Confucius: What have you done for me lately, and why? Confucius has said, "In any matter, if one doesn't think far into the future, trouble will be near at hand." The entire teaching of Confucius was practical and ethical, rather than religious. He claimed to be a restorer of ancient morality and held that proper outward acts based on filial piety, propriety, integrity, and righteousness constitute the whole of human duty. Embedded deep into Chinese tradition, Confucian thought has survived for around 2500 years, not as a dead or unused philosophy but as the primary architect of several East Asian cultures. The point of this paper will be to answer eight basic questions surrounding the teachings of Confucius in the hopes of obtaining understanding and knowledge of his teachings, and to question the problematic feasibility of Confucius' teaching in my own modern, western world. The modern relevance of Confucian teachings will show if he himself looked far enough into the future to avoid trouble. What is it to be a conscious human being? The words of Confucius, as recorded by his disciples, use the word conscious not only as 'not being asleep' but as primarily having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence. An individual who can undergo an entire day without learning, concern for others, or anxiety over misconduct is considered unconscious. Consciousness is the ability to understand your effect on the world around you, both socially and physically. "Humanity is more important for people than water or fire. I have seen people walk through water and fire and die. I have never seen someone tread the path of humanity and perish," said Confucius. This statement shows the goal of Confucian teachings, to reach an ethic above natural human nature no matter your social statue. Anthroposophical view of the human being - Threefold and fourfold view Rudolf Steiner often described the human being as consisting of an eternal spirit, an evolving soul and a temporal body, giving a detailed analysis of each of these three realms. Spirit: anthroposophical teachings describe the human spirit as eternal yet becoming progressively more individualized and consciously experienced. Steiner believed that the human being passes between stages of existence, incarnating into an earthly body, living a life, leaving the body behind and entering into the spiritual worlds before returning to be born again into a new life on earth. In earthly life, the individuality or ego awakens to self-consciousness through its experience of its reflection in the deeds and suffering of a physical body. Soul: We also have a framework of consciousness that includes our set feelings, concepts and intentions. As each human soul evolves through its experiences, the earth itself and civilization as a whole also evolve; thus, new types of experience are available at each successive incarnation. Body: Steiner uses the term body to describe the aspects of human existence that endure for a single lifetime. The physical body is the most obvious of these. Permeating our physical existence are forces of life, growth and metamorphosis that maintain and develop the physical body; as it is an aspect of a lifetime that falls away after death, Steiner called this the life or etheric body. Steiner called that which receives sensory impressions the body of consciousness or sentient body.