A Happy Life Lecture - How to Be a Genuine Good Person By Professor Lixu Cai (Translated by Christopher Daniel)

Good afternoon classmates! Today I am very happy to have this opportunity to discuss "How to Live a Happy Life",in this "Happy Life Lecture". First allow me to introduce myself, my name is Lixu Cai, the Li means"manners" and the Xu means "the rising sun". When I was young I had a habit, later I realized that this habit was good. When an elder came to my house, once I heard his or her voice, no matter where I was I put down whatever I was doing, went to the elder and greeted him or her. I said, "Hello sir", "hello ma’am". Classmates, after I bowed and lifted my head, the elders’ had extremely happy expressions. They petted me and said, "You are a good boy." I was very pleased, too. I was very happy because they approved of me, then I left. So when a child is doing moral acts he is practicing the teachings of the sages who teach us to be polite people. When he bowed, his heart is filled with happiness, because people originally have good and virtuous hearts. So since I was young I kept this habit, later because of this habit I gained enormous benefits.

Once while I was getting into an elevator, there was a woman who was about the same
age as my mother. I went in the elevator first, and then she entered. I asked her, "Excuse me ma’am, which floor are you going to?" Friends, when you take the elevator if you ask in this manner, raise your hand. Ok, thank you. If you entered an elevator and there was a person who smiled and said, "Excuse me, which floor are you going to?" friend, how would you feel? Very comfortable, for that day you will probably be in a good mood. So, manners are the most graceful distance between people. These kinds of manners must be taught. So I always ask my students and students’ parents, “Is learning manner more important or is getting a 98% to 100% on a test more important?"

Question1
(by speaker): "Is learning manner more important (a life’s correct attitude and concept), or is raising a 98% to 100% more important? Which one is more important?"

Audience
answer: "Learning manner is more important."

They all think that manners are important.

Question: "May I ask the parents if they are doing the former job or the latter job?"

Answer: "Latter job."

Why? Obviously, they all say that proper behaving in dealing with people and matters is important, but in actuality when seeing their children, they only force them to do homework.

Question: "As this shows, where does the problem come from?"

Answer: "The hope for children to be successful (to be somebody)."

Once grades improve, is the child successful? After grades improve, is life happy and harmonious? Many issues require us to think deeply. They require us to use wisdom to judge, and the judgment will then be correct.

I believe that many parents push their children towards grade improvement. By the time these children graduate from college, it is possible they do not even know how to greet people. Even without mentioning graduation, many college students study for a few months then drop out from school. Why do they get suspend from school? Their social skills are lacking, also their ability to provide for themselves is lacking. Social skills and an ability to provide for oneself both influence their lives. A grade of ninety-eight points and a grade of a one hundred points differ by two percent; will this difference influence their lives? It won’t! I was a student that grew up under the preoccupation with entering a higher school, after over ten years of schooling life,
when I think back, I didn’t really learn anything; so we have this deep appreciation and I do not want my students to waste ten years on studies that do not have any relevance to their lives. We have this understanding and can deeply think about it, how to let a student, or a child, really learn the right attitude of life and proper point of view, then have him/her plant a strong foundation of life.

So without learning manners, the obstructions in his or her life will increase, because bad manners may cause offence to some people. People will probably refuse to help him/her, so much that people will even obstruct him/her. However, when we show manners people will
probably offer more help, put forth the energy to assist us. So we, as adults, should think about what kind of learning can truly help children in their entire life. Therefore, having this attitude of
greeting elders from my childhood was because of my parents’ teachings, thus I form this habit ever since I was young.

After I waved at this woman she was very happy, following this I introduced
myself. I said, "Hello! I am Li Xu Cai." She said, "Hello! I am your mother-in-law." She thought I said I was her son-in-law2, so I started talking with her. After talking, I realized that her daughter went to the same high school as me. So from this I appreciated the saying, "with fate people a thousand miles apart can meet." So students, I flew from Haikou to Shenzhen, then from Shenzhen to HongKong, so when it is added up, it surpasses a thousand miles, so this really was "with fate people a thousand miles apart can meet." The course of this situation, which I just brought up, starts from greeting people in an elevator. Confucius said, "Without learning courtesy, there is no foundation." With courtesy one can have a place in society. We are all happy when others greet us and vice versa. For example, if we are willing to take initiative to greet others, others will be happy too. Friends, you are all from different areas, today after class when each of you returns to your neighbourhood, in dozens of neighbourhoods greetings will simultaneously ring out. You will all say, "Excuse me, which floor are you going to?" When people in dozens of neighbourhoods start doing this, we believe that Hong Kong’s interpersonal relations will definitely have a big change. In fact we hope that society will be better, we hope that people will respect each other and care for each other. Where should this start? We absolutely should not demand others to do it first. Mutual respect and mutual caring are the result, cause of this has to come from ourselves taking the initiative to respect others and taking the initiative to care for others to begin with. We believe that the entire mood of caring and respecting others will quickly take form and will change better and better quickly.

