Record of Teaching and Practice
Reply to Lu Yuanjing
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151 · Illumination Is Not Agitation
Your letter says: “As I begin practical work, I find that this mind is never at rest. The deluded mind certainly moves, but the illuminating mind also moves. Since the mind is constantly moving, there is not a moment when it pauses.”
It is because you deliberately seek tranquility that you become less and less tranquil. The deluded mind is indeed in motion; the illuminating mind is not in motion. Constant illumination is constant movement and constant stillness. This is how Heaven and Earth endure without ceasing. The illuminating mind certainly illuminates; even in the deluded mind there is illumination. Because its being is not divided, its generation of things never ceases. If there were a moment's pause, there would be cessation, and it would not be the learning of utmost sincerity without cessation.
152 · Innate Moral Knowing Has No Beginning of Its Presence
Your letter says that “innate moral knowing also has a point at which it arises,” and so forth. Perhaps you did not hear this accurately. Innate moral knowing is the original constitution of the mind, what I called constant illumination above. The original constitution of the mind neither arises nor fails to arise.
Even when deluded thoughts issue forth, innate moral knowing is never absent. It is only that people do not know to preserve it, and so at times let it go. Even amid the utmost darkness and obstruction, innate moral knowing is never without clarity. It is only that people do not know to examine it, and so at times it is obscured. Although at times it is let go, its constitution has in fact never been absent: simply preserve it. Although at times it is obscured, its constitution has in fact never been without clarity: simply examine it.
If one says that genuine knowing also has a point at which it arises, this means there are times when it is absent. That is not what is meant by its original constitution.
153 · Refinement and Oneness in Principle and Qi
Your letter says: “Does our earlier discussion of refinement and oneness concern the work of becoming a sage?”
The word jing in “refinement and oneness” is spoken of with reference to principle; the word jing in “vital spirit” is spoken of with reference to qi. Principle is the coherent order of qi; qi is the operation of principle. Without coherent order there can be no operation; without operation there would also be no means of seeing what is called its coherent order.
Refinement is refinement; refinement is clarity; refinement is oneness; refinement is spirit; refinement is sincerity. Oneness is refinement; oneness is clarity; oneness is spirit; oneness is sincerity. Originally these are not two undertakings. But the accounts of later Confucian scholars and those of people who nourish life each become stuck on one side, and so do not serve one another.
Although the earlier discussion of refinement and oneness arose because you, Yuanjing, cared about nurturing your vital spirit, the work of becoming a sage in fact does not lie outside this either.
Reading note: The repeated “refinement is refinement” follows the current source's 精则精. The discussion retains the different uses of jing rather than making principle and qi into separate substances.
154 · Spirit, Qi, and Essence Are Not Separate Locations
Your letter says: “Original spirit, original qi, and original essence must each have a place in which it is lodged and stored and from which it arises. There are also the essence of true yin and the qi of true yang,” and so forth.
Innate moral knowing is one. Speaking of its wondrous functioning, we call it spirit. Speaking of its flowing circulation, we call it qi. Speaking of its concentrated gathering, we call it essence. How could it be sought through shapes, images, directions, and locations?
The essence of true yin is the mother of the qi of true yang; the qi of true yang is the father of the essence of true yin. Yin is rooted in yang, and yang is rooted in yin. These, too, are not two. If my account of innate moral knowing is clear, all matters of this kind can be understood without further words. Otherwise, the “three passes,” “seven reversals,” “nine returns,” and such things mentioned in your letter will provide endless further occasions for doubt.
155 · No Knowing outside Substance and Function
Your letter says: “Innate moral knowing is the original constitution of the mind: what is called the goodness of nature, the center before feelings are aroused, the constitution that is still and unmoving, and openness and utter impartiality. Why, then, can ordinary people not achieve it, but have to wait for learning? Since being centered, still, and impartial are assigned to the mind's constitution, they must be innate moral knowing. Yet when I examine my mind, its knowing is always good, while centeredness, stillness, and utter impartiality are not actually present. Could innate moral knowing stand apart, beyond substance and function?”
Nature is good without exception, and therefore knowing is good without exception. Innate moral knowing is precisely the center before feelings are aroused, precisely the original constitution that is open and utterly impartial, still and unmoving. Everyone possesses it alike. But people cannot avoid being darkened and obscured by material desires, and must therefore learn in order to remove that darkness and obscuration. Yet not the slightest addition or subtraction can ever be made to the original constitution of innate moral knowing.
