Confucius say: I can change your life, How has a book of of ancient Chinese wisdom become a self-help guide, selling in millions?

 By Rob Sharp from The Independent.

"You sit cross-legged on a bamboo mat, soften your breathing and attempt to extract solace from the wisdom of one of the world's great philosophers. You read aloud from a recent translation of his work: "Learning from books as we grow from childhood to old age, from this you will learn the ability to hold on to happiness." Hang on a minute. Surely there's more to understanding life than that?

Yet since it was launched in China in 2007, the self-help book Confucius from the Heart has sold more than 10 million copies there. A simplification of the Analects of Confucius, a collection of the great mind's most famous writings, the sagacious tracts have been rendered digestible by Yu Dan, a 42-year-old professor at China's Beijing Normal University. The book began in 2006 as a series of lectures by Yu Dan, broadcast on Chinese Central Television, and rapturously received. Now the it's been translated and is available across the globe, and is about to be published here in paperback. So how has a book of 2,500-year-old philosophy, subtitled "Ancient Wisdom for Today's World", hooked in such a great number of modern readers (and in the process trounced its critics, who argue it is a perversion of an ancient wisdom)?"