VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 1
Handed Down in a Single Line, Mozi's Silk Taken Up Again
The last chapter took the hard bedrock apart, layer by layer, and saw where it is hard. This chapter takes up how that bedrock gets passed from one generation to the next, and how deep it goes. Across three sections. This first one takes back up Mozi's dyed silk from the seventh chapter, and talks about being handed down in a single line, one living generation dyeing the next by hand, a baton the Chinese people have carried for thousands of years without dropping.
The seventh chapter used Mozi, dyed in blue it comes out blue, to talk about how torment gets handed down. This chapter takes that same line up again, from a wider angle, to see how the whole hard bedrock passes. Mozi said the silk is dyed by the vat. But there is a question worth pressing. This vat, who is it? Where does it come from? The vat is not some fixed, dead thing sitting off to one side. The vat is the living people around the child, and above all the generation just ahead of him. His parents, his teachers, his elders, they themselves are the vat that dyes the child. And they, when they were children, were dyed by the vat of the generation ahead of them. See it plainly. The handing down of a culture is one living generation dyeing the next living generation, hand to hand, generation after generation. This is what is meant by being handed down in a single line.
That phrase, a single line, is worth weighing. It means culture has no other road, no backup path, only this one line, the living generation just ahead handing to the living generation just behind, one line and no second. Think about it. Where is a nation's culture kept? In its books? Books hold characters, not the living culture. A dead book on a shelf that no one reads and no one lives is only paper. Culture truly lives in living people, in the mouths and the hands and the daily life of a generation of the living. Let that generation of the living all die out, and if they had not handed the culture on to the next generation, then that culture, however brilliant, truly breaks. So the handing down of a culture is a fragile thing, and a precious one. It rests entirely on each generation of the living, while they are alive, handing what they received to the next. Drop this baton once, let one generation fail to hand it on, and it truly breaks, and breaks forever. History has many such civilizations. Brilliant once, and then at some generation the baton was dropped, and the culture broke, and all that is left is ruins and characters no one can read. Those civilizations' cultures died because that single line broke.
Set against that, one thing stands out as extraordinary. The Chinese people have carried this baton for thousands of years without dropping it. From the characters cut on the oracle bones to the characters you read today, this writing, changed as it is, has a root that never broke. From the thoughts of Confucius and Mencius to the ideas still moving in daily life today, this bloodline of culture, through no end of upheavals, was never cut. Among the world's civilizations this is exceedingly rare. Many ancient civilizations, Egypt, Babylon, their brilliant old cultures broke, and the people who live in those places today can no longer read their ancestors' characters directly, no longer inherit their ancestors' thoughts directly. Only the culture of China, this single-line baton, was handed unbroken from thousands of years ago down to today. Why does this unbroken matter? Because it means that when you today read Confucius, or Mozi, you are not reading some foreign, dead old book. You are reading your own cultural root, the one still alive in your blood. That resonance you feel when you read the ancestors' words is because this culture never broke between them and you, but is one unbroken line. And mark this well. To say so is not to say Chinese culture is superior. It is to state a fact, and the fact is a heavy responsibility. You have received a baton unbroken for thousands of years, and you are the one who will decide whether it goes on being handed to the next generation. That is the unavoidable position of every Chinese in every generation.
Understood this way, every living generation is a crucial juncture. You are not an isolated individual. You are one link on a chain thousands of years long. Ahead of you, countless generations handed the baton down to you. Behind you, countless generations wait for you to hand it on. You, in the middle, carry the past and open the way to what comes. That position sounds heavy, and it is also a great dignity. It means that every ordinary thing you do in a day is not your own business alone. It is dyeing the color of the next generation. Treat people warmly, and your child learns warmth. Love to torment, and your child is dyed with torment. And this ties back to the breaking of the chain in the seventh chapter. When you have seen clearly, and in the crucial second do not dye torment on down, you are not only holding onto yourself. You are standing at this juncture in a thousands-of-years handing down, and passing a better color to the next generation. So being handed down in a single line is not some abstract, grand phrase. It is every parent, every teacher, every elder, in every small detail of every day, dyeing the next generation by hand. Culture is like this, one hand and then the next, dyed down through thousands of years.
So here is where this section leaves us. Mozi's dyed silk, taken up again, and the handing down carried deeper. The vat is the living generation just ahead, and culture is one living generation dyeing the next, hand to hand, and that is being handed down in a single line. A single line means culture has only this one road, no backup, and is fragile and precious, and if one generation drops the baton it breaks forever. The Chinese people have carried this baton unbroken for thousands of years, which is rare, so that you read the ancestors and feel your own living root, and this is a heavy responsibility. Every living generation is a juncture that carries the past and opens the future, and every daily act is dyeing the next generation. That is the start of the twelfth stake this chapter drives. Culture passes by being handed down in a single line, one living generation dyeing the next by hand, unbroken for thousands of years. So this hand-dyed thing, how deep does it dye into a person? The next section brings in Xunzi's word wei, work upon the nature and raise the wrought, and looks at how culture dyes all the way into the cells, and becomes a second nature. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.