That knowing is always good, while centeredness, stillness, and utter impartiality are not yet whole, means only that darkness and obscuration have not been entirely removed and preservation is not yet pure. Since substance is the substance of innate moral knowing, function is the function of innate moral knowing. How could there again be something standing apart, beyond substance and function?
156 · Stillness without Deadness
Your letter says: “Master Zhou speaks of ‘taking stillness as master.’ Master Cheng says, ‘Settled in movement, settled in stillness.’ You say, ‘Settledness is the original constitution of the mind.’ This stillness and settledness certainly do not mean seeing and hearing nothing, thinking and doing nothing. They must mean constantly knowing and preserving, constantly taking principle as master. Yet constantly knowing and preserving, constantly taking principle as master, are plainly movement, something already aroused. Why call this stillness? Why call it the original constitution? Does this stillness and settledness perhaps run through both the movement and the stillness of the mind?”
Principle has no movement. Constantly knowing and preserving, constantly taking principle as master, is precisely what is meant by seeing and hearing nothing, thinking and doing nothing. Seeing and hearing nothing, thinking and doing nothing, does not mean being withered wood or dead ashes. Seeing, hearing, thinking, and doing are wholly one with principle, without there ever being any deliberate fixing upon seeing, hearing, thinking, or doing. This is movement without ever having moved. It is what is meant by “settled in movement, settled in stillness” and “substance and function have one source.”
157 · Movement and Stillness Cannot Divide the Mind
Your letter says: “Does this mind's constitution before feelings are aroused lie before their arousal? Does it lie within their arousal as their master? Or is it an undivided constitution with no before and after, inner and outer? When we speak of the mind's movement and stillness, do we chiefly mean having an affair to handle or having none? Do we chiefly mean being still or being affected and penetrating in response? Or do we chiefly mean following principle or following desire?
“If following principle is stillness and following desire is movement, this cannot make sense of ‘there is stillness in movement and movement in stillness; movement reaches its utmost and becomes still, stillness reaches its utmost and moves.’ If having an affair and responding to it is movement, while having no affair and being still is stillness, this cannot make sense of ‘movement without movement, stillness without stillness.’ If what is not yet aroused lies before what is already aroused, so that stillness gives birth to movement, this would mean that utmost sincerity has interruptions and that the sage has to return after a departure, which is again unacceptable.
“If what is not yet aroused lies within what is already aroused, should both what is not yet aroused and what is already aroused take stillness as master? Or is the unaroused still, and the aroused in movement? Or do both the unaroused and the aroused have neither movement nor stillness? Or do both have both movement and stillness? Please instruct me.”
The center before feelings are aroused is innate moral knowing. It has no before and after, inner and outer, but is an undivided whole. With reference to having an affair to handle or having none, one may speak of movement and stillness; innate moral knowing makes no division between having an affair and having none. With reference to being still or being affected and penetrating in response, one may speak of movement and stillness; innate moral knowing makes no division between being still and being affected and penetrating. Movement and stillness are the circumstances one meets at a given time. The original constitution of the mind certainly makes no division between movement and stillness.
Principle has no movement; movement in this sense is desire. If one follows principle, even amid responses to ten thousand changes one has never moved. If one follows desire, even with the mind withered into a single fixed thought one has never been still. What further doubt is there about “stillness in movement and movement in stillness”?
Having an affair and responding to it can certainly be called movement, yet what is still has never increased. Having no affair and being still can certainly be called stillness, yet the capacity to be affected and penetrate in response has never diminished. What further doubt is there about “movement without movement and stillness without stillness”? Since there is no before and after, inner and outer, but an undivided whole, the doubt about utmost sincerity having interruptions requires no further explanation.
What is not yet aroused lies within what is already aroused, but there has never been a separate unaroused thing residing within what is already aroused. What is already aroused lies within what is not yet aroused, but there has never been a separate aroused thing residing within what is not yet aroused. Thus movement and stillness have never been absent, yet the mind cannot be divided by movement and stillness.
