Record of Teaching and Practice
Reply to Ouyang Chongyi
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
168 · Hearing and Seeing as the Function of Knowing
Chongyi's letter says: “You say, Master: ‘The innate moral knowing of one's moral nature does not come from hearing and seeing. If one says, “Hear much, choose what is good and follow it; see much and remember it,” this is to seek exclusively in the secondary branches of hearing and seeing, and one has already fallen into a second rank.’ I think that, although innate moral knowing does not come into existence through hearing and seeing, students' knowing is nevertheless always brought forth through hearing and seeing. Being stuck in hearing and seeing is certainly wrong, yet hearing and seeing are also the function of innate moral knowing.
“Your words ‘fallen into a second rank’ are perhaps addressed to those who make hearing and seeing alone their learning. If one extends one's innate moral knowing and seeks through hearing and seeing, this too seems to be work in which knowing and acting are one. What do you think?”
Innate moral knowing does not come into existence through hearing and seeing, yet hearing and seeing are all the function of innate moral knowing. Thus innate moral knowing does not become stuck in hearing and seeing, but neither does it depart from hearing and seeing. Confucius says: “Do I possess knowledge? I possess none.” Outside innate moral knowing, there is no separate knowing. Hence extending innate moral knowing is the great guiding point of learning, the first principle in the sage's teaching of others. What is called seeking exclusively in the secondary branches of hearing and seeing means losing that guiding point and already falling into a second rank.
Among our companions in purpose recently, almost everyone knows the teaching of extending innate moral knowing, yet much of their practical work remains confused. It is precisely this question they have failed to ask. In general, the work of learning requires only that one's governing intention and guiding point be correct. If one's governing intention and guiding point make extending innate moral knowing their sole undertaking, then hearing much and seeing much are all work of extending innate moral knowing.
In daily life, hearing, seeing, responding, and exchanging may have a thousand beginnings and ten thousand threads, yet none is other than innate moral knowing issuing, functioning, and flowing forth. Remove hearing, seeing, responding, and exchanging, and there is no innate moral knowing to extend either. Thus there is only one undertaking.
If you say “extend one's innate moral knowing and seek through hearing and seeing,” the meaning of your words still cannot avoid making two. Although this differs somewhat from seeking exclusively in the secondary branches of hearing and seeing, in failing to grasp the purport of refinement and oneness they are the same.
“Hear much, choose what is good and follow it; see much and remember it”: since this speaks of choosing, and also of remembering, innate moral knowing has never failed to function within it. But if one's intention is directed exclusively toward choosing and remembering amid much hearing and much seeing, the guiding point has already been lost.
You should already see such matters clearly, Chongyi. Your question today precisely brings this learning to light, and is extremely beneficial among our companions in purpose. But if the meaning of the words is not transparent, a hair's breadth leads a thousand miles astray. It therefore cannot be left without precise examination.
169 · Distinguishing Reflection from Private Contrivance
Your letter says: “You say, Master: ‘When the Appended Statements speaks of “What thinking, what deliberating?” it means that whatever is thought and deliberated is simply Heaven's principle, with no separate thinking and deliberating. It does not mean having no thought or deliberation. The original constitution of the mind is Heaven's principle: what additional thing can there be to think and deliberate about? Even if students applying effort think a thousand thoughts and deliberate ten thousand times, they seek only to restore its original constitution. They do not use private intentions to arrange and think something up. To arrange and think things up in this way is to use cleverness for one's private self.’
“Students' obstructions generally consist either in sinking into emptiness and guarding silence, or in arranging and thinking things up. In the xin and ren years I, De, suffered from the first disease; recently I have also suffered from the second. Yet reflection, too, is innate moral knowing issuing into function. By what means does one distinguish it from arrangement through private intention? I fear mistaking a thief for my own child, remaining deluded without knowing it.”
“Thinking is called insight; insight makes for sagehood.” “The office of the mind is to think; by thinking, one obtains it.” How could thinking be dispensed with? Sinking into emptiness and guarding silence, and arranging and thinking things up, are precisely using cleverness for one's private self. In losing innate moral knowing, they are the same.
