A Confucian Moral Teaching for Children

In Chinese Civilization, from the establishment of the Chinese education system until the end of the Imperial era, this teaching, from "The Great Learning" and attributed to Confucius was one of the elementary teachings taught to every schoolchild:

The ancient people who desired to have a clear moral harmony in the world would first order their national life.
Those who desired to order their national life would first regulate their home life.
Those who desired to regulate their home life would first cultivate their personal lives.

Those who desired to cultivate their personal lives would first set their hearts right.
Those who desired to set their hearts right, would first make their wills sincere.
Those who desired to make their wills sincere would first arrive at understanding.

Understanding comes from the exploration of knowledge of things.
When the knowledge of things is gained, then understanding is reached.
When understanding is reached, then the will is sincere.
When the will is sincere, then the heart is set right.
When the heart is set right, then the personal life is cultivated.

When the personal life is cultivated, then the home life is regulated.
When the home life is regulated, then the national life is orderly; and when the
national life is orderly; then the world is at peace.

From the Emperor down to the common man, the cultivation of the personal life is the foundation for all.

It is impossible that when the foundation is disorderly, the superstructure can be orderly.
There has never been a tree whose trunk is slender and whose top branches are heavy and strong. There is a cause and a sequence in things, and a beginning and end in human affairs.
To know the order of precedence is to have the beginning of wisdom.

New Video: The Importance of Symbols, and Why the West is Losing It

Symbols are the secret language of humanity; the language that operates on a deeper level than surface speech. Universal symbols are common to all human beings and operate on a fundamental level to our human nature; while each culture also has specific symbolic languages that act as their own particular dialect of the human experience, which allows their culture to function.

In the 1960s, the Chinese declared war on their own symbolic language (that began in the I Ching), and it came at a terrible cost. Today, the West has done much the same, and if you lose this language of symbols, really bad things happen to your culture: