CONFUCIAN CORNER

"WHILE A MAN'S FATHER IS ALIVE, LOOK AT THE BENT OF HIS WILL. 

WHEN HIS FATHER IS DEAD, LOOK AT HIS CONDUCT

IF FOR THREE YEARS HE DOES NOT ALTER THE WAYS OF HIS FATHER, HE IS CONSIDERED FILIAL."

-Confucuis

 When a person whose father is still alive, look at how he lived and how how he live his life daily. You can see it through his actions with or without doing it in front of us. If his father is already deceased, consider looking at his conduct as a person. Is his action and behaviour the same as when his father still alive or not. Some are great pretenders to be filial but when no one was watching he isn't what he or she seems to be.

After three years when his father dies, yet his moral character, his moral values, and what breathen him when his father was still alive three years ago hadn't change. then he is considered filial.

This is true to the Chinese families. Confucianism is the center of Chinese family code. The father breathens the children with an indelible mark and a Chinese social identity. An indelible the children would bring till the day they die. It was the father and the mother who teaches the children the moral values  and social moral character which they will the basis on how their children behave in society.

Chinese families are hereditary in nature. Great grandfather to grandfather. Grandfather to Father. Father to Son. Son to Grandson. This has always been the tradition and customs of the Chinese families all over the world.

But you will see how fillial the children are when their father dies.

The moral character, their social identity and the moral values they are breathened by their forefathers are one of the priceless treasures they could ever inherit. It is their soul. If after three years of his father's death he hadn't change and still the same son his father once breathen then he is considered filial.  

Chinese Culture is unlike westerners and their westernized culture of being liberated and negligence to moral values and social identity as one race, one nation, and one identity. Self Cultivation starts with one own family, with one own self, and ones own moral character which acts as their social identity.

Let us not be like the westerners who neglected their roots, their history in the price of moving forward and threw away their forefathers in the ashes of time. We must be filial just like Confucius.