VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1
Afterword, Written at the End of the First Semester
Up to here, the thirteen chapters before this were spoken from the platform, facing you. For this afterword, let the one who wrote this book step down off the platform, no longer open with "class," and in the plainest voice there is, say a few words from the heart to you, one at a time. These words are not in the lessons. No teacher needs to teach them, and no exam will test them. If you like reading them, read them. If not, turn the page, it does not matter in the least. Just because they can be read or left, they can be said a little more solidly, a little more fully, a little more truly. The thirteen chapters before were spoken to a roomful of people. This piece is written for you alone to read.
One. Why fix on so small a thing as torment
The one who wrote this book is often asked a question. Culture is a subject as big as the sky, so why start, of all places, from torment, a thing so small it could not be smaller? The answer has to start from a refusal to let something rest. There are already many books on culture out there. But most of them speak from on high, from poetry and verse, from philosophy and thought, from the zither and chess and calligraphy and painting, from the things set out in museums and enshrined in lecture halls.
All of these are culture, of course. But the one who wrote this book has always had a knot in the heart. A person may talk about this high culture with every point in place, and then turn around, sit down behind that small window, and still block someone who came to get a thing done until he has nowhere left to go. Then the poems he has read, the reasoning he has understood, do they, in the end, count as his culture or not?
That knot forced this book out. What it means to speak of is not the culture hung up high for people to look up to. It is the culture that has bored into the bone, come down into every day, and hides in every word and act of yours and mine. And to see this culture clearly where it comes down to the ground, the best place to cut in is not the dignified things at all. It is torment, the least dignified thing, and the thing everyone has suffered. From how a person treats a stranger he is able to torment, you can see his real cultural bedrock more clearly than from how many poems he can recite.
So this book is written the other way round. Others speak from high up, downward. This book speaks upward, from the lowest, most everyday, most shameful place. It starts from that cold face behind the window and goes all the way to the hard bedrock, all the way to one tree. Perhaps few before have walked this road this way. That is not to say those before fall short of those today. Those before spoke of high culture far, far better than this book does. It is only that, starting from torment, this lowest cut, and going all the way up, to give a name to this thing that happens every day and has gone hundreds of years without being properly named, this particular road, someone had to walk it once and try.
Two. Looking back at how this road was walked
The first semester of this book, thirteen chapters, walked from start to end, was in fact a road from the sickness to the root. The first nine chapters spoke of the sickness. The one who wrote this book did not hurry to say how good culture is or how deep the root goes, but first crouched down and stared at that most shameful thing, torment, and looked a long time. Looked at what it is, at what position it happens in, at the resentment and the scorn in its heart, at the five forms in its hands, at how it runs outward and also inward, at how it is dyed down from one generation to the next, at why even the law cannot hold it. Only at the ninth chapter was this thing gathered into a single word, live.
Why spend nine chapters first on so uncomfortable a thing? Because the one who wrote this book believes one saying. Until you see the sickness through, you will not truly understand how much the root matters. Only a person who has been tormented, and has also seen in his own heart that small thought of tormenting others, will truly want to ask, what, in the end, has gone wrong with the bedrock of this culture?
So only then did the last four chapters turn around and speak of the root. They spoke of that bedrock people call soft power, which is in fact very hard. Of how it is hard all the way into language, food, reactions, so that even who am I is shaped by it. Of how it hands itself down in a single line, generation to generation, hard all the way into the cells. Of how it holds up economy, politics, and law, and grows into one whole tree. The first nine chapters looked at the sickness, the last four at the root, and only together are they the two sides of the same tree.
This road was not thought out so clearly from the start. It came through slowly, chapter by chapter as it was written, ancestor by ancestor as they were brought out. Confucius's what you do not want for yourself, Xunzi's force of position and Wei, Mozi's dye vat, Laozi's teaching without words, Zhuangzi's the Way is in the piss and the shit, Guanzi's when the granaries are full, Huineng's originally not a single thing... It was not that there was first a frame and then their words were filled into it. It was their words, line by line, that held up every layer of this tree. The one who wrote this book only told over again, in the plain speech of today, the positions they had set in place long ago. That too is why, at the foot of every page, that one line is written. The credit goes to the ancestors.
