Record of Teaching and Practice

Reply to Vice Minister Luo Zheng'an

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172 · Learning through One’s Person and Mind I bow my head and write: Yesterday you kindly instructed me concerning the Great Learning. As the boat was leaving in haste, I could not give you a reply. This morning, traveling on the river, I have a little leisure and have taken out your letter to read again. I fear that after reaching Gan, personal affairs will once more crowd upon me, so I first set down the outline in order to ask your further instruction. You write: “Seeing the Way is certainly difficult, but embodying the Way is more difficult still. The Way is indeed not easy to make clear, and learning must indeed be discussed. I fear one should not rest content with what one has seen and take it as the ultimate standard.” How fortunate, how fortunate! How have I come to hear these words? How would I dare take my own view as the ultimate standard and rest content with it? I am precisely thinking of seeking discussion and clarification of the Way throughout the world. Yet over these past several years there have been those who hear my account and condemn and ridicule it, those who revile and criticize it, and those who set it aside as not worth comparing, discussing, or debating. Will they be willing to teach me? Will they be willing to teach me, repeatedly explaining and instructing, with compassionate concern lest they fail to rescue and correct me in time? Thus, among those in the world who care for me, surely none has a mind as deep and devoted as yours. How grateful I must be! “Virtue not cultivated, learning not discussed”: Confucius regarded these as causes for concern. Yet the world's students, once they can pass on and practice a little textual explanation, all take themselves to know learning, and no longer seek what is called discussing learning. How sad! The Way must be embodied before it is seen. It is not that one first sees the Way and afterward adds the work of embodying it. The Way must be learned before it becomes clear. It is not that, outside discussing learning, there is some further undertaking called making the Way clear. Yet there are two kinds of discussing learning in the world. Some discuss it through their person and mind; some through mouth and ear. Discussing it through mouth and ear means conjecturing, measuring, and seeking amid shadows and echoes. Discussing it through person and mind means understanding one's actions and examining one's practice, really possessing it in oneself. Know this, and you know the learning of Confucius's school. 173 · The Old Great Learning and the Judgment of the Mind You say that my “restoration of the old text of the Great Learning takes people's learning to require only seeking within, while Cheng and Zhu's account of investigating things cannot escape seeking outside; therefore you removed Master Zhu's division into chapters and cut out the commentary he supplied.” I would not dare proceed in that way. How could learning have an inside and an outside? The old text of the Great Learning is simply the old text handed down in Confucius's school. Master Zhu suspected that it contained omissions and errors, and so corrected, supplemented, and rearranged it. I, for my part, think that originally it contained no omissions or errors, and simply follow it entirely as it stood. If the fault is excessive trust in Confucius, I can be charged with that. It is not that I deliberately removed Master Zhu's chapter divisions and cut out his commentary. Learning values obtaining the truth in one's mind. If, seeking it in one's mind, one finds it wrong, then even if the words came from Confucius, one would not dare take them as right. How much less if they came from someone who did not equal Confucius? If, seeking it in one's mind, one finds it right, then even if the words came from an ordinary person, one would not dare take them as wrong. How much less if they came from Confucius? Moreover, the old text has been transmitted for several thousand years. Reading its words now, we find them clear and intelligible. Considering its practical work, we find it simple, easy, and suited to people. On what evidence could one determine that this passage must belong there, that passage must belong here, that this part is missing in a particular way, and that part must be supplied in a particular way, and then go on to correct, supplement, and rearrange it? Would this not make one attach weight to turning one's back on Zhu, but little weight to departing from Confucius? 