VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 1
The Word No Draws the Line
The last chapter ended by pointing at something strange. Five whole chapters on torment, and from the first to the last, no tormentor was ever called a bad person and no verdict of this is wrong was ever passed. This chapter takes up that stroke of the pen on its own. Why it only lays out positions, and will not set down that one word, no. This chapter is about how this whole book itself is written. And it starts from the smallest word there is, that word, no. See that one word clearly, and you see exactly what seat the writer has put himself in.
Start with two kinds of sentence. They tell the same event, and the positions behind them are worlds apart. The first runs like this. The person behind the window blocked the man for one trip, let out one requirement, and kept the next card in his hand. The second runs like this. The person behind the window is a terrible person, tormenting people this way is wrong, and he ought to be condemned. Weigh the two. Where do they part?
The first only lays the event down where you can see it. Who was in what position, doing what, set out plainly. It adds no no, passes no verdict. The reader, reading it, forms his own scale inside. The second adds terrible, and wrong, and ought to be condemned. It does not only lay the event down, it has passed the verdict for the reader. Before the reader has had the chance to think, the writer has pushed the conclusion into his mouth.
Behind these two sentences stand two completely different seats. In the first, the writer has put himself in the seat of a recorder. My job is only to see the thing clearly and lay it out clearly, and the verdict I leave to you. In the second, the writer has climbed into the seat of a judge. I do not only look, I also convict on your behalf. This whole book, from beginning to end, holds to the first. Why? This section drives that all the way down.
Look at what happens the moment that word no leaves your mouth. This is wrong. This kind of person is bad. This behavior should not be allowed. These no words sound like standing on the side of justice, and they feel good to say. But in the very second you say that no, a thing you did not notice has happened. You have jumped from a person who sees the thing to a person who judges the thing. A ruler has appeared in your hand out of nowhere, a ruler of right and wrong. You lay it against another person, you measure wrong, and you hand him a conviction.
Does that action look familiar? Is it not the very ruler from the last chapter? The tormentor has a ruler in his hand too, the materials must be complete, and a hair off will not do. And now you have one in yours, a person must walk straight, and a hair off is wrong. The tormentor lays his ruler against the paperwork. The one passing the verdict lays his against the character. It is the same motion. Take a law, lay it against a living person, and where the person does not conform, punish. And here is the deepest and most sobering layer of it. A person who stands all day on the moral height, no-ing this and no-ing that, handing out convictions one after another, is in fact fighting torment with torment. He is against what torment does. He is using how torment works. And that is why this whole book is so careful, and will not lightly set down that word no. Because the moment it sets down that no, the writer himself has taken the judge's seat first, and has become, first of all, the very kind of person he is against.
Now here a reader may get anxious. By this reasoning, do we just leave torment alone? See evil, and say nothing? Throw right and wrong out altogether? This is the most important place in the section, and it has to be made clear, so no one runs off to the other extreme. Passing no verdict is not having no sense of right and wrong. Just the opposite. It is handing the right and wrong back to you. Look at the first sentence again. The person blocked the man for one trip, let out one requirement, and kept the next card in his hand. Is there right and wrong in that sentence? There is. You read it, and inside you it is perfectly clear, this is not a good thing. That perfect clarity is the right and wrong. But this right and wrong is a thing you saw for yourself, a scale that grew up out of your own heart. It stands steadier and runs deeper than any he is a terrible person. Because a verdict someone else pushes into you, you forget the moment you turn around. A right and wrong you saw for yourself, you remember for the rest of your life.
So passing no verdict is not the canceling of right and wrong. It is the refusal to reach over and chew the right and wrong up and spoon it into your mouth. The writer does one thing only. He lays the event out as clearly as it can be laid, and lets you see it for yourself. Once you have seen it, the scale rises inside you on its own. That is far cleverer than pushing a conclusion at you, and it respects you far more. A writer who truly respects his reader treats him as an adult able to judge for himself, and not as a child who has to be fed the conclusions. Laying out positions and passing no verdict is, at bottom, that respect for the reader.
This no verdict stroke of the pen was not thought up here. Twenty five centuries ago Laozi took it down to the root. In the Dao De Jing he wrote that the sage handles his affairs by doing without forcing, and carries on his teaching without words. Weigh that, the teaching without words. The highest teaching is not instruction poured in the ear, not telling you point by point that this is right and that is wrong. The highest teaching sets the thing's own shape in front of you and lets you look for yourself, and come to it for yourself. What you come to yourself is truly yours. What another pushes on you stays, always, another's. This whole book's laying out positions and passing no verdict is Laozi's teaching without words, carried on twenty five centuries later. Laying out the position is the teaching without words, is setting the thing out and not butting in with a conclusion. It was not invented here. It is a stroke of the pen the ancestors set down long ago. The credit is Laozi's.
So here is where this section leaves us. From the smallest word, no, it has shown the writer's seat. The same event can be told two ways, one that lays out the fact and leaves the verdict to the reader, and one that adds a no and convicts on the reader's behalf. Behind them stand the recorder and the judge. The moment the no is out, a person jumps from seeing to judging, with a ruler in his hand for measuring people, and that is exactly the motion of torment, so it is easy to fight torment with torment's own method. Passing no verdict is not having no right and wrong, it is handing the right and wrong back to the reader, and that is a form of respect. Laozi's teaching without words set the root twenty five centuries ago. So how did the ancestors, generation after generation, actually use this laying out of facts and passing of no verdict? The next section opens the history books and looks at how the pen of the ancients laid out positions, with not one word of praise or blame, and still let people a thousand years later see it all perfectly clearly. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.