Record of Teaching and Practice
Reply to Zhou Daotong
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
144 · Establishing Resolve in Daily Life
The two students Wu and Zeng arrived and gave a full account of your earnest devotion to the Way, Daotong. It greatly comforted my thoughts of you. Someone like you may truly be called firm in faith and fond of learning. Meeting amid mourning and illness, I could not discuss matters in detail with the two students. Yet both have purposes of their own and are willing to apply effort. Whenever I see them, I feel that they have advanced. On my side, I certainly cannot help feeling that I have failed to do justice to their long journey. On their side, however, they have perhaps not failed the intention with which they came so far.
As they were leaving, they presented this booklet to convey your regard and asked me to write a few words. Distracted and confused, I have nothing to say. I have therefore briefly offered a turn of explanation on several questions from your letter, as my reply. It is hastily done and far from detailed. The two students should be able to supply the rest by word of mouth.
Your letter says: “The work of daily life is simply ‘establishing resolve.’ Recently I have been testing your instructions in my own experience from time to time, and they become increasingly clear. Yet I cannot bear to be separated from friends even for a moment. If I can discuss and practice with friends, this resolve becomes more vigorous and expansive, and only then has a living vitality. If for three or five days I cannot discuss with friends, I feel it weaken; on meeting affairs I become stuck, and at times I forget it. Now, on days when there are no friends to discuss with, I simply sit quietly, read, or take leisurely, meditative walks. Everything my eyes encounter and every situation in which I place myself is used to nurture this resolve, and I feel considerable harmony and ease. Yet this is still not like gathering with friends for discussion, when the vital spirit flows and there is more living vitality. What further method should a person living alone, apart from the group, use to deal with this?”
This passage is enough to show what you have gained in your daily work, Daotong. In broad outline, the work is indeed to be applied in this way. Only see that there is no interruption. Once it becomes thoroughly practiced, your state of mind will again be different of itself. In general, the great, essential point in our learning is simply establishing resolve. The trouble you call “becoming stuck and forgetting” is also simply that resolve is not sufficiently genuine and earnest. People fond of sexual beauty never suffer from becoming stuck and forgetting in that pursuit. It is just a matter of their earnestness.
You yourself must be able to know your own pain and itching; you yourself must be able to rub and scratch where needed. Once you yourself know the pain and itching, you cannot but rub and scratch. Buddhists call this “skillful means and methods of entry.” You must adjust, weigh, and judge it for yourself. Others generally find it difficult to lend you strength, and there is no separate method to devise.
Reading note: In the incoming letter, the current source's 绕 and 遏 are read in context as increasing vigor and encountering affairs. The opening phrase about mourning and illness is kept as the circumstances of the meeting; the Chinese wording is unchanged.
145 · Thinking without Private Contrivance
Your letter says: “Shangcai once asked about ‘What thinking is there, what deliberating is there, in all under Heaven?’ Yichuan said: ‘There is this principle, but you have expressed it too early.’ In a student's practical work, one must indeed ‘always have something to attend to and not forget it.’ Yet one must also recognize the state of ‘What thinking, what deliberating?’ and consider the two together. If one does not recognize that state, there will be the defects of predetermining an outcome and forcing growth. If one recognizes ‘What thinking, what deliberating?’ but forgets the work of ‘always having something to attend to,’ I fear one will fall into nothingness. One must neither get stuck in having nor fall into nothing. Is this right or not?”
What you say is not far off; it is only that your realization is not yet complete. Shangcai's question and Yichuan's answer express Shangcai's and Yichuan's meanings. They differ somewhat from Confucius's original purport in the Appended Statements. When that text speaks of “What thinking, what deliberating?” it means that whatever is thought and deliberated is simply the one Heaven's principle: there is no separate thinking or deliberating. It does not mean having no thought or deliberation.
Hence it says: “The destination is the same, though the paths differ; the outcome is one, though deliberations are a hundred. What thinking is there, what deliberating is there, in all under Heaven?” Since it speaks of differing paths and a hundred deliberations, how could it mean having no thought or deliberation? The original constitution of the mind is Heaven's principle. Heaven's principle is only one: what additional thing can there be to think and deliberate about? Heaven's principle is originally still and unmoving; it is originally affected and thereupon penetrates all things.
