VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3
Why the Classics Can Last Thousands of Years
Last section made clear the four problems the enfeoffment of power cannot dodge: ability cannot pass down a bloodline, power magnifies private wants, a web of interests necessarily forms, and the person in the position grows ever further from the group. This section crosses to the other side and looks at the enfeoffment of faith and culture, at why those classics, teachings, and traditions are not troubled by the same four, at why the classics can last thousands of years. We lay the four problems against them one at a time, and the line dividing the two kinds of enfeoffment comes clear.
Take the first problem, the wearing away of ability. The enfeoffment of power must have a living person in the position, and a living person ages, sickens, dies, ability worn down by the body, a regularity no one escapes. The enfeoffment of faith and culture is not like this. The classics do not age. Confucius taught, do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself, taught twenty-five hundred years ago, and read today it is still that line, undimmed, unbent. Laozi taught that the highest good is like water. Jesus taught, love your neighbor as yourself. Shakyamuni taught that all things arise from conditions. Spoken more than two thousand years ago, said today, the force has not worn down by a hair. Why do the classics not age? Because a classic has come loose from any particular living person. A living person aging and dying is a law of the body. A classic is words, a way, a tradition, and words do not age, a way does not sicken, a tradition does not die. It has come loose from the body as carrier, and so it has come loose from the law of the body.
But set one layer here. The classic does not age, the living person who carries it does. The pope ages, so every few years a new pope is chosen. The abbot ages, so every few decades it passes to the next. The master ages, so every generation must train a new heir. So inside the enfeoffment of faith and culture there is still a cycle of persons, only this cycle is held up by the stability of the classic. The classic holds from below, and the people above can be changed freely. The pope changed, Catholicism did not collapse. The abbot changed, Shaolin did not collapse. This is how the enfeoffment of faith and culture runs.
Take the second problem, private wants magnified by power, the person slowly reshaped by the position. In the enfeoffment of faith and culture this force is far weaker too, because the classic itself has no private wants. The Analects does not want promotion and riches. The Dao De Jing does not want to be remembered for the ages. The Scriptures do not want to rule the world and pile up wealth. The classic is only words, and words have no desire, so a classic is not corrupted by desire. But set the same layer here. The classic is not greedy, the living person who carries it may be. The medieval Church once sold indulgences and gathered vast wealth. Certain monasteries in history once amassed land and ran lending. This was the living carrier growing greedy, not the classic itself. And here is the wonder: whenever the carriers corrupt the classic past a point, there comes a movement of returning to the classic itself. The Catholic Church corrupted past a point, and the Reformation appeared. Chinese Buddhism corrupted past a point, and the Chan school across the generations answered with renewal. Confucianism monopolized by officialdom and hardened past a point, and the Song and Ming learning of principle, and the Qing evidential scholarship, returned again and again to the original texts. This is the self-repair mechanism of the enfeoffment of faith and culture. The classic is there, and any generation can open it and read it anew, read out a fresh force, and wash off the corrupted part. The enfeoffment of power has no such mechanism. Once it corrupts, the whole dynasty collapses with it, and after the collapse it starts over from the beginning. The classic lets the enfeoffment of faith and culture wash itself and keep using, which the enfeoffment of power cannot do.
Take the third problem, that a web of interests necessarily forms around the position, officials sheltering officials. In the enfeoffment of faith and culture this force is far weaker too. Why? In the enfeoffment of power all the officials of the court eat from the same bowl, inside the same system of interest, and the web knits tight. In the enfeoffment of faith and culture the believers are scattered across different places, different countries, different ages, with no shared system of interest among them, only a common reading of the same classic. A Buddhist in China, one in Sri Lanka, one in the United States, have no interest relation among them, their only common point that they all recite the sutras. A Chinese reading the Analects and a Korean reading the Analects have no interest relation, only a common drawing of insight from it. A medieval Christian and a present-day one, a thousand years apart, read the same Scriptures. This feature, believers scattered across different times and places, keeps the enfeoffment of faith and culture from being easily seized by any one particular bloc of interest. The Catholicism of one country is manipulated, the other countries are not affected. The Confucianism of one dynasty is monopolized in its reading, and in the next dynasty someone reads it anew. The scattering of the believers is a natural firewall. Though this firewall too can fail, and that is when the enfeoffment of faith and culture takes up worldly power. That layer the next section takes up on its own. Here we only bury the line.
