VOLUME V, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3

VOLUME V, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3

The Living Law. How a Person Lives Inside the Web in a World Where No One Is Perfect

The last section planted the root of a right back in the Way of Heaven. By here, this road of nine layers has set the whole position of the law clearly. But a reader who has read this far is likely to feel one thing rise in his chest. I know all this, so what. What this section sets is not another layer of the law itself. It is a layer of the relation between a person and the law. Once you know what the law is, how does a person actually live inside the net of law.

Understanding all this, the days go on, and not one trouble is fewer. Know the law is Wei, and the mortgage still has to be paid. Know that whom the law serves is decided by position, and the ticket still has to be paid. Know that the law must cross human feeling, and the fine print on the contract you cannot make out still has to be signed. Know that the law has a boundary, and you still have to live inside the boundary. Know that no one is without fault, and you still have to hand some matter to some judge, some lawyer. This road of knowledge has blocked not one concrete trouble for the reader. Every day there is still the mortgage contract, the rental dispute, the traffic ticket, the work contract, the credit record, the insurance clause. Every day is still lived inside this net woven of law. So what are these ten layers of knowing for.

What this section sets is a third position. People who know how to use the law fill the market, they are called lawyers. People who want to flee the law will, sooner or later, hit the net. What this section sets out is neither how to use the law to grab more, nor how to flee the law and chance it, but a third position. That third position is neither to burrow in and scheme, nor to hide outside and chance it, but to know clearly with a sober eye what this net is and where you stand in it, and then walk across it, foot planted firm. Call this layer living inside the net of law with clear eyes. It leans not on clauses but on three plain things the ancestors set down long ago, plain enough for anyone to pick up. Each goes a step further in than the last, first a floor, then a bearing, then the landing, and together they hold up the two words clear eyes.

Confucius' line is the floor. Around 500 BC, Confucius said a line every Chinese household knows. Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. What you would not bear yourself, do not lay on another. This line is not law, and it stands nearer natural law than any law. A law has to be written on paper and run by people. This line needs no writing and no keeper. It grows straight in the human heart. For twenty-five hundred years, from the lettered scholar down to the unlettered farmer, no one has failed to grasp it. Lay it over how a person lives inside the net of law, and this is the first thing, the floor. Not willing to be cheated, do not cheat another. Not willing to be wronged, do not wrong another. Not willing to be forced, do not force another. Do this and a person has already walked clear of most disputes at law, not because he studied the law but because he holds to a line higher than the law.

This line is more useful than any law. Law changes, and can be burrowed through, and to look up one clause takes half a day, and to hire a lawyer costs dear. But the scale of what you would not want done to yourself, every person carries one in his own chest, no looking up, no asking, no paying. A person who never read one clause his whole life, so long as he holds to that scale, mostly never stands in the dock his whole life. This is no exaggeration. Look over the people around you who truly land in a lawsuit, and most are not people who do not understand the law. They are people who, in that first turn of thought, knowing the other did not want it, laid it on him anyway. But holding this one thing alone is not enough, because a person lives in a world where not everyone holds it. You do not lay on others, and others may lay on you. You do not cheat others, and others may cheat you. Here the law comes in. The use of the law is to add an outer bind on the ones who do not hold to what you would not want done to yourself. It cannot hold everyone, but it holds a part, so that all can live inside a net that is at least steady.

Laozi's line is the bearing. Around 500 BC, Laozi wrote another line. Know the strong, and keep to the gentle. Know what is strong and forceful, and yet keep to the gentle position. Know where power lies, and do not press it. Know how the law can be used, and do not abuse it. Lay this over the law, and it is to know clearly the Wei of the law and not to use that Wei to harm people. Know the law can be turned to the strong's use, and do not become the one who uses law to harm the weak. Know the law can be burrowed through, and do not burrow that hole. Take the plainest example. Two people sign a contract, and one side spots a pit in the clauses, good for himself and bad for the other. He can pretend not to see it, and bring it out when they later fall out, and let the other swallow a bitterness he cannot voice. That is using the Wei of the law to harm. Or he can point it out on the spot and level the clause. That is knowing the strong and keeping to the gentle. The same contract, the same pit, and the ones who spot it spot it alike, but what they do makes two kinds of people, living two kinds of lives. This is the second thing, the bearing, landed in the net of law. To spot a pit is not hard. What is hard is to spot it and still hold the hand back from using it. The market never lacks clever people who scheme. What it lacks is a person who knows how to scheme and chooses not to.

