posterity may know their names. As the teaching evidently was worthy of esteem, we do inscribe here, the philosopher never advised anything he would not have had exercised and practiced himself first. The honors his students paid him were those for skill that works really, and some people held those honors for worthy of a king.
Honeybee yet remained modest and decent. He disclosed to everyone, the teaching he brought was not entirely his own, but founded on writs by brethren and colleagues, today as distant to us in time, as he is himself. His singular sincerity assisted him to a true portraiture of knowledge.
Honeybee opened his instruction asking three questions.
1. What should we do, if we choose to exercise own mind and coordinate manners.
2. Is there guidance we would think to provide to other people, and if yes, what means we would invest.
3. What care ought we to have for own mind, to adhere to the Sovereign Good?
The three questions directly do address the three classic habitudes that man has designed for human ways of reason: first, to reckon on own self; second, to think about oneself among people; and third, to consider own potential for existence after physical death.
From the distribution and application of his discipline we readily can observe, Honeybee shaped his instruction for people who wanted to achieve personal success and independence. His disciple titled the book, The Great Knowledge.
Honeybee says, ability for intellect came from Heaven, but the design was for all people to have own minds, and this can be seen from the fact that by nature man talks, walks, and even makes roads or paths, where it is obviously own head to direct the action. Own mind is a great freedom.
The great way to knowledge is to exercise thinking; to learn to decide the course of own thought along with a fine manner, for the energy of own muscles. There is hardly anything a person could do without own ability to move about, and he who only meditates, wastes much time.
The power to design and construct, analyze and envision ideas, naturally originates with reasoning. Human reasoning would be yet fruitless, without the muscles that let speak or write. It would remain in silent thought.
Civilization may influence the reason, push for zany diversions. Exercised in own mind, we become able completely to reject ideas that do not agree with our true pursuits. We may designate the overall purpose of ours for own sovereign goodness, already early in life, body and mind.
People generally do not care to pursue ways to own sovereignty, also that eternal sovereignty. People are discouraged with lack of actual contact. It would be a long story to tell you what happened, for the contact to be broken; let us stay with the fact: after earthly living, people are going to need own sovereignty, to last as entities, Honeybee thus thought, it would be the right thing to get some guidance for such sovereign ways written.
He emphasizes, there is no manner to attain a goal without own mind, and this is true also for the most average of matters. Whether we sit, stand, or lie down to sleep, own head needs to be always first, to command the body.
We will have no good way to reason if we deny own brain, or hold it for separate from the mind during earthly existence. There is nowhere else for own mind to be on Earth, only in own head and brain. Thought cannot come from fingers or even noses.
Ways of the mind ought to be natural to us. By no means could they be mere tricks by traveling philosophers. The more complicated or advanced the purpose, the more ought we to refer to own mind. The Sovereign Good, own existence after mortal living, is by all means the most perfect of pursuits, yet it never is as thought most distant to our purposed actions on Earth, because paths to Heaven open only with good everyday living. The most average, as well as the most advanced of human behaviors become possible only if purposed by the mind.
Whether we want to get a house, which is earthly and quite average a purpose, or if we want to meditate eternity, our best and sovereign designation forever, we first consider ideas in mind. We may begin with allowing inner impressions from own self, all there comes to mind from within. We follow with shaping own thought.
An “entire conformity of actions with the right reason” can be attained, says Honeybee, where we take steps daily, even if those steps could be only small, towards own objective.
Let us mind, Honeybee also was an experienced language teacher, capable of refined writing and sublime interpretation of text. Some of his readers today might refuse regard to a philosophy that overtly cares for the rich and powerful; in truth, his lines come together well with a sort of awareness that all people have on Earth when learning language.
As we could use the word bailiwick, figure-of-speech to describe Honeybee’s three initial questions, about own self, oneself among people, and eternity, we may look up word origin for kings, princes, or emperors.
“Prince” comes from the words, “prima” and “capere”; these remain to say a person is able intellectually to grasp an idea, as when we see a letter shape and learn to keep it in mind.
A “king” has come with “kine”, the part to have made the word kinesthesia, about human muscle energy and ability to move about. To write, we hold a pen or type; to read, we open and use books or other written resources; we keep up own head, direct eyes and hands.
The name “emperor” comes from the Latin “im” and “parere”: to describe a person able to write on their own, the ancient people might say, scripto suo is (ea) imperat: own writing, does he (or she) command. Most people can write and read without assistance today, but many were not so well-to-do in ancient times.