174 · The Detailed Work Is a Single Affair You write: “If one must insist that learning does not depend on seeking outside, but should take looking back and examining within as its sole task, then what would the four characters ‘rectify the mind and make intention sincere’ fail to cover? Why, at the very entrance, trouble people with a whole section of practical work called investigating things?” Indeed, indeed! If we speak of the essential point, the two characters ‘cultivate the person’ are enough. Why add ‘rectify the mind’? The two characters ‘rectify the mind’ are enough. Why add ‘make intention sincere’? The two characters ‘make intention sincere’ are enough. Why add ‘extend knowledge’ and ‘investigate things’? It is precisely that the work is detailed and closely integrated, while in its essential point it is only one undertaking. This is why it is the learning of refinement and oneness. Here is exactly what must be thought through. Principle has no inside and outside; nature has no inside and outside; therefore learning has no inside and outside. Discussing, practicing, debating, and examining have never failed to be inward. Looking back and examining within have never discarded the outward. To say that learning must depend on seeking outside is to take one's own nature as having an outside. This is making rightness external; it is the use of contrived cleverness. To say that looking back and examining within means seeking inwardly is to take one's own nature as having an inside. This is having a separate self; it is private self-concern. Both fail to know that nature has no inside and outside. Hence it is said: “Refine rightness and enter into spirit, in order to extend its use; make use beneficial and settle the person, in order to exalt virtue.” And: “It is the virtue of nature, the Way that joins inner and outer.” From this the learning of investigating things can be known. Investigating things is where the Great Learning actually puts one's hands to work. From beginning to end, from first learning through sagehood, there is only this work. It is not merely a section of work undertaken at the entrance. Rectifying the mind, making intention sincere, extending knowledge, and investigating things are all means of cultivating the person. Investigating things is the ground where the application of effort can be seen day by day. Thus investigating things means rectifying the things of one's mind, the things of one's intention, and the things of one's knowing. Rectifying the mind means rectifying the mind pertaining to those things. Making intention sincere means making sincere the intention pertaining to those things. Extending knowledge means extending the knowing pertaining to those things. How could there be any division of inner and outer, this and that? There is only one principle. Speaking of its concentrated gathering, we call it nature. Speaking of the governing mastery of that concentrated gathering, we call it mind. Speaking of the issuing movement of that governing mastery, we call it intention. Speaking of the lucid awareness of that issuing movement, we call it knowing. Speaking of the affecting and responding of that lucid awareness, we call it things. Thus, speaking with reference to things, we call the work investigating or rectifying; with reference to knowing, extending; with reference to intention, making sincere; with reference to mind, rectifying. What is rectified is this; what is made sincere is this; what is extended is this; what is investigated is this. All are what is called exhausting principle in order fully to realize nature. There is no principle in the world outside nature, and no thing outside nature. The obscurity of learning comes entirely from the world's Confucian scholars taking principle as external and things as external. They do not know that Mencius once rejected the doctrine that rightness is external, and even inherit and fall into it without realizing it. Is this not another case of something that resembles truth and is therefore difficult to make clear? It cannot be left unexamined! 175 · What the Objections Presuppose All the reasons you have for doubting my account of investigating things must come from taking it to approve the inner and disapprove the outer; to occupy itself exclusively with looking back and examining within while discarding the work of discussion, practice, debate, and examination; to fix its intention on the simplicity of the guiding outline and original source while neglecting the detail of branches, measures, and particulars; or to sink into the one-sidedness of withering, deadness, emptiness, and silence, without doing full justice to the changing principles of things and human affairs. If it really were like this, it would not merely be an offense against the sages' school and against Master Zhu. It would be a perverse doctrine deluding the people, betraying the Way and disturbing what is correct. Anyone would have the right to condemn it—how much more someone of your integrity! If it really were like this, anyone in the world with a slight understanding of textual explanations, who had heard the remaining teachings of earlier philosophers, would know it was wrong—how much more someone of your clear insight! Everything I call investigating things embraces and includes Master Zhu's nine statements within it. It is only that there is an essential point in how one does it, and its application differs. This is precisely what is called a hair's breadth of difference. Yet a hair's breadth of difference becomes an error of a thousand miles, and it begins here. It must be distinguished. 