Record of Teaching and Practice
Recorded by the Disciple Huang Xiuyi
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
237 · Do Not Add a Lamp to Sunlight
Huang Mianshu asked: “When the mind has no evil thoughts, it is empty and spacious. I do not know whether one also needs a good thought.”
The Master said: “Once evil thoughts are removed, there are good thoughts: the original constitution of the mind has been restored. It is like sunlight obscured by a cloud. When the cloud goes, the light is already restored. If, after evil thoughts are removed, you want in addition to preserve a good thought, it is lighting a lamp in the sunlight.”
238 · Let the Muddy Water Settle
Someone asked: “In my recent practical work, I feel that deluded thoughts no longer arise very often. Yet within the chest it is dark and murky. I do not know how to make it bright.”
The Master said: “How could it become bright inside the chest as soon as you begin applying effort? It is like rushing muddy water just stored in a jar. Although it is still at first, it is only dark and turbid. Wait until it has settled for a long time, and naturally the dregs will all fall away and clarity return.
“Simply apply effort to innate moral knowing. When innate moral knowing has been preserved for a long time, the darkness and murk can naturally become bright. To demand results immediately is forcing growth and does not make for practical work.”
239 · Learning with a Root
The Master said: “When I teach people to extend innate moral knowing by applying effort to investigating things, this is learning with a root. Each day they advance beyond the day before, and the longer they continue, the more refined and clear they feel.
“Worldly scholars teach people to go searching in each affair and thing. This is learning without a root. In the prime of life, they may for a time decorate the outside so that no fault appears. But when they grow old and their vital spirit declines, they must finally collapse. It is like a tree without roots transplanted beside water. Although fresh and beautiful for a time, in the end it must wither.”
240 · Build the House before Buying Its Pictures
Someone asked about the passage beginning “Set your resolve on the Way.”
The Master said: “The one phrase ‘set your resolve on the Way’ already contains the work of the phrases that follow. Of itself it cannot stop there. It is like building this house. ‘Set your resolve on the Way’ means that in every thought one wants to choose a site, gather materials, and plan the completion of a dwelling. ‘Take your stand on virtue’ means the planning and construction have been completed and there is something to stand on. ‘Rely on benevolence’ means constantly living within that dwelling and never leaving it. ‘Roam among the arts’ means adding some painting and color to beautify the dwelling.
“Arts means appropriateness: what accords with principle. Such things as reciting poems, reading books, playing the qin, and practicing archery all train and regulate this mind so that it becomes familiar with the Way.
“If one does not set resolve on the Way but roams among the arts, one is like an ill-behaved youngster who does not first obtain and build a dwelling, but only wants to buy pictures and hang them as a display. I do not know where he intends to hang them.”
241 · Reading and Examinations without the Burden of Gain
Someone asked: “Reading is a means of regulating and caring for this mind and cannot be omitted. But while reading, a kind of intention directed toward the examinations comes and pulls me along. I do not know how to avoid it.”
The Master said: “Simply make innate moral knowing genuine and earnest. Even preparing for the examinations will not burden the mind. If there is a burden, it is also easy to notice and overcome it. For example, while reading, innate moral knowing knows that a mind intent on forced memorization is wrong: overcome it. It knows that a mind seeking quick results is wrong: overcome it. It knows that a mind boasting of quantity and competing in ornate display is wrong: overcome it.
“In this way, all day you are simply matching your understanding against the sages and worthies. It is a mind purely of Heaven's principle. Let it read books: that too is simply regulating and caring for this mind. What burden is there?”
The questioner said: “Although you have enlightened me, my endowment is common and low, and I really find it hard to avoid the burden. I have heard that failure and success have their decree, and people of the highest wisdom would perhaps disdain this. Unworthy as I am, I am bound by reputation and profit, willingly doing this and merely making myself suffer. I wish to set it aside, but am constrained by my parents and cannot abandon it. What should I do?”
The Master said: “There are many who shift the excuse for this onto their parents. In fact, it is simply a lack of resolve. Once resolve is established, the thousand and ten thousand affairs of innate moral knowing are only one undertaking. How could reading books and composing essays burden anyone? People burden themselves with gain and loss.”
He then sighed: “Because this learning is unclear, who knows how many outstanding people have had their lives delayed and wasted here!”
242 · Nature and Qi with the Guiding Point Recognized
Someone asked: “‘Life is what is called nature’: Gaozi's statement is right too. Why does Mencius reject it?”
The Master said: “It certainly is nature. But Gaozi recognized only one side and did not understand the guiding point. If he understood the guiding point, speaking in this way would also be right. Mencius too says: ‘Bodily form and color are Heaven-endowed nature.’ This also speaks with reference to qi.”
He also said: “People speak however they please and act at will, all saying, ‘This comes from following my mind and nature.’ This is what is called ‘life is what is called nature,’ yet there will be excesses and errors. If one understands the guiding point, speaking and acting in accordance with one's innate moral knowing, things will naturally be fitting.