Innate moral knowing is where Heaven's principle is brightly manifest and responsively aware. Hence innate moral knowing is Heaven's principle, and thinking is innate moral knowing issuing into function. If a thought is the functioning of innate moral knowing, everything thought is Heaven's principle. Thinking that is innate moral knowing issuing into function is naturally clear, simple, and easy. Innate moral knowing can itself recognize this. Thinking that is arrangement through private intention is naturally confused, laborious, and disturbing. Innate moral knowing can itself distinguish this too.
As for whether thinking is right or wrong, perverse or correct, there is nothing that innate moral knowing does not itself know. The reason one mistakes a thief for one's child is precisely that the learning of extending knowledge is not clear, and one does not know to apprehend the matter through innate moral knowing.
170 · Appropriate Action, Rest, and the One Undertaking
Your letter also says: “You say, Master: ‘Learning is only one undertaking throughout one's life. Whether there is an affair to handle or not, it is only this one thing. If one says, “I would rather leave an affair unfinished than fail to add further nourishment,” one has divided it into two undertakings.’ I think that being aware that one's vital strength is weak and insufficient to finish an affair is innate moral knowing. Preferring to leave the affair unfinished and for the time being add rest and nourishment is extending knowledge. How does this become two undertakings?
“When changes and affairs arrive, their circumstances may not permit leaving them unfinished, while, although one's vital strength is weak, a little encouragement can still enable one to carry on. Then one may hold fast to resolve and use it to command qi. Yet in speech and movement one still has no strength, and after completing the affair one is extremely exhausted. Is this not close to doing violence to one's qi? Innate moral knowing certainly knows the relative importance, urgency, and lack of urgency here. But if one is pressed by the circumstances of affairs, how can one attend to vital strength? If one is constrained by vital strength, how can one attend to the circumstances of affairs? What should one do?”
The idea “I would rather leave an affair unfinished than fail to add further nourishment” is not without benefit when provisionally explained to beginners. But once it is regarded as two undertakings, a fault is present. Mencius speaks of always having something to attend to. Thus the gentleman's learning throughout life is only the one undertaking of accumulating rightness. Rightness means appropriateness. When the mind obtains its appropriateness, that is called rightness. If one can extend innate moral knowing, the mind obtains its appropriateness. Hence accumulating rightness, too, is only extending innate moral knowing.
In the gentleman's responses to ten thousand changes, when one should act, one acts; when one should stop, one stops; when one should live, one lives; when one should die, one dies. All weighing, adjusting, and judging is nothing other than extending one's innate moral knowing and seeking satisfaction within oneself. Hence “the gentleman acts according to the position one occupies” and “one's thoughts do not go outside one's position.” Anything that plans what one's strength cannot reach or forces what one's knowing cannot do cannot be called extending innate moral knowing. Yet all that “toils the sinews and bones, starves the body and flesh, empties one's means, frustrates and disorders one's actions, stirs the mind and makes nature enduring so as to increase what one cannot yet do” is a means of extending innate moral knowing.
To say “I would rather leave an affair unfinished than fail to add further nourishment” likewise presupposes a mind directed toward achievement and profit, calculating success and failure, advantage and disadvantage, and loving and hating, taking and rejecting among them. Thus one makes finishing the affair into one undertaking, and nourishment into another. This already contains the intention to approve the inner and disapprove the outer. It is using cleverness for one's private self; it is making rightness external; it has the disease of “what you do not obtain in the mind, do not seek in qi.” It is not the work of extending innate moral knowing in order to seek satisfaction within oneself.
You speak of “encouraging oneself to carry on, and being extremely exhausted after finishing the affair”; you also speak of “being pressed by affairs and constrained by vital strength.” All this happens because you have made two undertakings of it. In all the work of learning, oneness is sincerity and twoness is falsity. All these troubles arise because the intention to extend innate moral knowing lacks sincere oneness, genuineness, and earnestness.
The Great Learning says: “Making one's intention sincere is like hating a bad smell or loving beautiful appearance. This is called satisfaction within oneself.” Have you ever seen someone need encouragement to carry on hating a bad smell or loving beautiful appearance? Have you ever seen someone become extremely exhausted after completing that affair? Has there ever been pressure from the circumstances of affairs or constraint from vital strength in this? Here you can know where the disease comes from.