176 · A Public Way and Disagreement with Master Zhu Mencius rejected Yang and Mo as going so far as to leave people “without father and without ruler.” Those two were also worthy men of their time. Had I been born in Mencius's age, I might well have regarded them as worthy. Mozi's impartial love was practicing benevolence to excess; Yangzi's concern for oneself was practicing rightness to excess. Were their doctrines so extreme in extinguishing principle and disordering the constant relationships that they could delude the world? Yet in the abuses to which their teachings flowed, Mencius compared them to birds and beasts and alien peoples. This is what is meant by killing the world and later generations through a teaching. As for the abuses of learning in the present age, should we call them learning benevolence to excess? Learning rightness to excess? Or learning the absence of benevolence and rightness to excess? I do not know how they compare with floods and savage beasts. Mencius says: “Do I delight in disputation? I have no choice.” The ways of Yang and Mo filled the world. In Mencius's time, the world's reverence and trust in Yang and Mo can have been no less than today's exaltation of Master Zhu's teaching. Yet Mencius alone kept speaking insistently among them. Ah, how pitiable! Master Han says: “The harm of Buddhism and Laozi is worse than that of Yang and Mo.” Han Yu's worthiness did not equal Mencius's. Mencius could not save things before their ruin, yet Han Yu wanted to make them whole after their ruin. He too failed to measure his strength, and one sees him in personal danger, with no one to rescue him, even unto death. Alas! Someone like me fails still more to measure his strength. Indeed, I see myself in personal danger, with no one to rescue me, even unto death. When everyone is laughing merrily, one alone sheds tears and sighs. When the whole world proceeds without concern, one alone worries, with aching head and furrowed brow. If this is not madness and loss of mind, there must surely be great suffering hidden within. Who but someone of the utmost benevolence in the world could perceive it? My compilation Master Zhu's Settled Conclusions in His Later Years was likewise something I could not avoid doing. As to the earlier and later dates of the writings included, I truly failed to investigate some of them. Although they need not all come from his later years, many certainly do. Yet my main intention was to make adjustments and accommodations in a careful, indirect way, giving greatest weight to clarifying this learning. Throughout my life I had revered Master Zhu's teachings like divine guidance, like yarrow stalks and tortoise shells. Suddenly to turn in the opposite direction was something my mind truly could not bear. Thus I had no alternative but to do this. “Those who know me say my mind is troubled; those who do not know me ask what I seek.” Being unable to bear contradicting Master Zhu is my original intention. Being unable to avoid contradicting him is because the Way is indeed like this. “Without straightforwardness, the Way is not made manifest.” You speak of my “decisively differing from Master Zhu.” Would I dare deceive my own mind? The Way is the common Way of all under Heaven; learning is the common learning of all under Heaven. It is not something Master Zhu can possess privately. It is not something Confucius can possess privately. It is common to the world, and one simply speaks of it impartially. Thus, if what is said is right, even if it differs from oneself, it benefits oneself. If what is said is wrong, even if it agrees with oneself, it only harms oneself. What benefits oneself, one must welcome; what harms oneself, one must dislike. Therefore, although my present discussion may differ from Master Zhu, it is not necessarily something he would fail to welcome. “The gentleman's errors are like eclipses of the sun and moon; when he corrects them, everyone looks up to him.” But “the petty person is certain to dress up an error.” Unworthy though I am, I certainly dare not serve Master Zhu with a petty person's mind. 177 · What Paper and Brush Cannot Fully Explain The several hundred words of your instruction, returning to the matter repeatedly, all arise from not yet fully understanding my account of investigating things. If my account becomes clear, those several hundred words can all become free of obstruction without waiting for further argument and explanation. Thus I dare not now go through every detail and add the discourtesy of tiresome minutiae. Yet unless my account is set out face to face and analyzed by word of mouth, it certainly cannot be made entirely clear through paper and brush either. Reading note: The mouth-shaped 囗 in 囗析 is read as oral explanation from the phrase's contrast with paper and brush. The Chinese source is unchanged. 178 · Gratitude without Abandoning Sincere Conviction Ah! Your efforts to guide and enlighten me may truly be called earnest, thorough, detailed, and exact. Could anyone's care for me equal yours? Although I am exceedingly foolish and lowly, could I fail to know how to feel gratitude, engrave it within, and respectfully take it to heart? Yet I do not dare suddenly to abandon what I sincerely hold true within and merely yield to receiving your words. Precisely in this, I dare not fail your deep care, and am also thinking of how to repay it. At the end of autumn, when I return east, I must seek a meeting with you to complete my request. By all means continue your instruction to the end.

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