Whenever we read the words of the ancients, we must use our understanding to meet their intention and grasp their main purport. If we insist on getting stuck in the wording, then “not a single one was left” would mean there really were no surviving people of Zhou. If Master Zhou's account of “stillness reaching its utmost and moving” is not read well, it too cannot escape trouble. His meaning comes from saying that “the Supreme Ultimate moves and generates yang, and is still and generates yin.” The Supreme Ultimate's principle of generation upon generation has wondrous functioning without cessation, while its constant constitution does not change.
The Supreme Ultimate's generation upon generation is the generation upon generation of yin and yang. Within this generating, we point to its wondrous functioning without cessation and call it movement, call it the generation of yang. This does not mean that movement generates only yang. Within this generating, we point to its constant, unchanging constitution and call it stillness, call it the generation of yin. This does not mean that yin is generated only after stillness. If yin really were generated only after stillness, and yang only after movement, then yin and yang, movement and stillness, would each be a sharply separate thing.
Yin and yang are one qi: the contraction and expansion of one qi make yin and yang. Movement and stillness are one principle: the concealment and manifestation of one principle make movement and stillness. Spring and summer may be called yang and movement, yet they are never without yin and stillness. Autumn and winter may be called yin and stillness, yet they are never without yang and movement. This same ceaselessness in spring and summer, this same ceaselessness in autumn and winter, may all be called yang and movement. This same constant constitution in spring and summer, this same constant constitution in autumn and winter, may all be called yin and stillness.
From the great periods called yuan, hui, yun, and shi, through years, months, days, and hours, down to the smaller divisions called ke, miao, hu, and wei, none is otherwise. This is what is meant by movement and stillness having no fixed beginning, yin and yang having no starting point. Those who know the Way recognize it silently; words cannot exhaust it. If one merely drags at the wording and clings to sentences, making comparisons and imitations, this is what is called the mind being turned by the Lotus Sutra, rather than turning the Lotus Sutra.
158 · Feelings Do Not Lie outside Innate Moral Knowing
Your letter says: “I have tried this in my own mind. When joy, anger, worry, or fear is stirred, even if the agitation of qi is extreme, as soon as my mind's innate moral knowing becomes aware, it dissolves and is checked. Sometimes it is stopped at the beginning, sometimes controlled in the middle, sometimes regretted afterward. Thus innate moral knowing always seems to occupy a leisurely place with nothing to do, acting as master, as if it took no part in joy, anger, worry, or fear. Why is this?”
Knowing this, you know the center before feelings are aroused and the constitution that is still and unmoving, together with the harmony of feelings aroused in due measure and the wonder of being affected and thereupon penetrating all things. Yet there is still a fault in saying that “innate moral knowing always seems to occupy a leisurely place with nothing to do.” Although innate moral knowing does not become stuck in joy, anger, worry, or fear, joy, anger, worry, and fear do not lie outside innate moral knowing either.
159 · What Can Be Vigilant Is Innate Moral Knowing
Your letter says: “Yesterday you identified innate moral knowing with the illuminating mind. I think innate moral knowing is the original constitution of the mind, whereas the illuminating mind is the work people apply: the mind of caution and apprehension, still something like thinking. Why, then, identify caution and apprehension with innate moral knowing?”
What can be cautious and apprehensive is innate moral knowing.
Reading note: The letter's repeated 恐催 is read through the reply's 恐惧 as apprehension. The source wording is unchanged.
160 · Neither Two Minds nor Two Illuminations
Your letter says: “You also said, ‘The illuminating mind is not in motion.’ Do you call it still because it follows principle? And ‘Even in the deluded mind there is illumination’: do you mean that its innate moral knowing has never ceased to be present and clear within it, and that whatever in seeing, hearing, speech, and movement does not exceed the standard is all Heaven's principle?
“Yet since you call it the deluded mind, what can be called illumination in the deluded mind would be called delusion in the illuminating mind. How is delusion different from cessation? I do not understand borrowing the illumination of delusion to continue the ceaselessness of utmost sincerity. Please enlighten me again.”
“The illuminating mind is not in motion” means that its issuing forth is the spontaneity of the original constitution's lucid awareness, without there ever being a movement imposed upon it. Such an imposed movement is delusion. “Even in the deluded mind there is illumination” means that the spontaneity of its original constitution's lucid awareness has never been absent within it; there is only this imposed movement. Without such movement, there is illumination.