Three. The rules this book was written by
A person learning on his own has only this book in hand, with no teacher at his side to explain. So the one who wrote this book wants to set out honestly for you the few rules kept while writing it, so that as you read, you know where you stand. The first rule. Only lay out positions, and pass no verdict. From beginning to end, this book has hardly once called the tormentor a bad person, nor passed a single verdict of this is wrong. This is not smoothing things over. It is on purpose.
Because the one who wrote this book believes that he is bad is far too easy a thing to say, so easy that you no longer need to see anything clearly at all. And what this book means to do is exactly to ask you to see clearly for yourself, and then hand the judgment back to you. Right and wrong you have seen for yourself holds far more firmly than what someone else stuffs into you. So the whole book only lays out positions, sets the thing out as clearly as it can be set, and lets you see it for yourself. This rule is the most important stroke of the pen in the whole book. The sixth chapter spoke of it on its own.
The second rule. Whenever the ancestors' words are quoted, they are always called by the usual honorific names. Confucius, Xunzi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Mozi, Laozi, Guanzi, these names are honorifics. This book does not call them by their own given names, because this book stands in the position of the student, taking up their words, not standing as an equal, or even higher up, to remark on them. This small measure of care in what they are called is this book's attitude toward the ancestors, and it cannot be done carelessly.
The third rule. In the body of the book, you will hardly see the one who wrote it. In the body, where "I" should have been said, it is mostly "here," "someone," "some people." Why hide himself? Because this book speaks of the ancestors' reasoning, not the high opinions of the one who wrote it. The further back the writer steps, the further forward the ancestors' words stand. The body of this book is a platform, and what should stand on the platform is the reasoning, not the one giving the lesson.
And yet, at the foot of every page, one line is signed. The credit goes to the ancestors, the mistakes go to Tiger Lyon. That brings us to the fourth rule. The fourth rule. The one place in the whole book where the writer's name appears is this signature line. Why drive himself clean out of the body of the book, and yet sign his name at the foot of every page? Because these two things are one. The credit is the ancestors'. Of the reasoning this book speaks, not one piece was invented by the writer. All of it the ancestors set in place long ago, so the credit goes to them, and in the body of the book there should be no position for the writer either.
But the mistakes, someone has to own. Copied wrong in the copying, told crooked in the telling, understood too shallow or too slanted, these mistakes cannot be laid on the ancestors' heads. The one who took up their words has to carry them, alone. So, the mistakes go to Tiger Lyon. This Tiger Lyon is the one who wrote this book. He signs his name only at the end that says mistakes, and he does it gladly.
You do not need to memorize these four rules as you read. But if you know them, and look back at the body of the book, you will likely understand why this book looks the way it does.
Four. The first semester speaks of the root, the second of the use
The thirteen chapters of the first semester spoke of what culture is, what has happened to culture, and where the root of culture lies. In a word, they spoke of the root. But a root, however deep it goes, is only a root. A bedrock, however hard, if it cannot be handed down one generation to the next, if it cannot be put to use in this new age of today, is a dead bedrock. So with the first semester done speaking of the root, the second semester goes on to speak of the use.
The second semester is the third and fourth themes of this set of books. The third theme speaks of education. The twelfth chapter of the first semester spoke of handing down in a single line, generation to generation. This hard bedrock has to be handed by one generation of living people, with their own hands, to the next. But how, exactly, is it handed down? What should a school do, and what should it not? How do you take a child's inborn material and work it well, without grinding away his nature? What does the position of teacher really mean? These are what the second semester will speak of, chapter by chapter. Education is the lifeline along which this bedrock of culture is handed down.
