Not sure Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Not sure - Essay Example However, although rituals were important to Confucius, he had a very strict sense of duty. Confucius viewed rituals as one of the duties an individual must always do, and emphasized this particularly when he would be appointed by a duke or a king as an advisor. In analyzing the Confucian analects, Slingerland (67) states that â€Å"Confucius felt the rituals (even if they were being enacted by someone else), and remained profoundly affected by the emotions they evoked.† In the contemporary Chinese society, there were different powerful countries and tribes who wished to identify themselves distinctly from each other. Rituals thus became means to assert one’s identity and sometimes, they were very elaborate and strict. However, these elaborate and sometimes, magnificent rituals would be observed superficially. People might ignore the inner meaning and zest of the rituals they practiced. Confucius was not one among them. Likewise, he instructed his followers to practice the traditional rituals with not only extravagance but sincerity too. Therefore, in his lifetime, Confucius remained a source of inspiration and information for those who wished to follow the different contemporary rituals correctly and sincerely. Translating the Book Seventeen from the Analects of Confucius, Slingerland (209) notes that in one of the accounts from the Record of Rituals, Confucius used to give ritual instructions to guide his disciples and emphasize the antiquity of Chinese culture. There were different kinds of rituals in the Chinese society about which the researchers obtain considerable information from Confucius’s teachings. For example, there were certain funerary rituals. Some rituals were supposed to mark certain life events like reaching adulthood. Other rituals included strict methods for doing worship, making sacrifices, going to warfare, etc. However, Confucius did not pressurize his contemporaries to accept his doctrine of sincere and if necessary extravagant