Understanding The Great Learning DaXue in One Minute

We covered The Doctrine of the Mean ZhongYong and shall cover the next book Da Xue "The Great Learning" here. The book is very organized and is divided into One Jing 经Chapter and 10 Chuan 传 Chapters. The Jing chapter states the purpose and the outline for the book. Each of the Chuan Chapter cover a concept in the Jing Chapter. Hence, it is very easy to present the whole book of "The Great Learning" in a mind-map as follow:

Mind-map of The Great Learning DaXue

"The Great Learning" covers three objectives and eight steps to achieve the objectives. The three objective begin with glorifying righteous conduct/behavior, then the transformation of people into new people, so that they can attain the utmost goodness and create an ideal world of peace and prosperity.

Transformation begins with self and extends over to family, country and world. Change occurs from within and then extends to the external world of family, nation and world. Develop of Self begins

1. Studying The Things in our universe.
2. Develop Knowledge and Insights of how things work - the principles.
3. Have Sincerity and Integrity.
4. A Right unprejudiced Heart that judges fairly and objectively.
5. A High Moral Character.
   Once we can take control of ourselves, we can then extend outwards to influence, in order, the following:
6. Lead the Family
7. Govern the Country
8. Rule the World with peace.

Further details of the 8 steps can be found in the following mind-map:

The Three Objectives:

The Eight Steps:

First 5 on Internal Character Development:

And the 3 External Steps:

Lim Liat Copyrighted 2011 March

Update: 10 Jan 2012

Dao School View on Leadership Development

This Confucius' Ru School teaching 内修外治 (inward development and outward ruling) is very similar to Lao Zi' s Dao School 内圣外王  (inward saint and outward king). It was from Zhuang Zi 《庄子·天下篇》. You can click the link to get the English translation. The keys are:

1. To build inner character, remember the root sources, the attributes, the truth, virtues, the ways, handling of changes, love, righteousness, manners of behavior, harmony of music.
2. To manage the people, use laws, right jobs for right people, evidence based, careful decision making, providing for living (economic development for the people), storing, care for the old, weak and orphans.

So, on this aspect of leadership, "character development is key to leading others", we have the agreement of Ru and Dao school.

Lao Zi's also has a measure for the levels of leadership. See Levels of Leadership - Can We Measure Leadership?

Lim Liat (C) 2011-2012