I recently mentioned that with destiny people can meet, but destiny does not come easily (It requires condition where all the essences are being provided at the right time). We must realize that each destiny depends on its particular condition which is hard to come by, thus we will treasure each condition. "Treasuring each Condition", besides helping oneself, also help one’s family members and many other people. So with good condition we must go a step further to "Create Destiny"

Today we have this destiny together to discuss "How to Be a Genuine Good Person" mainly due to our Chinese forefathers’ wisdom which have been passed down for more than four thousand years. Chinese people then have this precious chance to receive their teachings. All because of the inheritance of wisdom teaching from the forefathers, there forms the condition for us to be
able to connect this destiny.

Our lecture topic is "A Happy Life". Students, how is life happy? How should life be before it is happy? A happy life definitely has happy thoughts and ideas. You need to have the right thoughts and ideas then you will form the right behaviours. You need to have the right behaviours then you will have the right habits. You need to have the right habits then you will have the right personality. You need to have the right personality then you will have good destiny/fate. When you have good destiny/fate life definitely will be happy. So what is the origin? Whether a person’s life is happy or unhappy, the origin is in his thoughts and ideas. So by making your thoughts and ideas right, your life will be planted in a strong foundation.

Students, whose thoughts and ideas do you let manage your life? Especially for planting the right life foundation for your children, whose thoughts and ideas are you based on? This is a very
important question. If a person wants a happy life, his or her thoughts and ideas should be right. Only when the thoughts and ideas are right can one be a law-abiding good person. When you are a good person life will definitely be satisfactory. So modern people like to read books; many like to study psychology. I often ask them, "Suppose you read a psychology book, a person wrote it when he was forty, then when he was sixty he wrote another book,

Question: "Please tell me which book you would read first".

Answer: "Sixty years old."

Question: "Why would you read the sixty year old one?"

Answer: "Possibly the mind is more mature."

Friends, this student just said it — possibly the mind is more mature, has more knowledge. "Possibly", is it for sure? Our destiny and our next generation’s destiny, can they be build upon"possibly"? They can not. We must start from the beginning and think about it again.

Question: "Is a twenty-year-old more pure than a forty-year-old? Is being pure good or is being
complicated good?"

Answer: "Being pure is good".

Correct. We say this world is a big corrupting environment, so a sixty-year-old person does not necessarily have more wisdom than a forty-year-old.

So now, many people study psychology and apply psychological theories to teaching their children. When some people first came in contact with the theories of the USSR, they applied them to teaching their children. Later someone told them, "Italy is not bad". They then applied Italian theories to teaching their children. One day someone said that Europe is not bad, so they applied European teaching theories to teaching their children. Can someone tell me what the children turned into? Many people said that they became test subjects. What do many psychologists use to experiment on? Animals, so we say that today’s children are like lab mice, supplied to people for experiments. It is very possible that after the experiments there was a mistake and it needs to be restarted, is it possible? It’s not possible. So people must make decisions with reason. In the end, what kind of thoughts and ideas make a child’s life happy and harmonious, and make the child becomes a law-abiding good person? This is what we must ponder.

Once, I met a few very successful friends. After listening to my lecture, one of them stood on the side for a long time and did not leave. He waited until after I finished talking to these friends then walk over. He said to me, "Today, if I don’t tell you this I will have a hard time". He said, "After listening to your ‘Di Zi Gui3, I realized that in my more than ten years of social experiences in society, these are only one or two of the ‘Di Zi Gui’ precepts". Students, he is already forty years old, after many years of experience he only found out one or two virtuous teachings of sages. So many people lived to be forty or fifty and suddenly realized that if they were allowed to live life again they definitely would have made fewer mistakes. We have
this regret. Did our forefathers have this regret? They did. So our forefathers take pity on us, do wefeel it?