Neither delusion nor illumination: this does not mean taking delusion for illumination or illumination for delusion. To make the illuminating mind illumination and the deluded mind delusion is still to have delusion and illumination. Having delusion and illumination still makes two. With two there is cessation. With neither delusion nor illumination there are not two; without two there is no cessation.
161 · The Private Wish Hidden in Seeking Tranquility
Your letter says: “The essentials of nourishing life are clearing the mind and reducing desires. Clearing the mind and reducing desires complete the work of becoming a sage. Yet when desires are few, the mind clears of itself. Clearing the mind does not mean abandoning human affairs and living alone to seek stillness. It means wanting this mind to be purely Heaven's principle, without the least selfishness of human desires.
“Now, if I wish to do this work and overcome human desires whenever they arise, the root of the disease remains: it has scarcely been extinguished in the east before it is born in the west. But if I wish to scrape away, strip off, and wash clean before the various desires have sprouted, there is nowhere to apply effort, and I only make this mind less clear. Moreover, searching out desires before they have sprouted in order to remove them is like leading a dog up into the hall and then driving it out. This is still more unacceptable.”
To insist that this mind be purely Heaven's principle, without the least selfishness of human desires, is the work of becoming a sage. To insist that this mind be purely Heaven's principle, without the least selfishness of human desires, cannot be achieved without guarding before desires sprout and overcoming them just as they begin to sprout.
Guarding before they sprout and overcoming them just as they sprout is precisely the work of “caution and apprehension” in the Doctrine of the Mean and “extending knowledge and investigating things” in the Great Learning. Outside this there is no separate work.
What you describe as “extinguished in the east and born in the west” and “leading a dog into the hall and then driving it out” is the burden of self-concern and private advantage, of anticipating and contriving, supposing and insisting. It is not a trouble caused by overcoming, treating, washing, and clearing away. Now you say, “The essentials of nourishing life are clearing the mind and reducing desires.” The very words “nourishing life” are already the root of self-concern and private advantage, of anticipating and contriving, supposing and insisting. With this root of disease hidden within, it is natural that you suffer from “extinguished in the east and born in the west” and “leading a dog into the hall and then driving it out.”
Reading note: The awkward 未危 in the letter is read from the immediate east-and-west comparison as a desire scarcely removed before its return. The repeated expression 将迎意必 concerns contriving in advance and insisting on a desired outcome.
162 · The Original Face and the Rabbit Already Caught
Your letter says: “The Buddhists' ‘recognize your original face when you think neither good nor evil’ differs from our Confucian work of ‘investigating in response to each thing.’ If, while thinking neither good nor evil, I apply the work of extending knowledge, I have already become involved in thinking good. If I want neither to think good nor evil, while the mind's innate moral knowing is clear, still, and free, this happens only when I have just awakened from sleep. This is precisely Mencius's account of the ‘night qi.’ But this state cannot last long. In a fleeting moment, thoughts have already arisen. I do not know whether those who have applied effort for a long time are constantly like someone just awake from sleep, before thinking has arisen.
“Now the more I, Cheng, seek tranquility, the less tranquil I become; the more I want thoughts not to arise, the more they arise. How can I cause the preceding thought readily to diminish and the following thought not to be born, so that innate moral knowing alone is manifest and I roam with the maker of things?”
“Recognize your original face when you think neither good nor evil”: this is an expedient the Buddhists devise for those who have not recognized their original face. The original face is what our sages' school calls innate moral knowing. Now that you have clearly recognized innate moral knowing, there is already no need to speak in this way.
“Investigating in response to each thing” is the work of extending knowledge. It is the Buddhists' “being constantly alert,” and is likewise constantly preserving that original face. The general form of the practical work is similar. It differs only because, in the Buddhists, there is a mind of self-concern and private advantage.
Now you wish to think neither good nor evil while the mind's innate moral knowing remains clear, still, and free. This itself contains a mind of self-concern and private advantage, of anticipating and contriving, supposing and insisting. That is why you have the trouble of saying, “If, while thinking neither good nor evil, I apply the work of extending knowledge, I have already become involved in thinking good.”
