Sunday, October 26, 2008

I like it a LOT!

Check out what I learned today...

Jen

Jen is the cardinal virtue of Confucianism. The term is perhaps best translated as "human-heartedness." As Huston Smith explains:

"Jen involves simultaneously a feeling of humanity toward others and respect for oneself, an indivisible sense of the dignity of human life wherever it appears. Subsidiary attitudes follow automatically: magnanimity, good faith, and charity. In the direction of jen lies the perfection of everything that would make one supremely human. In public life it prompts untiring diligence. In private life it is expressed in courtesy, unselfishness, and empathy, the capacity to 'measure the feelings of others by one's own.' . . .'The person of jen, desiring self-affirmation, seeks to affirm as well.' Such largeness of heart knows no national boundaries for those who are jen-endowed know that 'within the four seas all men are brothers and sisters.'"

This is awesome.

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