An elder once asked me a question. This question shocked me, I had never even thought about it. This elder asked, "Out of the four ancient civilizations, which country is still remaining? China." Why is it that in the history of the world, after thousands of years, there is only one ancient civilization remaining? What is the reason for this? This is worth thinking about. Is it that the forefathers of these four ancient civilizations said to the gods, “Come, we’ll draw straws and whoever is drawn will not perish, whichever race is drawn will not perish?" Was it this way? No. Is it that the lucky straw was chosen by our Chinese forefathers, so our culture
was not broken? It was absolutely not like this.

How did China ’s ancient civilization last thousands of years? I believe whether Egypt or Southwest Asia, at that time, their forefathers invented writing, wanted to pass down their experiences through writing also. Why? If all they thought about every day is their daily matters, would they carve pictures and words onto stones? It’s not possible. So their forefathers had this heart, they hoped to pass life’s important knowledge and experience to the next
generation. However they were not successful, it was only China’s forefathers that
were successful. So this was the rare condition the whole world hoped for. We need to look for the cause of this, then you will realize (their profound wisdom), and cherish this Chinese condition, "Treasure the Condition". How could Chinese culture survive
thousands of years? It is because China ’s forefathers knew that language and literature must be separated, and then the culture can last for thousands of years without being broken. Why? Because if literature and language were not separated, if language were to change, after two hundred years would people understand it? They would not understand it. Once they would not understand it, literature would also be unintelligible. I have a friend who left his hometown for twenty years. After twenty years hereturned and talked with many relatives. Sometimes he needs an explanation to understand some phrases. So if after twenty years language had a small change, then after two hundred years there would be a big change. After two thousand years you would not even understand what the articles said. Our
forefathers realized this, so they spoke with modern words but wrote the same way people a thousand years ago did, this is Classical Chinese. The forefathers designed Classical Chinese as a unified literature, so they used it to pass along a thousand years of knowledge without it
breaking. So we hope that we don’t need to spend several years finding out what we are doing wrong, this would be a waste of time. We also don’t want to make our children spend several years finding out what is right and wrong. This kind of regret absolutely should not
happen again. I myself was twenty-five or twenty-six before encountering the sage’s teachings and our forefathers’ teachings. So I feel a little regretful.

After I learned it, I valued this condition. It happens that I went one step forward and became an educator, I taught elementary. I had a sworn brother who had two daughters. One was in second grade, one was in fourth grade. I took two copies of "Di Zi Gui" and drove for three hours to see my sworn brother. I sat down at the restaurant; I hadn’t eaten yet and could not bear it. I began to explain it to him, I told him that each sentence relates to children and its influence is far reaching, one by one I said it like that. As a result, halfway through, I suddenly felt sad and my tears just burst out. The entire room was quiet for three minutes. Later when my emotions stabilized he said to me, "I have heard college professor’s lecture, but none of them
talk the way you do." I explained to him saying, "Halfway though I suddenly felt that if when I was younger I had a teacher explain these concepts to me clearly I would have taken less
wasteful routes and less wrong routes. Taking wrong routes is not too hurtful, but while taking these wrong routes I have no idea how many people’s feelings I have hurt or how many hardships I have caused on people, hence I suddenly felt sad and regretful." With such a deep
experiences I have had, I don’t want my students, or even the next generation of Chinese, to have the same regrets. So whenever I have this opportunity, I absolutely must give the "Di Zi
Gui" to people. I usually keep the sages’ books in my car, so whenever the condition is mature I can give it to people.

We have a friend, his child is eighteen and the other is twenty. Last year when we met we introduced the sages’ teachings, including the "Di Zi Gui". He signed with emotion and said, "My son is already grown, it is too late." Friends, can it be too late? It’s better late than never. It’s not too late. I told him that that’s where one’s absolute sincerity lies. You must use your whole heart and patiently turn back your children’s thoughts and ideas. Of course this is a big job. Because he has this deep regret he kept the "Di Zi Gui" in his bag also. One day he went to get his hair cut. While getting his hair cut, so as not to waste time, he introduced the "Di Zi Gui" teachings
to the barber. She was pregnant and had not given birth. Once he introduced it to her, he gave her a copy of the "Di Zi Gui" text on CD. So after the barber went home, she often listened to the "Di Zi Gui". Later she gave birth to a boy. Our friend later went back for a haircut. She told him, "When my son starts acting fussy, I play him the ‘Di Zi Gui’ on cd, and then he immediately stops crying."

