Confucius

            
             As a ruler I would be most inclined to follow Confucianism because it is not so much a religion in a traditional sense, but a set of rules for human interaction. It is a system of social ethics concerned with the formal, external aspects of life. Conf ianism is humanism, a philosophy or attitude that is concerned with human beings, their achievements and interests, rather than with the abstract beings and problems of theology. In Confucianism man is the center of the universe: man cannot live alone, ut with other human beings. For human beings, the ultimate goal is individual happiness. The necessary condition to achieve happiness is through peace. To obtain peace, Confucius discovered human relations consisting of the five relationships which a based on love and duties. War has to be abolished: and the Great Unity of the world should be developed. Confucius did not intend to found a new religion, but to interpret and revive the unnamed religion of the Zhou dynasty, under which many people thought the ancient system of religious rule was bankrupt; why couldn't the gods prevent the social up heavel The burning issue of the day was: If it is not the ancestral and nature spirits, what then is the basis of a stable, unified and enduring social order? The dominant view of the day was that strict law and statecraft were the bases of sound policy. C fucius, however believed that the basis lay in the Zhou religion, in its rituals. He interpreted these not as sacrifices asking for the blessings of the gods, but as ceremonies performed by human agents and embodying the civilized and cultured patterns f behavior developed through generations of human wisdom. They embodied , for him, the ethical core of Chinese society. Moreover, Confucius applied the term "ritual" to actions beyond the formal sacrifices and religious ceremonies to include social ri als. He saw these time-honored and traditional rituals as the basis of human civilization, and he felt that only a civilized society could have a stable, unified and enduring social order.