“Yet innate moral knowing is also simply this mouth speaking and this person acting. How could it go outside qi and have some separate thing to act and speak? Hence: ‘Discuss nature without discussing qi, and the account is incomplete; discuss qi without discussing nature, and it is unclear.’ Qi too is nature, and nature too is qi. But one must recognize the guiding point correctly.”
243 · Rise after Falling without Pretending Not to Have Fallen
He also said: “In your practical work, the thing most to be avoided is forcing growth. People of the highest wisdom are exceedingly rare. Students cannot leap straight into sagehood. Rising and falling, advancing and retreating, are naturally the stages of practical work.
“Do not say, ‘I applied effort the other day, but now I am failing,’ and then forcibly produce an appearance without a crack in it. This is forcing growth. It ruins even the little work you did before. It is no small fault. It is like someone walking who stumbles and falls: get up and go on. Do not deceive others by putting on the appearance of someone who never fell.
“You need only keep constantly the mind that ‘withdraws from the world without distress, and is not distressed when not acknowledged as right.’ Follow this innate moral knowing and patiently continue. Do not concern yourselves with people's condemnation or ridicule, slander or defamation, honor or disgrace. Let the work have its advances and retreats. I simply do not let this governing mastery of extending innate moral knowing cease. Over a long time it will naturally gain effectiveness, and all external affairs will naturally become unable to disturb it.”
He also said: “If a person genuinely applies effort, let others slander, deceive, or slight them: everywhere there is benefit, everywhere there is material for advancing virtue. Without applying effort, these are only demons, and in the end one will be overthrown by their burden.”
244 · The Living Root Planted by Heaven
One day the Master went out to visit Yu's Cave. Looking at grain in the fields, he said: “How little time has passed, and already it has grown so much!”
Fan Zhaoqi, standing beside him, said: “This is simply because it has roots. If learning can plant its own root, there is no need to fear a lack of growth.”
The Master said: “Who has no root? Innate moral knowing is the responsive root planted by Heaven, naturally generating without ceasing. It is only that people become attached to private burdens and injure, obscure, and block this root, so that it cannot put forth growth.”
245 · Turn Back to One’s Own Faults
A friend was habitually quick to anger and blame others. The Master warned him: “Learning requires turning back to oneself. If you merely blame others, you see only where others are wrong and do not see your own faults. If you can turn back to yourself, you will first see how much in yourself remains unfulfilled. What leisure will you have to blame others?
“Shun could transform Xiang's arrogance. The key was simply not seeing Xiang's wrongness. Had Shun merely wanted to correct his treachery and evil, he would have been seeing Xiang's wrongness. Xiang was arrogant and would certainly not have yielded. How could he then have been moved and transformed?”
The friend was moved to regret. The Master said: “From now on, simply do not discuss other people's rights and wrongs. Whenever you are about to blame or argue with someone, take that itself as a great private attachment in yourself and overcome it. Only then will it do.”
246 · Treat a Question as a Disease to Be Healed
The Master said: “When friends ask questions or raise difficulties, even if their remarks are shallow, commonplace, coarse, or careless, or show off ability and promote themselves, these are all manifestations of disease. One should administer medicine according to the disease. One must not immediately harbor contempt. That would not be the gentleman's mind of joining others in goodness.”
247 · Divination and Clarifying the Mind
Someone asked: “In the Changes, Master Zhu takes divination as central, while Master Cheng's Commentary takes principle as central. What do you think?”
The Master said: “Divination is principle, and principle is also divination. What principle in the world is greater than divination? It is only that later people have taken divination to refer exclusively to casting and interpreting hexagrams, and therefore regard it as a minor art.
“They do not know that today's questions and answers among teachers and friends, and such things as learning broadly, inquiring carefully, reflecting cautiously, discriminating clearly, and practicing earnestly, are all divination. Divination is nothing more than seeking to resolve doubts and making our mind responsively clear.
“The Changes is asking Heaven. People have doubts and insufficient trust in themselves, and therefore use the Changes to ask Heaven. This means that the human mind may still contain personal involvements, while Heaven admits no falsity.”
248 · Accepting a Gift without a Fixed Rule
Huang Mianzhi asked: “‘Neither invariably for nor invariably against, but associating with rightness’: must one be like this in every affair?”
The Master said: “Certainly one must be like this in every affair. But one must recognize the guiding point. Rightness is innate moral knowing. Only when one understands innate moral knowing as the guiding point is there no rigid attachment.
“For example, in accepting gifts from others, there are gifts one should accept today but should not accept another day. There are also gifts one should not accept today but should accept another day. If you rigidly grasp today's case of appropriate acceptance and then accept everything, or rigidly grasp today's case of inappropriate acceptance and then reject everything, that is being invariably for or invariably against. It is not the original constitution of innate moral knowing. How could it be called rightness?”
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