Course Correction

The quote I used for my first blog entry on analects 7, 8, and 11 was this one: “I once engaged in thought for an entire day without eating and an entire night with outs sleeping, but it did no good. It would have been better for me to have spent that time learning.” (p.45) After seeing those examples on the board about correct textual interpretation I saw that in this case my interpretation might not have had any real connection with what the except meant.
After rereading I was able to extract what I believed was the true meaning of the phrase. Although it does include learning as a major thing, the way I expressed my interpretation in the previous blog failed to show the essence of the meaning. Right now I think that Confucius makes reference to the fact that a great deal of the knowledge and wisdom we need to find in life isn’t easy to find and sometimes we need something out side of us to find it. Thought, although useful for many things, can be insufficient for the purpose of learning at some point. We need other things outside of thought in order to stimulate it in order to explore new things, new ideas, and be able to see things from a different perspective.
Thought is not something useless but because it is based on the previous experiences it can be unreliable when it comes to learning. Although it is necessary for such thing attempting to learn only by thought can be fruitless. The Confucian way asks us to reason and to think beyond. To do so one must open their eyes to appreciate the full picture and not just the part we have already seen.