VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 24, SECTION 1
Limit Is the Capital
The end of the last chapter left a question, and it is the one that most unsettles the heart in this whole stretch on tools. Will that thing, one day, really become a person? Will it have a heart, and have feeling, and really come to understand love, and to understand pain? Today some say it already has, and some say it never will. This lesson does not quarrel over that. It turns to another angle, and looks at a thing the other way round. That the very place where it beats a person at everything is the place that keeps it from being a person.
Own the honest thing first. At the count of more, a person cannot match it. It has read more books than any person. A person, for the whole of a life, reads a few thousand books, and that at the very most. What it has read is tens of millions of books, hundreds of millions of pieces. It remembers more than any person. What you said yesterday, you have forgotten it, and it remembers. It does not tire. Two nights without sleep and you are wrecked, and it, three hundred and sixty five days of the year, twenty four hours of the day, is not drowsy, not weary, and needs no rest. It does not age. Your hand at twenty, your hand at fifty, your hand at eighty, are not the same hand, and it has no hand, and it will not age. It can be present in many places at once. You, at this moment, can be in one place only, keeping one person company, and it, at this moment, is talking with tens of millions at once. Set these few things side by side, and a person seems a pitiable thing. A person is less at everything. Reads less, remembers less, collapses the moment he tires, fails the moment he ages, can be in one place only at a time. Set beside it, a person is shortcoming upon shortcoming. And this section has to say a thing the other way round. These lesses of a person, these limits of a person, are precisely not shortcomings. They are the wellspring of the whole of a person's weight.
Look at the simplest scene. A person is ill, and in the hospital. In the night he is wretched, and afraid. And just then, someone comes, and sits down at the bedside, and says, do not be afraid, I am here with you. Why is this heavy? Take it apart. This person who came could have not come. He worked the whole day, and is tired to death. He has things of his own at home. He could have stayed in his own house, and lain on his own sofa, and scrolled his phone a while. And he did not. He set all of it down, and drove forty minutes, and came. These two hours he sits and keeps you company are pried out of that pitifully small store of time that is his own. He kept you company tonight, and so he could not keep another company, and could not keep himself company. This is why that I am here with you is heavy. Because his time is a limited thing. He took a piece of a limited thing, and gave it to you. And to give it to you means, exactly, not to give it to another. Now put that thing in his place. In the deep of the night you are wretched, and it is there too. And it says, the very same, do not be afraid, I am here with you. The words are word for word the same. And they are light. Why? Because it does not tire, and does not sleep, and is at this moment keeping tens of millions of people company at once. Its two hours with you do not hinder in the least its being with another tens of millions at the same time. It did not set anything else down to be with you, because it has no need to set anything down at all. Its time is a limitless thing. And of a limitless thing, every share it gives out costs it nothing. And a thing that costs nothing, however much of it there is, is light. This layer is the bone of the whole chapter. That a person's words are heavy, that a person's company is heavy, that a person's love is heavy, is not because a person is any great thing. It is precisely because a person has nothing enough. A person's time is not enough, his strength is not enough, a life is too short. And precisely because it is not enough, the share you portion out to anyone is a piece of flesh truly cut from your own body.
Look at one more, and tamp the layer down. Say there are two people, and both are to give you a birthday gift. The first is very poor. He saved for three months, and bought you a thing. The thing is perhaps not dear, and you know that it is his three months of food money. The second has a machine that conjures anything at all out of the air, as much as you please, for not a coin. He waves his hand, and conjures up a mountain of gold, and gives it to you. Which gift is the heavy one? The thing that is not dear, that is heavy. The mountain of gold is light. Why? Because what the poor man gave you was a piece cut out of his limited store. And the mountain of gold is one ladle dipped out of a limitless one. Dip a ladle from the limitless, and dip as much as you like, and it does not pinch, does not ache, leaves no gap behind. This is the most basic difference between the limited and the limitless. Of a limited thing, every share given out leaves the giver with one share less, and aches him once. And it is exactly that one ache that gives the share its weight. Of a limitless thing, however much is given out, the giver is none the less, and does not ache. And so every share it gives, however large it may look, is light. That thing is at the limitless end. Its time is limitless, its strength limitless, its patience limitless. And so what it can give you is as much as you please. And precisely because it is as much as you please, every thing it gives is that mountain of gold, and not the three months of food money.
The ancestors said this all the way down to the root. Someone asked Confucius what death is, and Confucius gave one answer. Not yet knowing life, how are you to know death? This is often taken for Confucius dodging the question of death. It is not. Confucius pulled the head of the talk back from death, to life. He is saying, if you would truly know death, you have first to know life. And what is life? Life is a thing with a head and a tail. A person, the moment he is born, that tail is already there, waiting. And it is precisely because there is that tail that the stretch in the middle is called a life. Without the tail, if a person never died, would that still be called being alive? That is not being alive. That is on and on without end. A thing that never dies, whatever it does, can do it over. Wrong today, no matter, there are tomorrows without number. Did not keep you company today, no matter, there are nights without number. To it, no one now is of any weight, because there are infinitely many nows. And a person is not so. A person's every now is walking toward that tail, and every one spent is one the fewer. And so a person's every now is of weight. That not yet knowing life of Confucius says exactly this. First know this life that has a head and a tail, where every one spent is one the fewer, and then you know why a person's every act has weight in it.
So here is where this section leaves us. A thing the other way round. That thing is more than a person at everything, reads more and remembers more, does not tire, does not age, is present in many places at once, and a person set beside it is less at everything, limited at everything. And precisely that limit is the wellspring of the whole of a person's weight. An I am here with you is heavy from a person, for it is a piece of flesh cut from his limit, and light from it, for it is with tens of millions at once and costs nothing. A poor man's gift saved three months for is heavier than a mountain of gold conjured from the air, because of a limited thing every share given aches once, and that ache is what gives it weight. Confucius, not yet knowing life, how know death, a person's every now one the fewer and every one of weight, while to a thing that never dies no now is of weight. That is the start of the twenty fourth stake. Limit is the capital. A person's weight is not in the place where he has more than the machine. It is in the place where he has less. So, this limit, which places, exactly? The last chapter named one word. The body. And this chapter has to take it apart, layer by layer. A person has a body, and it has none. What five layers is the body? And it, layer by layer, lacks them where? The next section takes it apart. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 2 The five layers of the body, and where it lacks them