171 · Awareness without Suspicion
Your letter also says: “Human motives and schemes produce a hundred forms of deception. Meet them without suspicion and one is often deceived. Become aware of them and one oneself falls into anticipating and guessing. Anticipating deception is itself deception; guessing at untrustworthiness is itself a failure of trust. Yet being deceived is not awareness either. To be constantly aware in advance without anticipating or guessing—does this require innate moral knowing to be clear and transparent? Yet amid the slightest departures and returns, many turn away from awareness and join with deception.”
Being aware in advance without anticipating or guessing: Confucius said this because people of his time concentrated on anticipating deception and guessing at untrustworthiness, thereby falling into deception and untrustworthiness themselves. There were also people who did not anticipate or guess, but did not know the work of extending innate moral knowing and were therefore often deceived by others. Hence he made this statement. He was not teaching people to keep this as their intention and make it their sole wish to detect others' deception and untrustworthiness in advance.
Keeping that intention is precisely the practice of the suspicious, treacherous, and ungenerous people of later times. This one thought alone already makes one unable to enter the Way of Yao and Shun. Those who do not anticipate or guess and are deceived by others still do not thereby forfeit goodness; they simply are not as excellent as those who can extend their innate moral knowing and are naturally aware in advance. Your words “this requires innate moral knowing to be clear and transparent,” Chongyi, have already grasped the meaning. Yet this may be an insight reached by intelligence, and I fear it is not yet actual practice.
Innate moral knowing in people's minds is the same throughout ten thousand ages and fills the universe without difference. It knows without deliberating, is constantly easy and thereby knows danger; it is capable without learning, is constantly simple and thereby knows obstruction. It precedes Heaven, yet Heaven does not oppose it. If even Heaven does not oppose it, how much less will people, or spirits?
Those described as turning away from awareness and joining with deception may, though they do not anticipate deception in others, still not be free of self-deception; though they do not guess at others' untrustworthiness, they may not yet truly trust themselves. They may constantly have a mind seeking awareness in advance, without being able constantly to be aware within themselves. Having a mind constantly seeking awareness in advance already flows into anticipating and guessing, and is enough to obscure one's innate moral knowing. This is why turning away from awareness and joining with deception cannot yet be avoided.
The gentleman learns for oneself. One never worries that others will deceive oneself, but constantly refrains from deceiving one's own innate moral knowing. One never worries that others will fail to trust oneself, but constantly trusts one's own innate moral knowing. One never seeks advance awareness of others' deception and untrustworthiness, but constantly strives to be aware of one's own innate moral knowing.
Thus, without self-deception, innate moral knowing has no falsity and is sincere. With sincerity there is clarity. With self-trust, innate moral knowing has no perplexity and is clear. With clarity there is sincerity. Clarity and sincerity give birth to one another. Hence innate moral knowing is constantly aware and constantly illuminating. Constantly aware and illuminating, it is like a clear mirror hanging before one: whatever comes cannot conceal its beauty or ugliness.
Why? Without self-deception there is sincerity, and no room for deception. If deception is present, one is aware of it. With self-trust there is clarity, and no room for untrustworthiness. If untrustworthiness is present, one is aware of it. This is what is meant by being easy and thereby knowing danger, being simple and thereby knowing obstruction. It is what Zisi calls “utmost sincerity being like spirit and able to know beforehand.”
Yet Zisi's saying “like spirit” and “able to know beforehand” still speaks in terms of two. It extends the discussion to the effects of the effort to be sincere, and is still addressed to people unable to be aware in advance. Speaking from utmost sincerity itself, the wondrous functioning of utmost sincerity is what we call spirit: there is no need to say “like spirit.” With utmost sincerity, one “has no knowing, yet there is nothing one does not know.” There is no need to say “able to know beforehand.”
Reading note: Two clauses in the current source are uncertain: 尚亦不先为善 and 未能自欺. The English adopts the surrounding contrast—being deceived need not forfeit goodness, and not suspecting others does not ensure freedom from self-deception—without changing either Chinese clause. The mirror's anomalous 妍㜐 is read as beauty and ugliness through the same mirror comparison in the preceding Lu letter.
Use ← / → or swipe left or right to change chapters