Even if students applying effort think a thousand thoughts and deliberate ten thousand times, they seek only to restore its original substance and function. They do not use private intentions to arrange and think something up. Hence Mingdao says: “For the gentleman's learning, nothing is better than being open and utterly impartial, responding fittingly when things come.” To arrange and think things up through private intention is to “use cleverness for one's private self.”
“What thinking, what deliberating?” is precisely the practical work. For the sage it is spontaneous; for the student it is achieved through effort. Yichuan instead treated it as a sign of attainment, and therefore said it had been expressed too early. When he subsequently said, “Yet this is just where one can apply effort,” he had already recognized that his earlier words were incomplete. Lianxi's discussion of taking stillness as master has this same meaning. Your words, Daotong, are not without insight, yet you still have not quite avoided making two undertakings of it.
146 · Recognizing the Sage through One’s Own Knowing
Your letter says: “As soon as students understand how to do practical work, they must recognize the bearing of the sage. Once they recognize that bearing and make it their standard, they can apply effort on solid ground, avoid going wrong, and truly do the work of becoming a sage. I do not know whether this is right.”
People of the past have indeed said that one should first recognize the sage's bearing. Yet this, too, lacks a guiding starting point. The sage's bearing belongs to the sage: from where am I to recognize it? If one does not genuinely and earnestly apprehend one's own innate moral knowing, it is like weighing light and heavy with a scale that has no markings, or reflecting beauty and ugliness with a mirror whose surface has not been cleared. This is truly what is called measuring a gentleman's mind by a petty person's belly. How could one recognize the sage's bearing?
Your own innate moral knowing was originally the same as the sage's. If you apprehend your own innate moral knowing clearly, the sage's bearing no longer lies in the sage but in you. Master Cheng once said: “If you look at Yao and imitate his conduct, without his abundance of clear perception and penetrating wisdom, how can you move, turn, and comport yourself in accordance with ritual as he does?” He also said: “Only after the mind communicates with the Way can one distinguish right and wrong.” For now, tell me: where does communicating with the Way take place? Where do clear perception and penetrating wisdom come from?
Reading note: The source's 妍桤 is uncertain as written. The English reads the mirror's contrast as beauty and ugliness, following the evident comparison; it does not silently change the Chinese.
147 · Cultivation amid Affairs Is One Undertaking
Your letter says: “Refining oneself amid affairs: throughout a day, whether there is an affair to handle or not, one directs intention solely toward nourishing the original source. If an affair comes and affects one, or a response arises within oneself, once the mind is aware of it, how can one say there is no affair? One simply gathers the mind for a while in relation to the affair, broadly perceives that its principle should be such-and-such, and handles it just as when there is no affair, fully exerting one's mind and no more. Yet some things are handled well and some not well: why is this? Again, when many affairs arrive, they must be handled in sequence. Often my capacity and strength are insufficient and I become overwhelmed. Even if I struggle to rouse myself, my vital spirit already feels weakened. When this happens, I cannot avoid withdrawing fully into self-examination. I would rather leave an affair unfinished than fail to add further nourishment. What do you think?”
For you, Daotong, the work you describe is indeed to be applied in this way. Yet there are still departures and returns. In learning, a person spends a whole life doing just this one undertaking. From youth to old age, from morning to night, whether there is an affair to handle or not, one is only doing this one thing. This is what is meant by “always having something to attend to.”
If you say, “I would rather leave an affair unfinished than fail to add further nourishment,” you are still treating them as two undertakings. “Always have something to attend to; do not forget it and do not force its growth.” When affairs and things come, simply fully extend your mind's innate moral knowing in response. This is what is meant by “conscientiousness and sympathetic understanding are not far from the Way.”