When Mencius speaks of the night qi, he too is simply pointing out to people who have lost their good mind a place where that good mind begins to stir, so that they may nourish it from there onward. Now that you already know innate moral knowing clearly and constantly apply the work of extending knowledge, there is no further need to speak of night qi. Instead, it is as if, after catching the rabbit, you do not know to keep the rabbit, but still go back to watch the stump. The rabbit will escape you again.
Wanting to seek tranquility and wanting thoughts not to arise are precisely the disease of self-concern and private advantage, of anticipating and contriving, supposing and insisting. This is why thoughts arise more and you become less tranquil. Innate moral knowing is only this one innate moral knowing, and good and evil are distinguished of themselves. What further good or evil is there to think up?
The constitution of innate moral knowing is originally tranquil, yet you add a further seeking of tranquility. It is originally generation upon generation, yet you add a further wish for no generation. Not only is the sages' work of extending knowledge unlike this; even Buddhist learning does not anticipate, contrive, suppose, and insist in this way.
There is only the single thought of innate moral knowing, from beginning to end, without beginning or end. This is precisely the preceding thought not being extinguished and the following thought not being born. But now you want the preceding thought readily to be extinguished and the following thought not to be born. This is what the Buddhists call cutting off and annihilating the seed-nature, entering into withered wood and dead ashes.
Reading note: In the rabbit comparison the current source has the uncertain 兔将复先之矣. “The rabbit will escape you again” follows the contrast between keeping a caught rabbit and returning to the stump; the Chinese is unchanged. The letter's “diminish” and the reply's “be extinguished” retain their differing source words.
163 · Vigilance Is Not an Additional Task
Your letter says: “The Buddhists also speak of constantly keeping the directing thought raised. Is this like Mencius's ‘always having something to attend to’ and your ‘extending innate moral knowing’? Is it ‘constantly alert, constantly remembering, constantly knowing, constantly preserving’? When this thought is held up and affairs and things arrive, there must be a way to respond to them. But I fear that the times when it is held up are few, and the times when it is put down are many, so the work is interrupted.
“Moreover, losing hold of this thought usually begins with the stirring of private desires and adventitious qi. Only when one suddenly wakes up does one raise it again. Between letting it go and raising it again, one is often unaware of the mind's darkness and confusion. Now, if one wants refinement and clarity, constantly raising it without letting go, by what way can this be done? Is constantly raising it without letting go the whole work? Or should one add the work of self-examination and overcoming within this constant raising and not letting go?
“Although one constantly raises it without letting go, I fear that private desires will remain unless one adds the work of caution, apprehension, overcoming, and treatment. Yet if one adds caution, apprehension, overcoming, and treatment, it becomes again an affair of ‘thinking good,’ and there is still an interval separating one from the original face. What should one do?”
Caution, apprehension, overcoming, and treatment are precisely the work of constantly raising it without letting go. They are precisely “always having something to attend to.” How could there be two undertakings? The first part of this question has already explained the matter clearly of itself. At the end, however, you generate confusion for yourself and speak in a fragmented way. Your further doubt about “an interval separating one from the original face” is all a disease of self-concern and private advantage, of anticipating and contriving, supposing and insisting. Remove this disease and the doubt will of itself disappear.
164 · Snow Floating in Hot Water
Your letter says: “For someone with a fine endowment, once clarity is complete, the dregs are wholly transformed. What is meant by clarity being complete? How can the dregs then be wholly transformed?”
Innate moral knowing is originally clear of itself. In someone whose qi endowment is not fine, the dregs are many and the obstruction thick, so it is not easy for clarity to open through. In someone with a fine endowment, the dregs were originally few and the obstruction slight. Apply a little effort in extending knowledge, and this innate moral knowing becomes clear and transparent of itself. Those few dregs are like snow floating in hot water: how can they form an obstruction?
This is not particularly difficult to understand. Your doubt here, Yuanjing, comes, I imagine, from not understanding the single word “clarity,” and also from a slight wish to hurry. We once discussed face to face the meaning of making goodness clear. When there is clarity, there is sincerity. This is not the shallow meaning later scholars give to making goodness clear.
