VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 39
The living Lei Feng, and the deepest layer
Start with a name every man has heard, Lei Feng, and with the one word in it that carries the weight, not the good deeds but the living. When men call some man a living Lei Feng the stress falls on living, and what lives is the giving, the heart of giving out for free and asking no return, the same account keeping absence that chapter thirty five found in the bowl of rice a mother left, only pushed from a mother to her own child onto stranger after stranger not known. Hold that, because a living Lei Feng is never one particular man but the name of a heart that can belong to anyone, and can be yourself. This is the last chapter of the term. The chapters before spoke the by need through, its warmth, its everywhereness, its bound, its check, and this one goes the last and deepest step and hands the whole volume on.
Section one counts what that giving can give, nine kinds, and it is worth naming them because most ask neither money nor skill. The first three are the most daily, time which goes and does not return so that an afternoon sat with a lonely old man is a stretch of your life given back, energy roused when you are already tired, and attention, the rare gift of a man willing to lay his whole heart on you in a world where all are head down about their own busyness, and even a man who owns nothing can afford these three. The middle three hand out something more your own, relationship drawn out to link a man in need, trust given to a man not yet proven so that you bear his risk and stand where you may be let down, since many never stood up only for want of one man willing to trust them once, and health, the most heart aching, burned down caring for a sick one. The last three are the innermost, skill you could have sold given free, reputation staked so that standing warrant for a man lays your own name as a road under him, and at the bottom feeling, the giving of the heart itself, taking a man of no blood kin into your heart to ache for. Confucius sets the floor with the line held over from chapter twenty nine, wishing to stand yourself help others to stand, which does not ask you to cast yourself away or burn to ash but to stand and arrive yourself and take another along, so that the healthy giving flows out of fullness and is not squeezed out of a deficit, a floor both warm and not tragic.
Section two digs the root question, on what this whole set of the by need can be carried out, and answers that it is not the mechanism but character under it. One same welfare mechanism set in two places runs two results, warm and vigorous where the men have in their hearts the character of being unwilling to take for free and willing to carry a bit more, and rotted into the four sicknesses where they have it not, so what differs is not the mechanism but the men, the mechanism being dead and guaranteeing nothing. This joins the front half’s closing line, that what makes labor come alive is the man and the little kind in his heart, into one line with the back half, that what makes the by need come alive is also the man and his character, the whole apparatus of rules and frames and checks a fine but dead frame that only a man can bring to blood and flesh. Confucius gives the highest image, to govern by virtue is like the north star that stays in its place while the host of stars turns toward it, character leaning not on force but on the drawing of the heart, the willing turning toward that no mechanism can make. And the guide answers the sharp comeback head on, that this does not stake all on the sage again, because two things are held at once, the mechanism and check that guard against the worst and bar the four sicknesses as a bottom line, and above that line the more character the more warmth, a direction and not a threshold, so the whole answer of the term is that the mechanism guards the bottom line and character fixes the height, both wanted and neither short.
Section three chases character to its own root and hands the volume on. Character does not drop from the sky, a babe knowing only to eat and cry, nor can a paper decree lay it down, for the law can punish a bad deed but cannot press out the spontaneous warmth in a heart. It is reared by all a man is steeped in from small to grown, the bowl of rice a mother left, the neighbors’ hand seen, the stories heard, the reasons of being a man taught, the ways of the men beside him, and that whole rearing set of things has a name, culture. So the root of the economy is struck into character and the root of character into culture, and the polity leaned on likewise through the character of those who hold it and the law kept from being a paper empty only by men of character, so culture is not a fourth thing abreast of the three but the one soil under all three trees, rich and they thrive, thinned and they wither. This takes up the second volume’s closing line that the economy is a tree grown out of culture, which this volume was written from its first section to fulfill, going from the slaveholder who could not cook all the way round and back onto it, the spine of the whole Justiceway that the economy and polity and law are trees grown out of culture. The Book of Rites closes it, jade uncut makes no vessel and a man unlearned knows not the Way, culture rearing character not at one pour but by the slow cutting of a mother’s rice and a neighbor’s hand and a good story and a taught reason, generation on generation, a society having the character to make the by need come alive only if it has a culture willing so to cut men. And the term closes the volume, turning back over the whole road from the unreckoned account to living labor and the man, and from the two pictures to the bowl of rice, having taken a side for no one but walked near both rules and returned them to their positions, two rules the human world uses at once and both alive on your pay slip and in the bowl your mother left.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is to run the whole term to its ceiling and find that under every rule and mechanism and check stands a person, and under the person character, and under character the soil that rears it, so that a book about the economy ends by handing itself to culture. What you carry out is three things. First, a full inventory of what you have to give that costs no money, from time and attention through trust and reputation to feeling, and the standard that healthy giving flows from your own fullness and does not burn you to ash. Second, the one balanced rule that decides whether any giving system works, the mechanism guards the bottom line and character fixes the height, so you neither trust rules to do everything nor stake all on everyone being a saint. Third, the spine of the whole work, that character is reared by culture and culture is the root under economy and polity and law alike, cut into a man slowly like jade and not decreed. The term has returned the two rules to their positions and handed the volume on, and the road ahead will spread all the rules on the table together to see how the four things join into one whole map that helps and completes and holds itself in check, and will turn open that soil of culture that holds it all up.
SECTIONS
Section 1, Nine kinds of living Lei Feng
Section 2, The basis is not the mechanism, it is character
Section 3, Character belongs to culture, culture is the root, and the whole map handed on
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.