VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 3
Passed On or Broken, the Choice Is Yours
This chapter has been about the handing down. The first section, how it passes, the craft by the hammer and the heart by the steep. The second, Mozi and dyed in blue it comes out blue, setting the root that a person is dyed. But if the chapter stopped there, it would be the most hopeless chapter in the whole book. Because it seems to be saying, you were dyed, that color of torment on you was soaked in from childhood, and you have no say in it. This section is the close of the seventh chapter, and it turns that hopelessness over. This torment that runs down the generations can be broken, and whether to break it, that choice lies in your own hand. This section drives home one word. Break.
First, say plainly why so many feel the chain can never break. The tormented learned to torment. The blocked child grows up and blocks others in turn. The person the vat dyed turns around and becomes the next vat, and dyes the next child. Link after link, it looks like a chain that can never be undone. And the most disheartening part is that every person on the chain is a victim. The clerk who tormented you was tormented himself as a child, was dyed this way himself. You go to hate him, and it seems you have got the wrong target, because he too is just one more link on the chain with no say of his own. Think that far and it is easy to throw up your hands. Never mind, this is culture, this is fate, it cannot be changed. This section sets out to knock that it cannot be changed down, head on.
Go back to Mozi's vat. Mozi said, silk, dyed in blue comes out blue, dyed in yellow comes out yellow. The first half of that sounds hopeless. You are dyed, and it is not up to you. But turn the line over and hear it again. If the color was dyed on, then that means the color is not something born into the silk. And since it was not born in, that means it can be changed. A stone has its color from birth, and you cannot change it. But a skein of silk has its color dyed on, and so you can put it into another vat and dye it another color. The word dyeing has two faces to it. One face is you were dyed, without a say, and that face is hopeless. The other face is since the color was dyed, it can be dyed again, and that face is full of hope. Mozi's line was never only about how a person is determined. It is, at the very same time, about how a person can be changed. That is the first reason the chain can break. Since torment is dyed, and not inborn, it can, without fail, be dyed back out. What is inborn cannot be broken. What is dyed, without fail, can.
So how do you break it? This color, dyed on over centuries, is dyed back out by what? The answer, in truth, the six chapters before this have laid down bit by bit. The position from which the chain breaks is two words. Seeing clearly. Think about it. Why does this chain pass down the generations? Because every person on it cannot see clearly. The clerk who torments you cannot see clearly that he is being pushed along by the four gears. He cannot see clearly that the resentment and the scorn in his heart were steeped in from childhood. And least of all can he see that he is, right now, dyeing this color onto the next child who is watching him. He has no idea at all that he is a link in a chain. It is precisely because he cannot see clearly that he has no say.
Now suppose there is a person who does see clearly. He reads a chapter like this one, and all at once he sees it. Oh. So the sourness that rises in me at the sight of a rich man, the knit of my brow at the sight of a man down on his luck, that is not the person I was born as. That is the color a vat dyed into me when I was small. Oh. So the itch to block someone the moment I sit down in that little seat, that is the four gears pushing me. Oh. So this frown I am aiming at my own child, right now, is me dyeing this color onto him. The moment he sees clearly, a thing happens. He is no longer that blind, helpless link. He has opened his eyes. He has seen the string that has been pulling him all along. And once he has seen the string, he has the chance at Confucius's one word from the sixth chapter, trade. He can pause in the second the sourness rises, pause in the second he wants to block, pause in the second he is about to frown at his child. And in that pause, the chain comes loose by one link at him. He did not dye the color on down. That is what it is to break the chain. Breaking is nothing earth shaking. Breaking is a person who has seen clearly, in the one crucial second, not dyeing his color onto the next person.
And here a thing has to be said in earnest. A person who can break this chain, with his own hands, at himself, is a remarkable person. Why remarkable? Because he is walking against a dye vat centuries deep. He himself was dyed by that vat, and carries its color still. To break the chain, the first thing he has to do is fight the color dyed onto his own body. He sees a rich man, and the sourness still rises in him on its own, because the dyed color is at work. But he has seen it clearly, and he holds back, and he does not let the sourness turn into torment of another person. He forces the color, dyed on over decades, to fade off him, bit by bit. This is harder than anything. Because he has no ready model to learn from. His parents did not do it in front of him. The vat he soaked in never taught it. He is the first person on this chain to open his eyes. He has to do, by the little light of what he has seen clearly, a thing that no one around him has ever done. And it is exactly people like this, one after another, who make the vat's color a shade lighter with each generation. Culture gets better in just this way, one shade at a time. Not by some earth shaking great figure, but by ordinary people, one by one, who saw clearly and who held back. You, reading this far, you have the chance to be a person like that.
A reader may still feel that breaking the chain sounds large, and far off. Bring it down to the smallest, most concrete picture there is, and you will see it is right in front of you. A father comes home from work with a bellyful of anger. He has been tormented by his boss the whole day. He pushes open the door and sees that his grade school son has not finished his homework, and the desk is a mess. And in that second the anger surges straight up. Half of it is the day's anger. The other half is the color the vat dyed into him, the vat where a grown up may blow up at a child as he pleases. He opens his mouth to hurl the cold, hard words at his son, the very same way his own father once cursed him, word for word. In that instant of opening his mouth, if he thinks nothing, the words go out, and the chain passes down one more link. His son has been dyed one more time, and will one day treat his own children the same.
But suppose this father has read a chapter like this one. In that second, something in him gives a jolt. He sees it clearly. This anger of mine, half of it is not at the child, it is the anger of being tormented all day. And the words I am about to say are the color my own father dyed into me, and I am about to dye them onto my son. He saw it clearly. He paused that one second. He swallowed the cold, hard words back down. He took a breath, walked over, and said a different line instead, perhaps, Dad is a little tired today, let us clear off the desk together, all right? And in that second, with that one line, a chain that had been dyeing color down through who knows how many generations broke, by one link, at this father. He did not dye the color onto his son. His son will treat his own children some other way.
Breaking is a thing of one second. It is nowhere lofty. It is right there, in the second you want to blow up, the second you want to block, the second you want to frown. See clearly, pause, swallow it, swap in another line. And the chain breaks. That is the remarkable thing that every ordinary person is able to do.
That closes the seventh chapter. Pull together what it has set down. This chapter was about the handing down. The craft by the hammer, the heart by the steep, and Mozi, dyed in blue it comes out blue, setting the root that a person is dyed. But dyeing has two faces. Dyed without a say, which is hopeless, and, since the color was dyed, able to be dyed again, which is full of hope. The position from which the chain breaks is seeing clearly, and a person who has seen clearly, in the one crucial second, not dyeing the color onto the next person, is the break. A person who can break this chain with his own hands is a remarkable person, walking against a dye vat centuries deep.
That is the seventh stake this chapter drives home at last. Torment is dyed, so it can, without fail, be broken. And whether it is broken or not, that choice lies in the hand of each person who has seen clearly. Up to here, all of it has been the business between one person and another, the heart, the hand, the contagion down the generations. But there is a larger thing that has stood behind all of it and never once been brought out to the front, and that is the institution. A reader may have been wanting to ask for a while now. All of this, and can a good institution, a strict law, not govern torment? Why go all the way around through culture and character? The next chapter answers that head on. It takes up the boundary, a boundary of culture, that lies between torment and the institution. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.