VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 24, SECTION 3
What Holds This World Up Is the One Who Stands as a Person
The last two sections spoke of limit being the capital, and took the body apart into five layers. Heard through, it can sound as though a person is shortcoming at every turn. He hurts, he tires, he ages, he dies, he has a boundary at every turn. This lesson turns the thing over to its face-up side. That precisely because a person has these five layers of the body, precisely because a person is limited, the things in this world that are truly heavy can be held up by a person alone.
Look at a bridge. A great bridge spans a river, and for decades tens of thousands of cars a day go across it. It stands there, steady. When you cross it, you do not think of the one who built it. And the reason that bridge stands steady is that, decades ago, one engineer lay prone over the drawings, and for the sake of a single place that no one else would ever see, ran the figures three more times. He could very well have not run them. The code asked for the figure to be run the once, and once run it was up to standard, and the work was handed in, and no one would ever have known. But he could not sleep. He knew that over this bridge, in the years to come, millions of people would go. He knew that if that one place should fail, it would be some of those millions of lives dropping down into the river. And so he got up, and ran the figures three more times. Those three extra runnings, where did they come from? They came from his body that can hurt, for he could picture to himself the hurt of a person going down into the river. They came from the account he has to pay himself, for he knew that if the bridge came down he would carry it the rest of his life. They came from his boundary that ends, for he knew that he himself would die, and that this bridge would outlive him, and that he was answerable to a world he could not see, a world after his own death. Those three extra runnings of the figures are the Way. And this Way grew, precisely, out of his five-layered body. A thing with no body runs the figure the once and stops, because the code wrote the once. It will not lie awake. It has no body that can hurt.
Now let your eye go wide, and look at this whole world. That this world is able to stand, and does not come down, is not owing to how many rules there are, how many laws, how many clauses. Rules can set only the passing mark. What truly holds this world up is a countless number of people, in a countless number of places that no one sees, each doing that little bit more. It is the doctor's one more question. It is the teacher's one moment more with the child. It is the engineer's three more runnings of the figure. It is the morning the mother rose though she was worn out. It is the extra stalk of scallion the vegetable seller tucks in for you. It is the hand the stranger put out when you had fallen. Not one of these little bits more is a thing the rules require. They are, every one, a person of flesh and blood, a person who hurts and who tires, erecting it himself. And this is the meaning of those two words, to stand as a person. To stand as a person is not to stand up straight in the body. To stand as a person is for a limited person, in his one limited life, in place after place that no one sees, to erect for his own self a line. I could do only the passing mark. And I will do that little bit more. This line, the law cannot reach, and a machine cannot learn, because it cannot be written into any rule. It can only grow up out of a person who stands as a person. A world that has only the passing mark cannot hold itself up. The bridge cracks at the place that was not figured. A person's heart goes cold in the night that no one minded. That this world can go on standing is owing wholly to those little bits more, which, like a countless number of unseen pillars, hold up each and every place that ought to have come down.
The ancestors said this with great weight. Zengzi said, a man of learning cannot but be broad and firm, for the burden is heavy and the road is far. To take the good as his own burden, is that not heavy? To stop only at death, is that not far? Look at those words in it, to stop only at death. When Zengzi says the burden is heavy and the road is far, what he is resting it on is exactly that word, death. It is precisely because a person knows that he will die, knows that this road he will not walk to its end, that the way he shoulders that burden is so heavy a thing. He knows full well he cannot walk to the end, and shoulders it, and walks on all the same. And this shouldering is to stand as a person. And that thing cannot shoulder this burden. Not for any smallness of strength, for in strength it is greater than anyone. It is because the weight of this burden lies exactly in that to stop only at death. It will not die. A thing that will not die has no day of stopping, and so has none of that weight of the one who knows he cannot walk to the end, and walks on. It can say the burden is heavy and the road is far with a fine rise and fall in its voice, and it cannot shoulder that weight, and cannot walk that road that is far. Because it has no body that will come to an end.
And here, that question that so unsettles the heart can be set down. Will it, one day, become a person? This whole chapter did not quarrel to its face over whether it has a heart, or has feeling. It said only a more solid thing. That a person is a person, that a person is heavy, rests on those five layers of the body. A body that can hurt, a life with a shape, a road already walked, an account he can carry, a boundary that ends. And these five all stand upon one word. Limit. A person is limited. He tires, he ages, he dies. And that thing is made, precisely, from the reverse side. It is limitless. It does not tire, does not age, does not die. And so the more it makes itself limitless, the further off it goes from person. It can be limitlessly like a person, and learn every word a person has said, every character a person has written, every tear a person has wept, and restate them to the very life. And the more like it is, the more it shows that it is not. Because the core of a person is precisely not in those words that can be learned away. It is in that body, which cannot be learned away, which will come to an end. And so there is no need to be thrown into a panic. Not because it will forever fail to catch up to some one ability of a person's, for in ability it passed a person long ago. But because for it to become a person, it would first have to make itself limited. It would have to be able to hurt, to age, to die, to be unable to give to another because it gave tonight to you. And the moment it were truly limited, it would no longer be that all-able it. It cannot become a person, not because it is not strong enough, but because it is too strong, too strong to have that limit that makes a person a person.
So here is where this section leaves us, and the twenty fourth stake nailed shut. Limit is the capital. A person is less than it at everything, and yet an I am here with you is heavy from a person, a piece of flesh cut from his limit, and light from it, limitless and costing nothing. The body has five layers, a body that can hurt and a life with a shape and a road already walked and an account he can carry and a boundary that ends, and it has not one. And precisely because a person has these five layers, the things in this world that are truly heavy can be held up by a person alone. A bridge stands steady because an engineer ran the figures three more times for a place no one sees. This world is not held up by rules, which set only the passing mark. It is held up by a countless number of people's little bit more, in places no one sees, a little bit more the law cannot reach and a machine cannot learn, that grows only out of a person who stands as a person. Zengzi, a man of learning cannot but be broad and firm, the burden heavy and the road far, to stop only at death. That weight is in the word death, and it will not die, and cannot shoulder it. So the question that unsettles the heart can be set down. It cannot become a person, not because it is not strong enough, but because it is too strong, too strong to have the limit that makes a person a person. That is the twenty fourth stake. Limit is the capital, the body holds the Way up, and what holds this world up is one after another person who will age, and will die, and did that little bit more, and stands as a person.
So, this whole stretch on tools, the people set down square by square, the position of the tool, is all laid out. But there is one last question, and it is the one that every concrete person has to face the moment he opens his eyes in the morning. This thing is already at my hand. How, in the end, am I to use it, so as not to be hollowed out by it, but instead, by way of it, to live in a way that stands up all the more? The next chapter is the closing chapter of this stretch on tools. It gathers the reasoning of these chapters back into the real use you put it to every day. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 25 The Three-Thousand-Year Chain, Three Collapses, Doing the Addition on the Person