VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 35, SECTION 1

VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 35, SECTION 1

That bowl of rice your mother left for you

The last chapter set the ground floor firm: distribution by need is the fruit, capacity is the root. From this chapter on, we do a thing that mirrors the front half of the term: as we once counted the by labor, so we count distribution by need out, corner by corner. Count from the nearest place, near to where you may never have marked it. Count from that bowl of rice your mother left for you.

One, that bowl of rice

Call up a picture. One day you came home late. Very late, the family had all eaten, the table was cleared. But you lift the pot lid, and in the pot there is still a bowl of rice left for you, a dish, a cover set over the top, and it is still warm.

Last term, this term, we used this bowl of rice again and again. Now, in earnest, walk near it, and look down under it. This bowl of rice, by what was it divided to you. That day, what did you do for this house. Mostly nothing. You were only out about your own business, busy till very late before you came back. You put out no labor, earned no money, added not a bit of force to this meal. Yet this bowl of rice sat there waiting for you. Take the six rules from the front half of the term to weigh it, and no reason at all weighs out for your deserving this bowl of rice. By labor, this day you were a zero to this house. Yet the rice is still warm.

So by what was it left. By your need. You came home late, you would be hungry, you needed a warm mouthful. The one who left the rice, what she had in mind was only this one thing: the child comes home, he will be hungry. She did not reckon whether you put out labor today, whether you deserve. She knew only that you need. This bowl of rice is the purest, nearest, least adulterated sample of distribution by need. It happens every day in thousands upon thousands of houses, yet no man ever called it by this great word.

Two, in this bowl of rice, there is no account

Look one layer deeper under this bowl of rice. The most moving thing about this bowl of rice is that in it there is not one line of account.

The one who left the rice will not, when you sit down to eat, reckon with you: how much I busied for you today, how much you owe me, when you will pay it back. She keeps no such account. Nor does she look for you, in some day to come, to carry a bowl of rice back and repay her. This bowl of rice is given for free, given asking no return. This is the most root difference between distribution by need and distribution by labor. The by labor is an account, is you put out this much and I give that much, clear and clean, neither owing the other. The by need is no account, it is given for free, it is a giving out with no keeping in the heart of getting it back.

You may feel, keeping no account, is that not to take a loss. But think, if a house reckoned every bowl of rice into an account, the parents keeping account against the child and the child turning back to reckon with the parents, is that still a house. It has become a cold inn where neither owes the other. It is exactly because in this bowl of rice there is no account that this house is a house, is warm. Hold this layer: the heart of distribution by need is a heart that keeps no account. That word the kind from the front half of the term, that warmth willing to give one bit more and asking no return, is seen most truly in this bowl of rice.

Three, this thing lives first in the smallest places

From this bowl of rice, set up a most needful watching, which governs this whole chapter: this thing distribution by need, it does not live first in some great state, some great institution, it lives first in the smallest, nearest, warmest places.

It lives first between a mother and a child come home late. It lives between a husband and wife, when one falls sick, the other will not reckon that he did no work these days, earned less money, only hurries to care for him. It lives at a family’s table, that best piece of meat picked for the one who most needs it. See, the old home of distribution by need is not in the hall of state, not in some grand institution, it is in these palm sized places, of blood and flesh. It grows out of that little tenderness between man and man. Where there is tenderness, there is the by need.

This point is greatly needful. The error of those two pictures of the last chapter is exactly to pull this thing up by the root out of these small, warm old homes, and puff it into a great institution to overspread all under heaven. But once it leaves these places of blood and flesh, once it is drawn out into a cold great machine that overspreads all strangers, that heart of keeping no account, of tenderness, is very easily lost. This layer, this whole chapter, and this half term, will come back to look at again and again: distribution by need, the more it is in the small, the near, the place with tenderness, the truer, the more alive. The more it is puffed large, drawn abstract, pushed onto strangers, the more you must watch it turning in taste, turning cold, being wormed into.

Four, treat my young as young, and reach it to the young of others

To speak of the by need growing from the smallest, nearest place, call back that line of Mencius, because it speaks exactly this reasoning of from the near to the far, pushed ring by ring outward. The front half of the term used it, this chapter sets it up as a main line. Treat my old as old, and reach it to the old of others. Treat my young as young, and reach it to the young of others. So runs the line in the Mencius, King Hui of Liang.

The last chapter spoke the face of the words, here we speak its order. Fix your eye on the order: treat my old as old comes first, reach it to the old of others comes after. Treat my young as young comes first, reach it to the young of others comes after. Mencius did not say, at the first go out and love all the old, all the children under heaven. He said, first nourish well your own house’s old, first love well your own house’s young, and then push this heart, ring by ring, outward.

This order is one reasoning with the old home of distribution by need. That tenderness is first thickest, truest, in the nearest place, and then from the near to the far, ring by ring, thins outward, and also spreads outward. This is the healthy way distribution by need grows: rooting from a small place like a bowl of rice, and by that true heart of treating my old as old, my young as young, pushed ring by ring outward, pushed to the neighbor, to the countryman, to the stranger. It is grown out, pushed out, not cut level and roofed down from the sky. Whoever would leap over this order, would in one step cover all men, mostly breaks loose those disorders of the last chapter. This order of Mencius, from the near to the far, is the main line of this whole chapter, hold it fast.

Five, what this section set, crossing to the next

Good. This section counted from the nearest bowl of rice.

Walking near that bowl of rice a mother left for the child come home late, it saw clear it is by need, not by labor, your labor that day a zero, yet the rice still warm, because it goes by your need. And looking one layer under it, it saw in this bowl of rice not one line of account, it is given for free, keeping no account, which is exactly the most root difference between the by need and the by labor. From this it set a watching that governs the whole chapter: distribution by need lives first in the smallest, nearest, warmest places, growing out of that little tenderness between man and man. Through Mencius, treat my old as old, treat my young as young, it set that order of from the near to the far, pushed ring by ring outward, as the main line of this chapter.

The position this section set is: the old home of distribution by need is in the smallest, nearest place, in the tenderness that keeps no account, and it is grown out, pushed out, not roofed down from the sky.

So, this tenderness, pushed one ring out from a bowl of rice, where does it reach. Pushed out the door of your house, out onto the street, into a place where a stranger too gets the good of it all the same, is it still there. A street lamp lit, an emergency room that saves you first and asks not your standing, a public school that takes no fee, are these things too the by need. The next section pushes out the house door, to count these places.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

Section 2, A street lamp, an emergency room, a public school