VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 22, SECTION 1
The Gentleman Is Not a Vessel, a Person Is No Longer an Implement
At the end of the last chapter it was said that this force loosened an old bind that had roped people thousands of years. This section first sees clear what that old bind is. To see it clear, set down for now that world in your heart of going to work, changing trades, jumping jobs. Those words, two hundred years ago, all but did not exist. The person of that time had one position his whole life, and that position, in the moment he was born, was already fixed.
One. Born into what house, that is what you are
Go back into that old bind and look at a person. He was born into a farming house. From the time he can remember, he followed his father down into the fields, he learned to read the weather, read the water, read the soil, read the pests, at twenty he could farm, at forty he could farm, at sixty he still could farm. The one thing he could do a whole life was this one thing.
Born into a smith’s house, a whole life at the forge, born into a weaver’s house, a whole life at the loom, born into a boatman’s house, the son a boatman still. You ask, was he willing to change or not? This question, in that world, had almost no meaning. It is not that he was unwilling, it is that the matter of changing was not in his imagining at all. The one craft his hands had was taught by his father, handed down from his grandfather, and outside this one craft he could do nothing, and losing this one craft he had nothing to eat.
Two. The root of this old bind is one character
The root of this bind is one character, and that character is: vessel. What is a vessel? A vessel is an implement, a hammer, a bowl, a plow. See clear the temper of an implement: an implement has one use only. A hammer is a hammer, you cannot use it as a bowl, a bowl is a bowl, you cannot plow a field with it, a plow is a plow, its whole life it does one thing.
That old bind did just this thing: it took a person as a vessel. One person, one craft, one position, from birth to death. This is no one’s malice, it is the way of living of that time: the work in the hand could lean on the hand only, on one pair of hands drilling it round after round, and a person’s life is so short, and what can be drilled to mastery is that one craft only.
Three. Those three characters of Confucius
More than twenty-five hundred years ago, a person, facing this bind, spoke three characters.
The gentleman is not a vessel, runs the line in the Analects, in the book For Governing. Read these three characters once, and once more. Confucius said: the gentleman is not an implement. These three characters, landing in that world where all were vessels, are a most weighty line.
Confucius did not mean a person should learn no craft. His meaning was: a person should not be welded dead by one use, he should not have only one face, only one road, only one thing he can do. He should be alive, he should be able to meet a matter he has not seen, walk a road he has not walked, do one thing in this position and do another in another position. Confucius, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, set out that position of not being a vessel. Yet he set it out, and the great majority were still vessels. For in that time, there was no such thing as could take a person out of that one craft.
Four. That thing came two hundred years ago
That thing came two hundred years ago. It is the machine. The machine did a thing no one had reckoned on: it took away, on purpose, those repeated, single, fixed-pattern kinds of work. A loom took away the weaving, a forge-hammer took away the swinging of the great hammer, a water pump took away the carrying of water.
See clear: what the machine took away was precisely that one craft that welds a person dead. That person who wove a whole life, the craft in his hands, the machine matched his year in a day. This matter sounds cruel, and it is indeed cruel, and this layer is spoken next. Yet it did another thing too: it pried a person loose from that position welded dead for thousands of years.
Five. Once pried loose, where did the person go
Once the machine pried a person loose, where did he go? To do the things the machine cannot do. The machine can take away the repeated work of fixed pattern, and what can it not take away? It cannot take away the making of a decision, cannot take away the dealing with people, cannot take away the thinking up of a thing never had before, cannot take away, in a place with no rule, the setting of a rule.
Look at the world today. What are the people of today doing? Designing, teaching, healing, caring for people, doing research, handling affairs, managing a group of people, making a thing not had before. Of these kinds of work, the great majority, two hundred years ago, did not exist. It is not that the people of that time could not do them, it is that the people of that time were all roped to the land, roped before the loom, roped to that one craft that had to be drilled out by hand round after round, and could not pull themselves free.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section saw clear that old bind. Born into what house, that is what you are, one craft, one position, from birth to death. The root of this bind is one character: vessel, an implement has one use only, and that world took a person as a vessel. Confucius, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, spoke three characters, the gentleman is not a vessel, and set that position out, yet in that time there was nothing that could take a person out of that one craft.
Two hundred years ago the machine came, it took away on purpose those repeated, single kinds of work, that is, the craft that welds a person dead, and the person pried loose went to do what the machine cannot: make decisions, deal with people, think up what was never had. Speaking to here, it sounds like a great good thing. Hold the words here. Remember one line, and the next section will use it throughout: every liberation has its cost. A person was loosed from one craft locking a whole life, yet in the loosing, another thing was gone too, and that thing is called the guarantee of having food a whole life. That person who wove a whole life, on the day he was loosed, where did he stand?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.