VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 3
The Picture of One Tree, Living the Hard Bedrock, Crossing into the Second Semester
This is the last section of the first semester. It gathers the thirteen chapters into a picture of one tree, then talks about living the hard bedrock, and then crosses the bridge into the second semester. This is the closing lesson of the first semester.
First, the picture of one tree. Picture the whole of the first semester as a single tree. The root, buried deepest of all and out of sight, is that bedrock hard to the point of being invisible, your language, your who am I, your deepest values, from the tenth and eleventh chapters. The root decides whether the whole tree lives or dies, and yet, day to day, you never see it. The trunk, the middle layer of culture that you can feel, is the food and the reactions between people and the sense of time and the ritual, from the eleventh chapter. The branches, growing at the highest and most visible place, are the three hard institutions, economy and politics and law, from the first section of this chapter. People, day to day, see only the branches, and argue over economy and politics and law, and forget that the branches are all fed by the root and the trunk. And the thing that runs from the root all the way up into the branches, the core of the seed, is that one threaded-through seed of consider others, do not torment, from the twelfth chapter. And torment, from the first nine chapters, is the yellow spot on the leaf that you see first, when the root of this tree has gone wrong. The whole of the first semester has been this one tree, looked at from the sickness on the leaf, torment, down to the root of the matter, the hard bedrock, once, all the way through.
Second, living the hard bedrock, bringing this picture into every day. To see this tree clearly is not to hang it on a wall and look at it. It is to live it, every day. Take up the three levels of living the hard bedrock from the twelfth chapter, to see it, to guard the good of it, to hand it down, and drive them one step further into the ground. You yourself are one small length of this tree. How you treat people day to day is either feeding or poisoning the patch of soil around you, your home, your coworkers, your child. Be warm, and your small patch of soil grows rich. Torment, and you poison it. And the next generation grows up out of your patch of soil. So living the hard bedrock comes down, in the end, to this. From today, on the small patch of soil you can reach, be a warm vat, and a good seed. It asks of you no great power and no great talent. It asks only that, in those seconds when you want to torment, when you want to pour out your anger, when you want to knit your brow, you see clearly, and pause, and choose another way. The whole first semester comes to rest on that one second.
Third, crossing the bridge into the second semester. The first semester was about the root, about laying the root. It made clear what culture is, where it is hard, how it passes. But that passing, that handing down, the first semester only touched on, without spelling out. A bedrock, however hard, that cannot be handed down, is a dead thing. So then, how is it handed down? The first road of the handing down is education. How do you teach? How do you hand the good seed, the warm vat, to the next generation on purpose? That is the first great matter of the second semester, the semester of putting to use. And the second semester has another great matter besides. In this age of ours, when a new thing, the tool, is sweeping over everything, how do you hold onto the person? Education and tools, these are the putting to use that the second semester is for. The root laid in the first semester is to be put to use in the second. And the next chapter, the first of the second semester, begins from the true place of education.
That closes the thirteenth chapter, and rounds off the whole first semester. Pull it together. The picture of one tree, the root the hard bedrock and the who am I, the trunk the food and reactions and ritual, the branches economy and politics and law, the seed that threads through them all consider others and do not torment, and the sickness on the leaf, torment. Living the hard bedrock, on the small patch of soil you can reach, being a warm vat and a good seed, come to rest on one second. And the bridge, the first road of handing down is education, and the second semester is about putting to use, education and tools. That is the closing stake of the first semester. Culture is one tree, economy and politics and law its branches, culture its root and trunk, the seed of do not torment threaded through them all, and living the hard bedrock is to be, from today, a warm vat on your own small patch of soil. The laying of the root of the first semester is laid. The putting to use of the second semester begins from education. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.