The fourth theme speaks of tools. This volume is the newest piece of this set of books, and the most important. This age of ours has been met by a new tool, one never seen before, artificial intelligence. When a hard bedrock thousands of years old meets a wholly new tool like this, what is to be done? Will the tool dig up our root for us? Is the tool, in the end, the master, or the servant? The one who wrote this book has himself told the ancestors' words over again by way of just such a new tool, and so has some things on this matter he cannot leave unsaid. Those words are kept for the fourth volume, to be spoken of in detail.
The first semester sets the root, the second speaks of the use. Only when the root is set firm can there be talk of use. Only when it is used right can the root stay alive and keep growing. So, please, keep this one tree of the first semester in your heart, and carry it with you across into the second semester.
Five. A few words from the heart
Written this far, the reasoning is finished, the rules are set out, the road ahead has been looked over. What is left is a few words from the bottom of the heart, for you, who are reading this page now. This book is for learning on your own. No teacher pushes you, no exam weighs on you. If you have read your way to this last page, it is most likely not because anyone required it, but because you yourself were willing. The one who wrote this book is grateful. Not grateful that you came to cheer it on, but grateful that you were willing to spend so much time keeping company with so unremarkable a small thing, torment, looking at it all the way down to the root behind it, thousands of years old.
This book was not written so that you would understand a little more reasoning, the better to pass exams, the better to argue with people, the better to look learned. Quite the opposite. If, after reading this book, you have grown fonder of finding fault with others, better at standing up high and remarking on others, then this book was written for nothing. Worse, it was written wrong. This book was written in hope of something very small and very real.
Hoping that the next time you sit down in the position that can block a person, you can call to mind that word, trade places, and hold a second, and loosen that little power at your hand. Hoping that the next time you are tormented until your belly is full of fire, you can call to mind it is not the person who is bad, it is the position doing the work, and not carry that fire home and pour it out on the people closest to you. Hoping that one day, facing your own child, you can dye into him the warmest side of that hard bedrock, and not its most tormenting side.
These things are all very small, too small to be worth mentioning. And yet this book, thirteen chapters from start to finish, went round such a long way, brought out so many ancestors, and when all is said, it was for these few small things. Culture is not anywhere else. It is in the choice you make this second. If you loosen your hand this second, this bedrock thousands of years old has, in you, lived once.
Six. Last of all, that same line
At the foot of every page of this book the same line is printed. The credit goes to the ancestors, the mistakes go to Tiger Lyon. Reading all the way here, you have likely seen it hundreds of times already. On this last page, let the one who wrote this book say that line once more, solemnly, as the close of the whole first semester. The credit goes to the ancestors. This line is meant in earnest. It is not modesty.
Of the things in this book that truly stand, not one was thought up by the writer. Positions not being traded is Confucius's. The force of position is Xunzi's. The dye vat is Mozi's. The teaching without words is Laozi's. The Way has no noble and no base is Zhuangzi's. Originally not a single thing is Huineng's. All the writer did was to catch the positions they set in place more than two thousand years ago, and set them out once more in today's words. The credit is theirs. On this point there can be no blurring.
The mistakes go to Tiger Lyon. This line too is meant in earnest. The one who takes up the words is bound to take some up wrong. Perhaps somewhere, the ancestors' meaning was understood too shallow, or told crooked. Perhaps some quoted line was not remembered exactly enough. Perhaps some judgment of the whole book is itself wrong. These mistakes should not be counted against the ancestors, nor against anyone else. The one person who took up the words should carry them. So, the mistakes go to Tiger Lyon.
This one line, when all is said, is this book's attitude. Toward the ancestors, reverence. Toward you who read it, sincerity. Toward himself, a willing readiness to carry the weight. The writer is willing to sign his name only at the end that says mistakes, because he knows clearly that to be able to stand between the ancestors and you, as one who takes up the words and passes them on, is already a blessing as big as the sky. As for the mistakes, he owns them, and that is all. The thirteen chapters of the first semester are, here, truly finished. Thank you for walking so far, all the way. See you again in the second semester.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.