VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3
The Same Ruler, Measuring Out and Measuring In
This chapter has taken torment in its second direction, from within, tormenting yourself. The first section took the reactions of the body. The second took how culture bores down into the body's deepest layer. This section is the close of the chapter, and it drives one thing to the root. Whether it is tormenting others or tormenting yourself, the ruler in the hand is the same ruler. See that one ruler clearly and this whole doctrine of torment closes, in your hand, into a single whole. Bring the ruler out.
Set the two directions the chapters have covered side by side. The first, turned outward, tormenting others. A person takes a law, the materials must be complete, the format must be regulation, the process must be followed, and measures other people by it. He measures a hair off, and blocks, and will not let it pass. That is the ruler held out toward others. The second, turned inward, tormenting yourself. A person takes a law, you must not break wind in public, a grown person must not weep, you must not breach the decorum of the setting, and measures himself by it. He measures a hair off, and burns with shame, and reins himself in, and forces it back. That is the ruler turned around to measure yourself.
Now put the two ends together, and you find one thing. The ruler turned outward and the ruler turned inward are the same ruler. Its markings are identical, must conform to some law, and a hair off will not do. Its use is identical, take that law, lay it against a living person, and where the person does not conform, punish. The one and only difference is the thing being measured, others or yourself. A man who is out in the world nitpicking others and yielding them nothing is, back home, mostly just as harsh with himself. A man who at work seizes on every small mistake his subordinates make is, when he is alone, mostly going over every small slip of his own, again and again. Turn it the other way, and a man who is easy on himself is mostly easy on others too. Why? Because he has only the one ruler in his hand. A strict ruler measures everyone strictly. A lenient ruler measures everyone lenient. This is the most important finding in the chapter. Tormenting others and tormenting yourself are not two things. They are one thing, the two ends of the same ruler. How you measure yourself is mostly how you measure others, and how you measure others is mostly how you measure yourself.
So who handed you this ruler, strict and hard as it is? You did not make it yourself. It was laid down by others, and soaked into your body layer by layer, in the process the last section walked through. This law went from knowledge to belief to habit and at last bored into the body and became your automatic reaction. And once it was in the body, you took the ruler for your own, and thought this was just how strict you were born. But it is not. Others laid it down, you took it for real, and you have toiled a lifetime measuring yourself with it, and measuring others. See that one layer, and something comes loose. Since this ruler is not inborn, since it was handed to you by others, since it can be set down, then a choice opens to you. You can swap it out. Swap in a ruler that is wider, and warmer. That choice has been in your hand the whole time. You only did not know it was there.
One thing has to be made very clear here, so this does not go astray. To swap in a wider ruler does not mean that from now on there is no measure to anything, that you may break wind wherever you please, relieve yourself wherever you please, be rude to whomever you please. That is not the meaning. The real proprieties inside a culture, the ones that should be kept, are still to be kept. The ruler being swapped here is the ruler of torment, the ruler that says a hair off and you humiliate, a hair off and you punish. Keeping to a propriety is a warm thing, a considerate thing. Torment is a cold thing, a thing out to punish. That is where the two part. To swap out the cold ruler is not to throw away the warm propriety along with it.
And here the old line of Confucius can be brought out a third time. Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. The first chapter used it to drive down the stake of positions that do not trade, turned outward. The third chapter used it to face the mirror, to see that you have tormented others too, turning from the outside inward. This time, in the fifth chapter, it turns all the way inward. For twenty five centuries this line has been taken as a line about dealing with others, about how to treat other people. But it holds an inward use almost no one has ever spoken of. The self in what you would not want done to yourself takes in, also, the you of this very moment. You yourself do not want to be measured breathless by that strict, hard ruler, do you? Then the other in do not do it to others begins, first of all, with yourself. You do not want to be treated harshly, so do not first treat yourself so harshly. You do not want to be humiliated over one small slip, so do not first seize on one small slip of your own and berate yourself for it without end. Confucius's line, turned outward, is do not torment others. Turned inward, it is do not torment yourself. That one line, twenty five centuries old, measures both ends of the one ruler. It is the antidote to tormenting others and the antidote to tormenting yourself at once. One line catches this whole chapter, and the whole doctrine of torment with it.
That closes the fifth chapter. Pull together what it has set down. This chapter took torment in its second direction, from within, tormenting yourself. The first section drove it down to the plainest reactions of the body, and Zhuangzi, the Way is in the piss and the shit, set the root, the Way has no high and no low. The second section pushed deeper. The highest dimension of culture is not in the spirit but in the body, and tormenting yourself torments at that deepest layer. The third section put the two directions together. Tormenting others and tormenting yourself are the two ends of the same ruler. That ruler was handed to you by others, and it can be swapped. And Confucius, do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself, brought out a third time and turned inward, is one line that answers both directions at once.
That is the fifth stake this chapter drives. Torment has two directions, outward and inward, and they run on the same ruler. How strictly you measure others is mostly how strictly you measure yourself. And this ruler is not something you were born with. It can be swapped out.
By now the what of torment has been laid out across five whole chapters. But a careful reader may have noticed a strange thing a while ago. In all these chapters, from the first to the last, no tormentor has ever been cursed as a bad person, and no verdict of this is wrong has once been passed. Why is that? It is not an oversight. It is, of all things, the single most important stroke of the pen in this whole book. The next chapter takes up that stroke on its own. Why it only lays out positions, and will not set down that one word, no. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.