Because he has a deep regret, he does not want others to repeat his mistakes. As this friend with this kind of purpose, we believe he will accumulate a lot of good fortune, which will be passed down to the next generation. We also believe that his children will slowly see their father as a model and change their own behaviours. Since we know that our forefathers have such a profound wisdom and have passed down thousands of years of culture. We must deeply figure it out. After all, exactly what teachings have China ’s sages given us? I always ask my friends this
question, "Are you Chinese?" Why isn’t there a reply? You people have still been
considering it for a long time. Do you need to think about this question for such a long time?

Speaker (ask the audience): "Are you Chinese?"

Audience answer: "Yes."

You don’t sound too loud. Why ask this question? Usually when I ask, in the beginning it is
soft. Later I ask a second time then they usually loudly say, "Yes". Even it is loud, does it definitely mean yes? We must examine our nature and our essence; it’s not a loud shout that gets us milk to drink. I usually ask this question, "If a person was born and raised in America and his or her parents were Chinese, do we dare say that his or her blood is pure Chinese
blood?"

Speaker: "But whose thoughts does he have?"

Audience: "A westerner’s thoughts."

Is blood important or are thoughts and ideas important? Will his blood influence his life? His thoughts and ideas will affect his lifelong intentions, and they will also affect his attitude with
people. Therefore thoughts and ideas are more important. Although we bleed Chinese blood, are our thoughts Chinese concepts? This question relies upon our careful consideration. Our Chinese sages’ teachings, frankly speaking, have already gone for two to three generations. Now we loudly shout, "Yes", but we must really realize our present thoughts and ideas, are they really Eastern or Western. In the world’s "civilized" countries, this "civilized" needs quotation marks because it is merely materialistic civilization not spiritual civilization, people’s thoughts and ideas in these countries are tend to be western thinking. Let’s think about it for a minute, are our thoughts and ideas similar to western thinking as well?

In western thinking the individual is the center. When this self-centered is promoted, interpersonal association becomes "competition". When competition reaches a certain level it
will extend to borders, then attacking will begin, a "war". When war is promoted, it will become
"Doomsday". While walking down the street I often see signs posted on electric poles that say, "Doomsday is here." Friends, did Doomsday arrive yet? Many people believe that Doomsday is an atomic bomb exploding or a nuclear bomb exploding then the earth is destroyed. It is not like that. What is Doomsday? When people’s thoughts are not like a human’s, living will is unbearable. When virtues and moral theories are gone, a human life is like an animal’s life.

One day I went to Shantou to give a lecture, there they were having a month-long classical reading festival to teach children how to conduct oneself and handle matters; the teachings came from the "Di Zi Gui". After a month the teacher organized a small activity. He asked each student to share what he or she learned during that month. A seven-year-old student took the stage and said, "After I learned ‘Di Zi Gui’ I had just aware that to be a human being one must be filial (be dutiful to his parents)." This statement has flavour, only after he learned this then
he knew that a person must be filial. As now when elders meet these children and teenagers they will most likely be very upset. "Don’t you know that you should be filial?" Do theyknow? If people don’t learn they won’t know, "If people don’t learn they won’t know morality and justice." Can you blame these children? It’s because the adults don’t even understand where the
foundation of conducting oneself lies, so they could not pass it on. The responsibility is on us adults, we cannot be partial to this kind of behavior in children nor can we constantly put the
responsibility on them. That is not fair at all.

This child continues, "Before learning ‘Di Zi Gui’ I daily thought about how to frame and hurt my
parents." He was seven. When he said this, his mother was dumbfounded and shocked. I believe that in her entire life, her child was already seven; she never thought that her child
would say this. While she listened her tears could not stop, they continuously flowed. Why? The child said, "Every day she makes me learns this and do that while my parents work themselves to death." If you work yourself to death, can a child feel your love? They cannot feel it, thus the parents have no relation to the child. You still force him or her to learn a bunch of things. What is the purpose of forcing a child to learn a bunch of things? To put it nicely, it is the hope that one’s son will be somebody and the hope that one’s daughter will be somebody. To put it harshly, it is the fear that the children haven’t learned enough; they loose face.

So after our teacher gave this example, another teacher quickly took the stage and shared a story with us. He said that today he asked a student, a seven-year-old, "Do you like your dad more or your mom more?" Was it proper to ask this question? No it was not. By asking this kind of question it’s clear that he is trying to make the child learn to discriminate and to have likes and dislikes. This damages the children. A child’s breadth of mind should
have been wide, but it’s been given erroneous guidance by adult’s erroneous thinking. We should teach them to be more filial and concerned for parents, but instead we ask them which one they like more. As a result, this child didn’t even think, he said, "I don’t love either one, I hate both." The teacher who asked and was immediately shocked, why was he shocked? Because
when his parents talked about their child with the teacher, they were immensely proud. They said their child plays the piano well and represents the school at competitions; he is always among the best, so they are very proud of him. However not long after, have they ever thought about what their child was thinking or what their child was feeling?