Own power over oneself is no bailiwick to complain of autarchy, says Honeybee with humor, because to learn language, we need to learn symbols as letters, ideas as words, phrases as figures of speech sometimes, and occasionally, people also joke. This experience is the same in all languages, whereas there is no language to demand bailiffs or politics for grammar.
Much of Honeybee’s counsel looks concerned with written skill rather than anything else. A book of shapes was published around year ■1706 in London, for Mr. T. Horne, to tell Honeybee advice in English:
● for people to be subject to “redress of reason”, when there is a new head of state;
● for the royal family physically to be “regulated”, if one of them assumes the throne;
● for virtuous princes not to desire anything that other men might wish for;
● and for those princes to disparage felicity and people: riches, children and life itself, all to be just transient advantages whilst they forgive most heinous of crimes, never to have been injured themselves of course.
We do not believe this for Honeybee philosophy at all. We believe Shakespeare wrote ■Hamlet, and Aristotle published his ■Topics. Thus will we continue, with two font families to beautify the endeavor. One is Alice Open Type, because we are venturing as into a land unknown. The other is Linden Hill, for the strong associations of honey and this kind of forest exactly, that we have developed looking through a most famous Book of Changes the Honey Bee people had put to writing even before the philosopher time.
We trust, a good reader will see our reason to interpret symbols as symbols, and a good learner shall find affable alternates for the word “bailiwick” with as much ease.
Honeybee philosophy of Right Reason is summarized as Knowledge of ■Will, ■Desire, ■Love, and ■Hate. We looked up the words in a big dictionary, as we do not like hate, and we are individual in all our feelings and thoughts. We found four yan symbols, some in popular sayings, as “beauty is in the eye of the lover”. As well, Honeybee philosophy is “Knowledge of the Yàn”.
The four yans can show 验 check, 言 word, 厌 satiate, 眼 eye, and though transliterated with varied diacritics, yán or yãn as well, they are actually similar in sounding.
Another yan, transliterated as ■yan4, ■彦, says accomplished, elegant, and ingenious, like someone had their 4 yans proper and was happy with a ■calligraphic style.
For philosophy, many people have heard about ■Yin and Yang.
■Yìn-pǔ, ■印谱, can stand for an imprint today, and it is possible that stamp prints were the house ■sweet 甜 secret of trade; yet having some acquaintance of the philosopher’s lore, we have certainty it could not have been ■the sweetest, the true heaven 天 Tiān.
Our concise pursuit is to seek a moderate way; we want to avoid the commonplace failure some researchers suffer, presuming a person is deficient in spiritual self-determination, should he or she partake in earthly business. Honeybee’s texts certainly were matter in hand, and at the same time, they were disquisitions of high transmundane reference.
Love of language arts can make good ideas for living.
Honeybee said, do not seek enlightenment in privation; it was the heavenly resolve to make your soul belong in your body on Earth. Do not becloud your mind with excess, was his reservation.
Advising to refresh oneself every day, it is believed he meant simply bath or ablution, and the pleasure of ■salts, 浴盐, yù-Yán, arguably to compose into some divine freshness with decoctions of ■herbs, 汤, Tang, as basil 洋紫苏, Yáng-zǐsū, or sage, 洋苏, Yáng-sū.
Inscriptions of counsel became popular among the Honey Bee people, on the inside or outside of their utilities and decor, cups, jars, and vases, as they lived sweet days, ■甜天, Tián Tiān, under the Heaven as paradise proper, ■天堂, Tiān-Táng.
The Honey Bee people were amicable and peaceful, never fell for the bit of misinformation about our universe, that it could “reassume a new form”, if all people became innocent. Philosopher Honeybee did not consider it impossible, that all humanity could be one day more or less free of demerit. He yet never cared to proliferate sin, to help keep the shape of the world, because matters can only reassume previous or older forms, alternately to assume new ones.
There is absolutely no way for matters to re-assume new shapes. Honeybee certainly would have advised on the need for sin otherwise. Living was good, and the Book of Changes ■trigram inventions prove that minds were emboldened with good leisure. Centuries later, one Franklin would admit to magic squares, whereas we can observe from the Yán, Yáng, Tiān, and Táng that body and soul is probably a best of ways. Heaven was real one day.
Finally, rumor is, the true legend told the skies would be lustrous at night, but not as day, if people learned to live without malice and other such traits. The change to come with the heavenly way open would not damage our world, that is.
(Alice and the Linden Hill: Work in progress)
TERESA PELKA.COM 