"Where the Way is, there the teacher is. Therefore a student need not be inferior to the teacher, nor the teacher superior to the student."
Think of one person you work with today, and find one thing worth learning from them. What comes to mind first?
A teacher's manifesto from a writer exiled for speaking truth to the emperor
Han Yu was a Tang dynasty prose master who led the 'Ancient Prose Movement,' valuing substance over ornate form, and is ranked first among the Eight Great Prose Masters of Tang and Song. In his day, scholars considered it shameful to learn from others, a trend he lamented in his essay 'On Teachers.'
In 819, when the emperor planned to welcome a relic of the Buddha's finger bone into the palace, Han Yu submitted a memorial opposing it, narrowly escaped execution, and was exiled to distant Chaozhou in the south. Even in exile, he is remembered for founding schools and teaching the local people—living out the role of a teacher himself.