VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 26, SECTION 2
That Half Second
The last section spoke of how to live alongside the nine things, and came to rest on one word. Portion. But this portioning, at which moment does it happen? This lesson shrinks it down to the smallest, down to one half second. This whole set of books, two volumes, so much reasoning, comes at the last all to rest on this one half second.
See a thing clearly first. In a person's one life, what is truly his own to decide is, in truth, very little. Which family you were born into, you had no choosing. What you look like, your gifts, your temper, are for the most part what you were brought here with. What kind of an age you happened into, you had no choosing. What people you met at your side, more than half of it is fate. For the overwhelming most of this one life of yours, you are pushed along by a force far larger than you. So what is there left that is your own? What is left is one half second after another. It is those tiniest of moments, when a thing has come, and you are to make a response, that one flick of it. Someone steps on your foot, and you flare, or you hold it in. The child speaks to you, and you lift your head, or you keep your eyes on the phone. You come in the door with a belly full of anger, and you fling the keys down, or you set them down soft. In a meeting you are asked to nod on a thing that wrongs your conscience, and you say yes, or you say no. That call you have been meaning to make, that I am sorry you have been meaning to get out, you make it or you do not, you say it or you do not. These moments are every one of them short, only a half second long. And it is precisely these half seconds, one after another, that are the thing in your whole life that is truly your own, truly yours to decide. What kind of person you are is not written in your achievements, and not written in your family line. It is written in these half seconds, one after another, in which way, in the end, you lean.
Look back over this whole set of books. The first chapter of the first semester, that person seated behind the window, who could block a man or could not block him, and the one flick in which he let his hand go, that is a half second. The fifteenth chapter of the second semester, that father who came in the door meaning to fling the keys down, and set them down soft instead, that one flick, is a half second. The nineteenth chapter of the second semester, that mother who was too worn out to move and got up all the same to take the child to the zoo, that one flick, is a half second. The twenty first chapter of the second semester, that engineer who, in the meeting room, with the mortgage and the review pressing on him, got out the word no, that one flick, is a half second. The twenty fourth chapter of the second semester, that man who ran the figures three more times for the sake of a bridge, that one flick, is a half second still. Have you seen it clearly? These two volumes, dozens of chapters, so many people spoken of, so much reasoning, come at the last all to be speaking of one same thing. A person, in that half second, in which way he leans. The Way is in no other place. The Way lives right here, in this half second. All the education, all the steeping, all the standing as a person, raise this one half second. Raise it so that when that half second comes, you do not have to think, and of your own self you have leaned to the right side.
There is a thing of the first importance here that has to be said plain. That half second is too short, too short for you to have any time to think at all. Someone steps on your foot, and the anger comes up with a rush, and whether you flare or do not flare is in that one instant, and you have no time to open a debate in your heart. The one flick in which the child speaks to you, and you lift your head or you do not, is the body's own response, and not a decision the head thought out. It is precisely because the half second is too short, too short to think in, that in that half second what you lean on is not the reasoning. The reasoning is too slow. What you lean on is that body that was long ago raised into what it is. And this circles back to the root of this whole set of books. The eleventh chapter of the second semester spoke of that bedrock, hard past all seeing. Culture has long since burned a great many things into the innermost layer of your body, so deep you cannot govern them at all. The fifteenth chapter spoke of steeping. Those things were not taught in. They were steeped, a year at a time, into your body. The twenty fourth chapter spoke of the body. All of a person's weight is on that body, which can hurt, and can tire, and has walked a road, and can bear an account, and has a boundary. And now you understand. In that half second, the one that decides for you is exactly this body. The education you took in over the better part of a life, the steeping you took, the standing as a person you did, were all of them laying in a store for this body. What kind of store was laid in is what is drawn out in that half second. A person who from small was well treated, and well steeped, in that half second his body of itself leans toward the good. A person who from small was soaked in torment, in that half second his body of itself leans toward the torment. The half second is too fast, and the reasoning cannot hold it back. Only the store laid up in the body can hold it back.
And so, that new thing, the thing it can least touch is exactly this half second. Come to here, its position is wholly clear. It can write your piece for you, reckon your account for you, do your analysis for you, run through all the reasoning under heaven for you. There is nothing it cannot do in your stead. And it alone cannot do this half second in your stead. Because this half second happens too fast, happens in the innermost layer of your body, happens in a place where no person and no tool is present, only your own self and that one flick of response. It cannot get itself in. The half second you were stepped on, it is not there. The half second in which you would or would not lift your head to the child, it is not there. The half second in which you would or would not fling that key, it is not there. That half second is you, pure and unmixed. It is the last you, that nothing in this world can do in your stead, and that nothing can take from you. And this is the most heart-settling line this whole set of books comes to at the last. However strong that thing is, however large, however like a person, it can never touch this half second of yours. This half second is a person's last, and hardest, piece of ground. Hold this half second, and you hold the person. And whether this half second can be held turns not on how much reasoning you understand, but on what, over the better part of a life, you have had this body of yours raised into.
The ancestors spoke of this half second, and spoke of it to the very heart. Mencius said, a man of today who of a sudden sees a small child about to fall into a well will, every one of them, feel a start of alarm and a pang of pity. See the marvel in the example Mencius takes, in those two words, of a sudden. Of a sudden is to see it all at once, with not a moment to make ready, not a moment to reckon. And in that half second of the sudden seeing, that heart that cannot bear it gives its start, of itself, and rises up. It was not thought out. There was no time to think. It welled up, of itself, from the innermost of the body. Mencius says that this, just this, is the root of the good in a person's heart, and he calls it the heart that cannot bear. Twenty three centuries ago, Mencius saw this half second, clear and clear. Whether a person is good or is not good is not read off the fine words he speaks in the ordinary way. It is read off that half second of the sudden seeing, in which way his heart leans. And this whole set of books, from the head to the tail, raises exactly this. It raises that heart of yours that, in the half second of the sudden seeing, wells up of itself.
So here is where this section leaves us. That half second. A person's one life is, for the most of it, pushed along by a force larger than he is, which family and what gifts and what age none of it his to choose. What is truly his to decide is one half second after another, whether to flare at the foot stepped on, whether to lift the head to the child, whether to fling the keys at the door, whether to nod on the thing that wrongs the conscience. These dozens of chapters speak all of this half second, in which way a person leans in it. And the half second is too short to think in, and what it leans on is not the reasoning but that body long ago raised into what it is, the education and the steeping and the standing you took over the better part of a life all laying in the store that is drawn out in that half second. And so that new thing can do everything in your stead but this half second, which happens in the innermost of the body where no tool is present, a person's last and hardest ground. Mencius, a man who of a sudden sees a child about to fall into a well feels, every one, the start of alarm and the pang of pity, that heart welling up of itself in the half second of the sudden seeing. That is the twenty sixth stake carried deeper. What a person truly decides is one half second after another, and in the half second he leans on the raised body and not the reasoning, and this half second is the last person, that no tool can touch. So, raised a whole life, held a whole life, at the very end, this one journey of a person, what in truth is it for, and what does it leave? Come to this last section, there ought to be a place for it all to land. The next section draws these two volumes, these hundreds of thousands of words, in onto eight characters. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3 Originally not a single thing, a great love left in the human world