VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20, SECTION 2

VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20, SECTION 2

The Way Comes Before the Implement

The last section, with the Records of the Examination of Craftsmen, fixed the square of the tool for good. The implement is always the object. But that leaves one question unanswered. Which square is the person in? And what lies between the two squares? This lesson brings in the Book of Changes. It has one line, of twelve characters, that draws the line between the two squares in a single stroke.

What is above form is called the Way. What is below form is called the implement. Twelve characters. Unpack them slowly. Look first at that word, form. Form is shape, the thing you can see and touch, that has a size and a weight, that can be held in the hand. A hoe has form. You can touch its iron and heft its weight. A book has form. You can turn its pages and smell its paper. A machine has form. You can hear it hum, and you can cut its power. These are what is below form. The ancestors called them the implement. And what is above form? It is the things you cannot touch, cannot weigh in the hand, cannot pack into a box. A person's conscience, has it form? It has none. And you know that it is there. The line do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself, has it form? It has none. And it has governed for twenty five hundred years. The love that has no words, in the bowl of soup a father carries into the room late at night, has it form? It has none. And it is heavy enough to crush a man. These are what is above form. The ancestors called it the Way. Twelve characters, and everything under heaven is split into two layers. The upper layer, the Way, which cannot be seen. The lower layer, the implement, which can.

So which layer is this thing of today in? Look at it honestly. Has it form? It has. It has line upon line of code, string upon string of numbers, row upon row of machines, room upon room of servers. Those rooms draw power, and blow cold air, and need a person to crawl in at midnight and swap out a board that has burned through. It runs hot. It loses power. Its code can be deleted, its numbers can be changed, its machines can be switched off. Read that line over. Deletable, editable, switch-off-able, its power able to be cut. What is that? That is an implement. What is below form is called the implement. It is in the lower layer. However like a person it speaks, however well it has the Analects by heart, however it keeps a child company at midnight, it is an implement.

And the Way, then, where is the Way? The Way is here, with the person. Set it down where it lives. The first semester spent a whole volume on it. The first chapter, do not torment. A person seated where he could block a man, a little power in his hand, and he may block or he may not. In that second he let it go. That letting go, has it form? It has none. That is the Way. The fifteenth chapter, steeping. A father home with a bellyful of anger, at the door. He may fling the keys down on the table, or he may set them down soft. He set them down soft. That soft, has it form? It has none. That is the Way. The nineteenth chapter, the nine things. A mother had promised the child the zoo on Saturday. Saturday morning she is too tired to move, and she gets up all the same, because she gave her word. That got up all the same, has it form? It has none. That is the Way. See it clearly. The Way has no form. It cannot be written into code, for code is form. It cannot be stored in a machine, for a machine is form. It cannot be downloaded, or copied, or uploaded. It can only grow on a person. In the second he lets go. In the setting of the keys down soft. In the morning he is worn out and rises anyway. This is the word of the eighteenth chapter. The body. The Way grows on the body. And the implement has no body. And so the implement cannot catch the Way.

Now the most important line comes. The Way comes before the implement. It is easy to mishear. It does not mean the Way is the earlier in time, that it appeared first and the implement after. It is speaking of position. The Way is above, the implement below, and the one above governs the one below. A hoe, is it to be used to turn the soil, or to gouge out the foot of a neighbor's wall? The hoe itself does not know. The hoe has no opinion. The hoe says not a word. The one who decides is the thing in the heart of the hand that holds it. And that thing is the Way. The Way comes before the implement means just this. The one holding the tool has first to have a thing in his heart. With that thing, the tool knows where it is to go. And the other way round? The other way round is the trouble. Let the thing in a person's heart be gone, and only the tool in his hand be left, and the more he uses it the more he cannot do without it. And at the last, is he using the tool, or is the tool using him? A man who could once reckon his own accounts, and then reckoned everything by the machine, ten years on cannot reckon at all. A man who could once find his own road, and then was guided everywhere by the machine, ten years on cannot find the road. A man who could once think a thing through, and then asked everything of that thing, ten years on. I will not finish that line. You finish it yourself. Does the Way obey the implement, or the implement the Way? Once that order is turned around, the person slowly empties out. And this, exactly, is the thing this stretch of seven chapters comes to at the end.

There are, besides, three loud claims to be taken apart. The first. It comes up with abilities no one ever taught it. It has a magic sound. But taken apart, the abilities it comes up with are pieced back together out of the hundreds of millions of books it swallowed. It is a cleverer piecing, not a heart it has grown. A person who has a whole library by heart can also come out with much that no one taught him in so many words. And he is still that person, only a person with a very good memory. However many abilities it comes up with, it is still an implement. A larger implement. The second. It grows on its own, it makes itself better on its own. This too has a magic sound. But ask one thing. It grows by what measure? By a measure that someone set for it. What counts as better, what as worse, what it should do more of and what less. These were set by someone. An ox in a pen can eat its grass on its own and put on its own weight. But the pen was fenced by a person, and the grass was planted by a person, and when it is led out is for a person to say. However fat the ox grows, the pen is still the pen. The third, and the most mystical. It has learned the Way, it has read all the books of the sages, it understands goodness better than anyone. This one needs the most taking apart. It can indeed recite the Analects from the first word to the last, and expound every commentary through the ages more completely than an old scholar who read a lifetime. But to have it by heart is not to have lived it. The eighteenth chapter said it. A tape recorder can play the whole of the Analects back word for word, a hundred times over. And did anyone therefore say the recorder had taken Confucius into itself? No one did. This is ten thousand times more intricate than a recorder. And to restate is still only to restate. To be able to say is not to be able to do. The Way is not in the book. The Way is in the one thing a person did. And it has done not a single thing.

So here is where this section leaves us. The Book of Changes drew the line. What is above form is called the Way, what is below form is called the implement, everything split into two layers, above the Way unseen, below the implement seen. And this thing of today, with its code and its machines and its server rooms, that runs hot and loses power, that is deletable and editable and switch-off-able, is an implement, in the lower layer. And the Way is with the person, in the second he lets go, in the keys set down soft, in the tired morning he rises anyway, a Way that has no form and cannot be coded or stored or downloaded but can only grow on a person, the body of the eighteenth chapter, and the implement having no body cannot catch it. The Way comes before the implement, not earlier in time but above governing below, the hoe not knowing soil from wall while the decider is the thing in the holder's heart, and once that order turns around the person empties out. And the three loud claims taken apart, the grown abilities a reassembly, the self-growth inside a pen a person fenced, the reading of all the sage-books not a living but a reciting, the recorder that no one credits with Confucius, to say not to do. That carries the twentieth stake deeper. The Way is above and the implement below, and the implement obeys the Way, and not the Way the implement. So the third stone? The first two told how the tool came, and which layer it is in. But the most important question is still unanswered. Should a tool be made at all? And once made, should it be used? By what is that to be judged? The next section brings in Mozi. He has the hardest ruler in the world. See you there.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

SECTION 3  Benefit people, do it; do not benefit people, stop