Take the fourth problem, that the person in the position and the group grow ever further apart, information dressed up layer by layer. In the enfeoffment of faith and culture this force is far weaker too, because the classic simply sits there, and anyone who can read may open it and read it directly. A farmer, so long as he can read, may open the Analects and read directly what Confucius taught, with no one able to block the way between. A monk, so long as he reads Latin, may read the Scriptures and see directly what Jesus taught. Between the classic and the reader there is no middle link to hold them apart. In the enfeoffment of power, between emperor and people lie layer on layer of officials, the distance ever widening. In the enfeoffment of faith and culture, between the classic and the believer there is no such distance. In some ages officialdom or a religious authority tries to monopolize the reading of the classic, the medieval Church once forbidding commoners to read the Scriptures, certain Chinese dynasties fixing an official standard reading. But these monopolies never fully succeeded, and there was always a reader who read in secret, thought for himself, and wrote a new reading. Someone translated the Scriptures into the common tongue so ordinary people could read them. The Qing evidential scholars refused the official reading, returned to the original texts, and opened a new direction. The Sixth Patriarch of Chan could not read, and understanding the Diamond Sutra directly through another's recitation, opened the Southern school. The channel between the classic and the reader has always been there, and cannot be cut. There is always the possibility of returning to the classic. This is another advantage of the enfeoffment of faith and culture.
So on what does the enfeoffment of faith and culture last for thousands of years? On three things holding it up together. The first is the classic, its content stable, copied, printed, and passed down generation to generation, the classic itself unchanged. The second is the rite, its motions stable, worship, sacrifice, chanting, reading, planting the content into the next generation through the motions of the body. A child follows the adults to the temple, understanding none of the scripture but bowing along, and grown, naturally carries the feeling. Following a father in reading the Three Character Classic, not necessarily understanding it, but the seed is already planted. The rite lets the classic sink from the mind down into the body, and what the body remembers holds steadier than what the mind remembers. The third is the community, its bonds stable, church, temple, academy, and school of a master, organizing the carriers to bear it together. Alone, a person can hardly keep up a long devotion, but a group together can. The church has the believers gather weekly, reminding and supporting each other. The academy gives the scholar fellow travelers, to sharpen and to transmit. The community keeps the carrier from being alone, and loneliness is the greatest enemy of bearing anything. These three together, the classic plus the rite plus the community, give the enfeoffment of faith and culture its mechanism of endurance across thousands of years. The enfeoffment of power has only position plus person plus interest, no stable classic (change of dynasty discards it), no stable rite (the next dynasty alters it), no true community (the court is all interest relations). So the mechanisms of endurance on the two sides are worlds apart in strength.
The enfeoffment of faith and culture is not without cost. First, it is slow. A new reading may take generations to spread. The enfeoffment of power has a single order carried out across the country overnight, while the enfeoffment of faith and culture takes decades for an idea to seep in. Second, it cannot govern directly. The classic teaches love your neighbor as yourself, but how to set this year's taxes, how to relieve a year of disaster, the classic does not directly say, and governing still needs the enfeoffment of power to do it. Third, it is easily pushed to the margin. In some ages power is strong, and faith and culture are pressed to the side, unable to make a sound for decades. But so long as the classic, the rite, and the community remain, it can be pressed for decades without dying, and rise again in the next age. This is its resilience: it can be pressed down, it cannot be wiped out.
And remember the paradox of last section. The enfeoffment of faith and culture endures for thousands of years, and inside it is always cycling too. Every few centuries the classic is read anew, a school splits, a new transmission appears, an old one declines. Christianity from the early Church to the great East-West schism to the Reformation, Buddhism from early Buddhism to the Great Vehicle to Chan, Confucianism from Confucius and Mencius to the Song and Ming learning of principle to Qing evidential scholarship, each an inner cycle every few centuries. But its cycle differs from that of the enfeoffment of power. The enfeoffment of power is whole collapse and rebuilding, with a break between. The enfeoffment of faith and culture is inner renewal and continuation, one school declining and a new one growing out of the old transmission, with no break between. A cycle is not the same as a collapse. This is the deepest inner mechanism of the enfeoffment of faith and culture.
So here is the position this section lays down. We turned why the enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years into four advantages of the classics: the classics do not age, the classics are not greedy, the web around the classics is loose, and the classics cannot be cut off from their readers, plus the three carriers of transmission holding it up, the classic, the rite, and the community. The four problems drag down the enfeoffment of power, and these same four cannot drag down the classic, because the classic has come loose from the body as carrier.
But remember, the enfeoffment of faith and culture, enduring for thousands of years, is always cycling inside too, only its cycle is inner renewal without a break, not the whole collapse and fresh start of the enfeoffment of power. And now the sharpest question is due. What if the enfeoffment of faith and culture turns around and takes up worldly power? The classic is still there, but the people who carry it begin to manage finance, move armies, appoint officials, and then will the four problems of the enfeoffment of power arrive at once? And he has gained one more thing, the halo of I speak for the divine. The next section walks into that deepest paradox: what happens when faith becomes power.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.