165 · Natural Endowment and Knowing How to Learn
Your letter says: “Are perceptiveness, clarity, insight, and wisdom really matters of endowment? Are benevolence, rightness, ritual propriety, and wisdom really nature? Are joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure really feelings? Are private desires and adventitious qi one thing or two? Gifted people of antiquity, such as Zifang, Zhongshu, Shudu, Kongming, Wenzhong, and the lords Han and Fan, had manifest virtue and achievements, all issuing from innate moral knowing. Yet they are not allowed to be called people who had heard the Way. What, precisely, is the reason?
“If it is said that this was merely the excellence of their inborn endowment, then is knowing from birth and acting at ease not superior to knowing through learning or difficulty and acting through effort? In my humble view, it would be acceptable to say that these men saw the Way partially. But to say that they had never heard it at all seems, I fear, an error of later scholars' exaltation of memorization, recitation, and textual glosses. Is this right or not?”
There is only one nature. Benevolence, rightness, ritual propriety, and wisdom are the nature of nature. Perceptiveness, clarity, insight, and wisdom are the endowment of nature. Joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure are the feelings of nature. Private desires and adventitious qi are the obscurations of nature. Endowment has clarity and turbidity; therefore feelings have excess and insufficiency, and obscurations have shallowness and depth. Private desires and adventitious qi are two pains of one disease, not two things.
The lords Zhang, Huang, Zhuge, Han, and Fan all had excellent natural endowments, and so much in them spontaneously accorded with the wonder of the Way without their recognizing it. Although one cannot in every case call them people who knew how to learn or had heard the Way, they nevertheless had learning of their own and were not far from the Way. Had they heard the learning and known the Way, they would have been Yi Yin, Fu Yue, the Duke of Zhou, and the Duke of Shao.
As for Master Wenzhong, one cannot say he did not know how to learn. Although much of his book comes from his disciples and contains many incorrect points, its general outline is still plainly visible. But we are now far removed from him in time, and have no definite evidence on which to rely. We cannot decide in the abstract how far he attained.
Innate moral knowing is the Way. Its presence in the human mind is not confined to sages and worthies: it is the same in every ordinary person. If there were no material desires to drag at and obscure it, and one simply followed genuine knowing as it issued, functioned, and flowed forth, everything would be the Way. But ordinary people are mostly dragged at and obscured by material desires and cannot follow innate moral knowing. In the case of these several men, their natural endowments were already clear and bright, and there were naturally few material desires to drag at and obscure them. Thus their innate moral knowing naturally issued, functioned, and flowed forth in many ways, and they were naturally not far from the Way.
Students learn only to follow this innate moral knowing. To call someone a person who knows how to learn means only that the person knows to concentrate on learning to follow innate moral knowing. These several men did not yet know to apply effort exclusively to innate moral knowing. At times they wandered along many divergent paths and were confused by shadows and echoes. Hence they sometimes departed from and sometimes accorded with it, without purity. Had they known this, they would have been sages.
Later scholars have said that these men still allowed their qi endowments to conduct affairs, and could not avoid “acting without understanding, practicing without examination.” This is not an excessive judgment. Yet what those later scholars call understanding and examination is itself habituated to the narrowness of hearing and seeing, obscured by inherited errors, and dependent on imitation among shadows, echoes, external forms, and traces. It is still not what the sages' school calls understanding and examination. How, then, can they seek clarity in others through their own darkness?
In the expression “knowing from birth and acting at ease,” the words knowing and acting are spoken with reference to practical effort. But the original constitution of knowing and acting is innate moral knowing and innate ability. Even in people who labor through difficulty and effort, these may all be called knowing from birth and acting at ease. The words knowing and acting require still more precise examination.
Reading note: “The nature of nature” preserves the source's 性之性 rather than silently replacing it with a different reading. The anomalous 圣贸 is read as sages and worthies from the contrast with ordinary people. The names listed in the incoming question and those repeated in the reply remain different, as in the source.
166 · Looking for the Donkey One Is Riding
Your letter says: “Long ago Zhou Maoshu repeatedly told Bochun to seek the place of Zhongni and Master Yan's joy. May I ask whether this joy is the same as the joy among the seven feelings? If it is the same, ordinary people can all be joyful as soon as they get what they want. Why require sages and worthies? If there is a separate genuine joy, does this joy also remain when sages and worthies meet occasions of great worry, great anger, great alarm, or great fear? Moreover, the gentleman's mind constantly preserves caution and apprehension: this is surely a lifelong concern. How can there be joy? Throughout my life I, Cheng, have often been troubled and have never seen the delight of genuine joy. Now I earnestly wish to seek it.”
