Record of Teaching and Practice
Qian Dehong's Postscript
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In the winter of the wuzi year of Jiajing, Wang Ruzhong and I, Dehong, hurried to Guangxin to mourn our teacher. We informed our fellow students of his death and agreed to spend three years gathering his remaining sayings. Afterward, the fellow students each sent me what they had recorded. I selected the statements most directly bearing on questions and correction, combined them with my own private records, and obtained a certain number of entries.
While living in Wu, I was about to have them printed together with the Collected Writings. Just then I left because of mourning and did not complete it. At that time discussions of learning were increasing daily in every direction. The guiding purpose of our teacher's school was already clear, and further printing seemed unnecessary. Thus I no longer kept it in mind.
Last year our fellow student Zeng Han, called Zicai, obtained my handwritten copy and gathered further material around it. He called it Remaining Sayings and had it printed in Jing. Reading it, I felt that my selection and recording at the time had not been refined. I therefore removed repetition, cut away sprawling material, and retained one third. Calling it Continued Record of Teaching and Practice, I had it printed again at the Shuixi Retreat in Ningguo.
This summer I came to visit Qi. Mr. Shen Siwei said:
“The teaching of our teacher's school has long circulated in every direction, yet alone has not reached Qi. When scholars of Qi read Remaining Sayings, it is as if they personally receive the Master's instruction. Pointing them to innate moral knowing is like seeing the brightness of sun and moon again. They fear only that transmission and practice may not be broad enough; they do not yet regard repetition as burdensome. Please gather the omitted material and add it to the printing. What do you think?”
I said:
“Yet the purpose of our teacher's extending knowledge and investigating things is to open the way for those who come to learn. Students must cultivate it personally and awaken silently. They dare not receive it merely through conceptual understanding, but only obtain it through actual personal embodiment.
“Thus our teacher spoke of this all day without tiring of repetition, and students listened to this all day without wearying of its frequency. When the pointing is concentrated and one, personal awakening becomes more refined each day. The incipient is met before words, and spirit unfolds beyond words: this is the sincerity of meeting and responding.
“Now, although not three cycles of twelve years have passed since our teacher died, his guiding sayings and subtle meaning already seem gradually to be sinking into obscurity. Is this not because our own personal practice lacks strength, and excessive words have brought disease to it? Students' directions are not one, and our teacher's teaching is not made manifest.”
I then took up the omitted drafts again and selected statements that did not run counter to his teaching, obtaining one volume. All the rest, uncertain echoes lacking genuineness or material already contained in the Collected Writings, I removed. I also changed the middle volume's designation to Questions and Answers and handed it to Mr. Zhang, magistrate of Huangmei, for an expanded printing.
If readers do not receive it merely through conceptual understanding but obtain it through actual personal embodiment, perhaps they will have no doubt concerning this record.
In summer, the fourth month of the bingchen year of Jiajing, the disciple Qian Dehong respectfully writes at Chongzheng Academy in Qi.
Reading note: The reductions, earlier printings, omitted drafts, and change of designation are the postscript's own edition history. They are translated here in full, not carried out as deletions or regrouping in the present reading edition.
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