Adults don’t take the time to truly understand children’s feelings, adults only use what they think is a good method to force beliefs onto children. When children are under such pressure, are their lives happy? Their life is already sick. Their thoughts are already sick even if they graduate from a reputable college, is their life happy? This is worth thinking about; after all, what is the next generation of children thinking about?

There was once an intermediate student who personally cooked for his parents. After his father finished eating he died, he fell down, twitched and died. Not soon after the same happened to his mother, after eating she died. Then after the funeral he quickly and impatiently threw the food down the gutter4. When his aunt saw this she was shocked, it’s like this child has no respect for his parents. Suddenly he walked over to his aunt and said, "Aunty, did my mom and dad buy insurance?" Once he said this his aunt suddenly got goose bumps. It wasn’t normal so she quickly called the police. The result of the investigation was that they found that this thirteen-year-old from Sichuan poisoned his parents. After the investigation, students, do you know why he killed his parents? The insurance company only gave him 10,000 RMB. The motive will scare us; the motive was to get money to buy a cell phone. After we hear this kind of story we feel that the real Doomsday arrived. A child actually, just to buy a cell phone,killed his beloved parents. His heart has no sense of gratitude, no morals, it only has wants.

Let’s go back and think about it for a minute, where does a child get such a strong want for material goods? It comes from teaching children to want, ever since his childhood. Question: Who teaches this?

Answer: Parents.

So now if parents don’t calmly think about it, when most parents reach middle age they will think that life is difficult. They have lost half their life working hard, but the children that they taught will cause them to loose sleep everyday. So when people don’t understand reason, life really will cause them to moan and extremely helpless outcomes will arise. Lets look back on this for a minute, how do we interact with children nowadays? It’s all with material goods. “If you get a good grade on your next test, you get ice cream”, this is while in elementary. In middle school, “If you get a good grade on your test, parents will buy you a bicycle”. What is the motivation for children to work hard? It’s not so they can improve their lives then take care of their parents. On the contrary, it is so they can achieve their goal (material desires). In high school they get good grades on tests, why? Because they can get a digital camera, so life’s motivation is material goods. There was a middle school student who just got accepted into high
school. After the test he said to his mother, "Mom, you should buy me several articles of thousand dollar name-brand clothes." His mom said, "Why?" The child said, "I got accepted into high school, I saved father tens of thousands of dollars. If I didn’t get accepted into high school dad would have to waste time, spend a lot of money and buy me a fake diploma." So do you see what is inside a child’s head? It’s all wants; it’s all using money to measure value. So when the next generation always chases their wants, this will cause many evil actions.

So we say, a nuclear bomb exploding is not Doomsday, when all people’s thoughts and ideas are not human thoughts and ideas; that will truly be Doomsday. So I often say to the teachers that they must teach their students well. Why? If we don’t teach our students well, in the future whose hands will the country and society will be in? It is all going to be in their hands. If their tempers are big, if they don’t even think about others and are all selfish, when they become the country’s pillar our later years will be very miserable. If they have never heard Confucius’ teachings that, "When taking care of parents, do not forget about the elders who do not have someone to take care of them." Everyone should care for their own parents, their elders and at the same time should care for other people’s parents and elders. If one doesn’t have these
thoughts and ideas, every day he only thinks about himself. When we are old, they will say that old people are just old and let nature! Run its course. Then we will be very miserable.

So we, as being adults, teachers, even as being bosses, must try our best to teach our next generation, youngsters and subordinates. Society is a community and cannot be separated. Now that we have this awareness, we must grasp the heart of education. It must not start with "the
self". To put it more clearly, "the self" is when selfish attitude emerges. Rather than us fearing the future society will be chaotic, we should start doing things our self, start doing things with
the family. Do not walk down this wrong road anymore; that is the road to doom.

In the education world we often hear a voice. What voice? The voice that says the education system must change. ‘We must be persistent in walking down this road; we cannot look back, because we must continue “changing”.’ I say, if this road we are walking down leads to a cliff, should we continue walking? If we continue walking, what will happen? We will fall off. Our educational system has been changing, we should like to ask, are the children being taught more and more excellent? Or have they been more and more of a disappointment? So when we do things we must use their wisdom to deeply consider it, not act on impulse. No one can say that he or she is the Chair of the Board of Education and already announce to change and cannot go back on that, otherwise he or she will loose face. That would be putting the entire world and society’s thoughts on education on one person’s impulse. That would be a mess. The reason for change must be proper, and it should change toward right direction.