Joy is the original constitution of the mind. Although it differs from joy among the seven feelings, it does not lie outside joy among the seven feelings. Although sages and worthies have a distinctive genuine joy, it is also something ordinary people possess alike. Ordinary people possess it without knowing it, and instead seek out much worry and suffering for themselves, adding their own confusion and abandonment. Yet even amid worry, suffering, confusion, and abandonment, this joy has never been absent. Let a single thought become clear, turn back upon oneself and be sincere, and it is present here.
Whenever I discuss matters with you, Yuanjing, this is always the meaning. Yet you still ask “By what way can it be obtained?” This is still failing to escape the obstruction of looking for the donkey while riding the donkey.
167 · The Clear Mirror and Qian Dehong’s Postscript
Your letter says: “The Great Learning takes ‘the mind having fondness and delight, resentment and anger, worry and anxiety, fear and apprehension’ as ‘failing to obtain its rectitude.’ Master Cheng also says: ‘The sage's feelings follow the myriad affairs, yet the sage has no feelings.’ The Record of Teaching and Practice explains what is meant by ‘having’ through the comparison with intermittent fever, and this is extremely exact and apt. Yet Master Cheng's words would mean that the sage's feelings arise not from the mind but from things. What does this mean?
“Moreover, when an affair affects one and a feeling responds, one can investigate and rectify the rights and wrongs in relation to it. But when an affair has perhaps not yet affected one, to say the feeling exists is to speak before it has taken form; to say it does not exist leaves the root of the disease between existence and nonexistence. How can I extend my knowing here? If learning makes having no feelings its task, one's burdens may become lighter, but one has left Confucianism and entered Buddhism. Is this acceptable?”
The sage's work of extending knowledge is utmost sincerity without cessation. The constitution of the sage's innate moral knowing is bright as a clear mirror, without the slightest film of obstruction. When the beautiful and ugly arrive, their forms appear according to each thing, yet the clear mirror never retains a stain. This is what is meant by “feelings follow the myriad affairs, yet there are no feelings.”
“Let the mind arise without abiding anywhere”: the Buddhists have said this, and it is not wrong. In a clear mirror's response to things, the beautiful appears beautiful and the ugly appears ugly; in a single illumination all are true. This is where the mind arises. The beautiful appears beautiful and the ugly appears ugly, but once they have passed, nothing is retained. This is where there is no abiding.
Since you have already seen the exactness of the comparison with intermittent fever, the question in this passage can be resolved. Although a person's fever has not yet broken out, its root is certainly present. How could one forget the work of taking medicine and regulating oneself merely because the fever has not yet broken out? If one insists on waiting for the fever to break out before taking medicine and regulating oneself, it is already too late. The work of extending knowledge has no interval between having an affair to handle and having none. Why would it depend on whether the disease has already broken out or not?
In general, although your earlier and later doubts appear different, Yuanjing, they all arise from the trouble made by self-concern and private advantage, by anticipating and contriving, supposing and insisting. Once this root is removed, your earlier and later doubts will melt like ice and disperse like fog of themselves, without having to wait for further questions and distinctions.
Qian Dehong's postscript:
When the Reply to Yuanjing appeared, readers were all delighted that Cheng was skillful in asking and the Master skillful in answering: everyone heard what they had not heard before. The Master said: “Yuanjing's questions merely turn about on the level of conceptual understanding. I had no choice but to distinguish and explain matters section by section for him. If one trusts innate moral knowing and applies effort only to innate moral knowing, then not one of a thousand classics and ten thousand canons will fail to fit, and heterodox doctrines and distorted learning will all be broken by a single examination. Why is there any need to explain each section in this way? The Buddhists have the comparison of ‘pouncing on the person or chasing the clod.’ See the clod and pounce on the person, and you catch the person. See the clod and chase the clod: what do you gain from the clod?”
The friends sitting there heard this and were all startled into alert realization. This learning values turning back and seeking within oneself. It cannot be entered through conceptual understanding.
Reading note: The duplicated 所 in the source's Buddhist quotation is not duplicated in English. The final postscript remains attached to this source record, rather than being dropped or made into a new reading chapter.
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