Whenever there are cases of handling things well or not well, or troubles with exhaustion, confusion, and loss of sequence, these all come from being dragged along by blame and praise, gain and loss, and failing really to extend one's innate moral knowing. If you can really extend your innate moral knowing, only then will you see that what you ordinarily call good is not necessarily good; and what you call not good may instead turn out to be precisely your entanglement in blame and praise, gain and loss, injuring your own genuine knowing.
148 · Investigating Things Is the Work of Extending Knowing
Your letter says: “When I received your further instruction this spring on extending knowledge, I came to understand fairly well how to apply effort, and found it still simpler and easier than before. But I think that, when speaking of it to beginners, one must also include the meaning of investigating things, so that they know where to put their hands to work. Originally, extending knowledge and investigating things are applied together. It is only that beginners do not yet know how to begin applying effort; one has to speak to them of investigating things before they understand extending knowledge,” and so on.
Investigating things is the practical work of extending knowledge. If you understand extending knowledge, you already understand investigating things. If you do not understand investigating things, then you have never understood the work of extending knowledge either. Recently I discussed this in considerable detail in a letter to a friend. I am now sending a copy. Read it carefully and you should see for yourself.
149 · Criticism as a Teacher
Your letter says: “Those now disputing the merits of Zhu and Lu have still not stopped. I often tell friends: right learning has long been obscure, and for the present there is no need to waste mental effort contending over Zhu and Lu's rights and wrongs. Simply follow your two words, ‘establish resolve,’ in awakening people. If someone can truly discern this resolve and decide to understand this learning, that person is already largely clear. Even without a dispute over Zhu and Lu, such a person will be able to recognize the matter for oneself.
“I have also seen friends become angry whenever someone questions your words. That the two masters Zhu and Lu left so much dispute to later generations also shows that their work was not yet thoroughly mature: they too plainly suffered from becoming angry. Mingdao had no such defect. Look at his discussion with Wu Sheli about Jiefu's learning: ‘Convey all this to Jiefu for me. If it does not benefit him, it will certainly benefit me.’ How composed his bearing was! I once saw you quote these words in a letter as well. I wish all our friends could be like this. What do you think?”
This part of your discussion is very right indeed, very right indeed. I hope you will tell all our companions in purpose, Daotong: each of us should for the present discuss our own rights and wrongs, rather than Zhu and Lu's rights and wrongs.
To slander someone with words is a shallow slander. If we ourselves cannot embody the teaching in actual practice, but merely let it enter our ears and leave our mouths, noisily passing the days, that is slander through our own persons, and the slander is deep. As for everyone in the world who now criticizes me, if I can take their criticism and use it for good, they are all whetting, polishing, cutting, and refining me. On my side, there is nothing that is not an occasion for vigilance, self-examination, cultivation, and advancement in virtue. Someone of old said: “Those who attack my shortcomings are my teachers.” Can teachers be hated?
150 · Nature and Qi Are Not Two
Your letter says: “Someone cites Master Cheng: ‘Of what is prior to “human beings are still at birth,” nothing can be said. As soon as one speaks of nature, it is already not nature.’ Why can nothing be said? Why is it not nature? Hui'an answers: ‘Nothing can be said because there is not yet any nature to speak of; it is not nature because it can no longer be free of the admixture of one's qi endowment.’ I have not been able to understand either master's words. Whenever I reach this in reading, I am perplexed, and ask for instruction.”
In “life is what is called nature,” the word life is precisely the word qi. It is like saying “qi is nature.” Qi is nature: this is why “of what is prior to ‘human beings are still at birth,’ nothing can be said.” Yet as soon as one says “qi is nature,” one has already fallen to one side, and it is not the original source of nature.
Mencius's “nature is good” speaks from the original source. Yet the beginnings of the goodness of nature must first be seen in qi. Without qi, there would also be nothing to see. Compassion, shame and aversion, deference and yielding, and the sense of right and wrong are themselves qi.
Master Cheng says: “To discuss nature without discussing qi is incomplete; to discuss qi without discussing nature is unclear.” This, too, is said because students each recognize one side; he can only explain it in this way. If one clearly sees one's own nature, qi is nature and nature is qi. Originally there are no separate nature and qi to divide.
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