Chinahas grasped the essence of education. What does"teach" mean? Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty compiled the first Chinese dictionary. He clearly laid out the meaning of each character; in addition, explain outright with only one sentence. So when I read ancient texts I truly admire the sages. "For educators, what is done on top has results down below." So the essence of education is setting a good example with one’s own conduct. "Teach" means "teach children so they will behave". Children should be taught to do benevolent good works. So in "teach" the key word is "righteousness". Only when "righteousness" has standards then will children know the proper restraints of a good person. I often say that the goal of ancient scholars was to become a sage; the goal of modern scholars is to make money. Sages and
making money are very different. Making money is selfish, so children taught under these people have no way to become a good person. The direction of this teaching method lean toward deviation and it is wrong. When the method is wrong one should quickly realize it and withdraw from it. This should be done without a second’s delay.

China’s education system has not been changed in thousands years. Even during the Yuan and Qing dynasties, it was not changed5. Why is it that when the Yuan and Qing dynasties governed China they did not change the education system? Because theygained a deep appreciation of China’s wide-ranging and profound culture, it influences a person, a society and a country deeply. So they didn’t change it, they knew it wasgood. Let’s take a look at the flourishing times of the Qing Dynasty. Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, these well-known emperors, all favour Chinese culture the most; they all thoroughly studied the teachings of the sages, and realized that this kind of teaching would keep families happy and society peaceful and glorious, that’s why they did not change it.

Nevertheless, our education system nowadays kept changing, and frankly, do the people making the changes know where they are changing to? Possibly a new theory will emerge, they will examine it for a minute and use it for reference. All these theories originate from Western thinking, which has led the world for the past one or two hundred years. It’s not that we don’t want to let others stand in front and lead, we just need to cool down and see clearly — which road are they actually leading us to?

Friends, lets take a moment to look at the state of the entire society and world, is it this road? It indeed is. Look, today’s children are very competitive; a competitive mind is extremely narrow. When people’s hearts are small, each day will be very difficult due to the endless worries with gains and losses. With competition people will treat others viciously, which will become a war. Thisis why whenever we watch the news there is always news about war. If war could really solve problems then we could accept it. The question is — does war really solve problems? It can even make the problem more serious. Let’s look at the war that America is in, is there a happy ending? There is no happy ending. In the wars that America was in, not one had a happy ending. Of course we cannot blame the American people, after all they do not have the forefathers that the Chinese have, they do not have the thousand-year-old teachings of the sages nor have they studied the "Di Zi Gui". In the "Di Zi Gui" there is a saying; if people understand it and learn it they will not use war as method to solve problems. Whichsaying? "Use force to make people submissive, their hearts will have anger. Use reason to convince people, they will have nothing to object to."

If you use power and force to control people, how will they react? "Angry". Once they have the chance they will arise and retaliate against you. However if you "use reason to convince people", you are treating others with the genuine principles ofbehavior. You will have consideration for others, care for others and they will admire you, then they will take the next step and get along
with you. The sentence is this important, and China’s sages taught it in their first book on educating children. Now America is involved in so many wars, the entire world has been drawn into the shadow of war. In addition, what kind of influence does this have on their next generation? Is it good? It is a bad influence. Returning to the phrase, "For educators, what is done on top has results down below", if what is done above is good, they will learn well; if what is done on top is bad, they will learn badly. Now the state of education of America ’s youth is very
serious. In 2002 the education budget was raised from $50,000,000 to $750,000,000 in a flash it was increase threefold. Did it produce results? Parents, today people have the wrong ideas. What ideas? They think that spending money can solve a problem. In Chinese teachings, money is the last thing to consider, however, people nowadays move this final consideration to the beginning, so people today are thinking backwards. People in some country use money to solve problems. In a minute we will have psychoanalysis of the youth in these countries for you. We will see if in the end, after spending money, will there or won’t there be a good result. Ok, we will end class at that, thank you.

1 This question was posed to the audience, who later responded.

2 His name, Lixu Cai, sounds like the word for son-in-law, hence the misunderstanding.

3 An ancient text taught by the sages that outlined the standards for being a good student and child.

4 At funerals food is customarily placed on a table as an offering. After the funeral
the guests eat the food.

5 During these dynasties foreigners (Mongolian and Manchu respectively) ruled China