Wang Yangming's line is the landing. Around 1500, Wang Yangming wrote a line. Knowing and doing are one. Knowing and doing are one thing. Wang Yangming does not mean know first and then do, nor do first and then know. He means knowing itself is doing. A person who truly knows a thing will do it. Fail to do it, and it shows he never truly knew. Lay this over the law. Know the law is Wei, and do not, in public, call the law sacred and beyond question. Know that whom the law serves is decided by position, and do not, when you stand in the strong's position, make the kind of law that serves only yourself. Know the law must cross human feeling, and do not, when you judge a case, take human feeling as a thing to be bought and sold. Know that no one is without fault, and do not, when you hold the power to make, enforce, or judge, think yourself perfect. Many a person says all day that the law is unfair, and the moment a chance comes to use that unfairness to gain on another, moves faster than anyone. Such a person never truly knew the law was unfair. He only took the line as a pretext for gain. A person who truly knows the law is Wei turns, on the contrary, more restrained, because he knows well what that Wei tastes like used on another. When knowing and doing do not match, there was no true knowing. This is the third thing, the landing.

Put the three together, and an ordinary person can pick them up and use them. Confucius' what you would not want done to yourself is the floor, Laozi's know the strong and keep to the gentle is the bearing, Wang Yangming's knowing and doing are one is the landing. Together they are a whole plain set of tools for living inside the net of law with clear eyes. It is not complex, not mysterious, and not one of them takes a law school to learn. An unlettered old farmer may hold to what you would not want done to yourself better than a professor of law, keep to know the strong and keep to the gentle better, do knowing and doing are one better. This set of tools is plain enough that any ordinary person who is willing can pick it up. And this is exactly what this book means to do from first to last, to carry the principles that big words and terms have covered over back into a shape an unschooled person can hear and use.

But a person who holds this set of tools will lose by it, so why hold it. Here a plain and honest word, no hiding it from the reader. A person lives in a world where not everyone picks up this set of tools. Some do not hold to what you would not want done to yourself. Some know only the strong and not the gentle. Some have knowing and doing wholly split. In such a world a person holding this set of tools may lose, may be harmed, may be bullied, may lose a dispute he ought to have won. Justice may not come. Recompense may not be got. To hold to this line has never promised a good return, and from the old days to now the people who held the line and lost are past counting. This has to be said plainly at the front, or it becomes a bowl of broth to soothe a fool. To hold the line truly costs, and sometimes costs dear.

Then why hold it. Because nothing else is yours to govern, only what you make of your own life is. That the law tilts, that enforcement tilts, that a verdict is unjust, all are outer things, not in your hand. But whether you hold to that line of what you would not want done to yourself, whether you use the law to harm people, whether you go on holding it after being wronged, these you can decide. The easiest thing for a person who has been wronged by the law to do is to turn and wrong another by the law, telling himself as he does it, everyone is like this, the age forced my hand. But the moment he does it, he becomes the same kind of person as the one who wronged him at the start. To hold the line, much of the time, is not to win this round, but often to lose it, and to hold is to keep from living yourself into the very kind of person you most despise. This layer leans on no law. It leans on a person's cultivation of himself. The law can hold a person's hand. It cannot hold a person's heart. Whether you can, after being wronged, still keep that heart, is the one thing the law cannot stand in for and cannot take away.

So this section sets a tenth layer, and Part One seals here. Living inside the net of law with clear eyes is a person's own cultivation, not a bestowal of the law. However complete a law, it cannot save a person with no floor in his heart. However incomplete a law, it cannot crush a person with a floor in his heart. The law is an outer net, cultivation an inner root. The outer net turns over, today's lawful is tomorrow's unlawful, and the inner root does not turn with the dynasty or flip with the clause. Seize the inner root and walk the outer net with clear eyes, and that is the deepest position of the living law.

Now set the ten layers of Part One together. The highest position of the law is natural law. The law is Wei, a made thing. Whom the law serves is decided by the position of people. The law must cross human feeling, and human feeling is Wei too. The law has a natural boundary, the law cannot govern the many. The deepest base of the law is that no one is without fault. The four institutions hold one another up. Rights are in nature, not in the law. And living inside the net of law with clear eyes is a person's own cultivation.

These ten layers, stacked from the highest to the deepest, close into one whole net, the ground of the whole volume ahead. However concrete or ornate the parts that follow, they land on some layer of this net, and a reader who holds these ten firm can see at a glance where each lands. Part One is like laying the foundation of the whole volume, buried in the earth, out of sight, and however high the building above rises, it all leans on this to stand.

Around 100 BC, Sima Qian wrote a line in his records that can close this Part One. To probe the border of Heaven and man, to run through the changes of past and present, and to make of it the words of one hand. To study the border of Heaven and man, to thread the changes of past and present, and shape from it a voice of its own. This arrangement, in doing the fifth volume, sets up no ism. It takes the positions the ancestors set down more than two thousand years ago, and in the plain speech of today, says them once more, layer by layer.

Part One spoke of what the law is, and set the root firm. The next part walks downward, to how the law runs, who sits in the seat of making law, who is the law's largest customer, what roads a weak person has once taken from, and why the highest law is in fact self-discipline. Let the reader carry these ten layers of foundation into Part Two.

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