VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 26, SECTION 2
The Kind Man Grows the Self by Wealth, the Board Is Dead, the Player Is Alive
The last section set out three deaths: hoarded dead, turning empty, the guest made host. This section speaks the way of living. The way of living, the ancestors spoke through in one line, and that line is fourteen characters only, yet in it there is one character that is the key of this whole semester. This section first speaks those fourteen characters through, then gathers up this whole game of chess.
One. Those fourteen characters
Set this line up here first.
The kind man grows the self by wealth, the unkind man grows wealth by the self, runs the line from Master Zeng, in the Book of Rites, the Great Learning. See clear the structure of this line. Two lines, using the same three characters, wealth, self, grow, only the order turned once about. One is grows the self by wealth: take money, and stand this person up, one is grows wealth by the self: take this person, and heap money up.
The key is on that character grow. To grow is to give life, is to sprout. Ask one line: who is growing? In the front line, what grows is the person, money is the soil, the person the sprout, in the back line, what grows is money, the person becomes the soil, money the sprout.
Two. Grows wealth by the self, what it looks like
Look first at the back line: grows wealth by the self, take the person to grow money. He stakes his body in, stakes in his time, his sleep, his knees, his stomach, those evenings of eating with his family. See clear: it is not that he does not toil, he toils to the utmost, he is one of the most diligent crowd in this world.
Yet the direction of his toil is to make that number grow large. This is the third death of the last section: the guest made host. The person becomes the soil, money the sprout. Walked to the end, that number is very very large, and that person, very very small.
Three. Grows the self by wealth, what it looks like
Now look at the front line: grows the self by wealth, take money to grow the person. Look at these two characters, grow the self, a little more solid. A person takes a sum of money and runs a factory, several hundred people come to work in it, and their children can afford to study. A person takes a sum of money and goes to learn a craft he had long wanted to learn. A person takes a sum of money and heals his mother’s illness. A person takes a sum of money and mends a broken road up again.
See clear: in these several matters, the money is all spent, the number grew smaller, yet something grew out. What grew out is the person: the days of several hundred people, a craft, a mother who can rise and walk again, a road come through. This is that character grow.
Four. This layer joins that weir
Carry this line back to chapter sixteen, back to that weir that watered the fields two thousand three hundred years. Li Bing’s money, that manpower, those stones and bamboo cages, all spent. Spent, and on the books nothing was left. Yet something grew out: what grew out is two thousand three hundred years of rice, is the food of generation upon generation on the Chengdu plain.
See clear: grows the self by wealth, what it grows is never only this one self, what it grows is the selves of many people. Chapter sixteen spoke of it: that one share, no one may swallow alone, gain not of labor belongs to the public. Today this line is the same position, set over from the other end: the pair of hands that truly makes capital live was never the pair that gathers it in, it is the pair that scatters it out, that lets it grow into the days of others.
Five. The board is dead, the player is alive
Now gather up this whole semester. Recall chapter twenty-four, that board. Scarcity is the board: born scarcity is the squares Heaven drew, made scarcity is someone on the board drawing a few more lines. The board is dead, it does not favor, nor work ill, it is just there.
That rule too is dead, it carries no feeling, it only reads the number, heaven and earth are not kind, they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs. Capital, more so, is dead, it has no eyes, no heart, no notion of its own, the twenty piculs of grain a farmer had left can be eaten, can be hidden, can send a child to study. Gather the thirteen chapters of this semester all into this one line: this whole game of chess, from board to piece, is all dead. The alive, there is one only, it is the person seated before the board.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section spoke the way of living. The kind man grows the self by wealth, the unkind man grows wealth by the self, the key on that character grow: grows wealth by the self, what grows is money, the person becomes the soil, grows the self by wealth, what grows is the person, money becomes the soil. The number grew smaller, yet something grew out, and Li Bing’s weir is the greatest one time of growing the self by wealth. And this whole game of chess, the board is dead, the rule is dead, capital is dead, the alive is only that person playing the chess.
Speaking to here, this semester has only its last section left, and one thing is still owed. Chapter twenty-three dug to that stroke: all the costs of the two frames, the root is one line, one side crossed the line. Chapter twenty-five dug once more: making scarcity walked to the innermost, the root is not in the economy. Twice, both dug to the same place, and that place has all along not been spoken to its face. The next section, the last section of this semester, speaks it clear. Those six characters of Confucius have been used once already, and this last section will set them to the very center.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 3 Not in That Position, One Does Not Plan Its Governing, the Economy Is Not Politics