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 previous section set the root of rights back into heaven's way. By this point, nine layers along this road have laid out the whole position of law clearly. But a reader arriving here likely has a line rising in his heart. Knowing all this, so what. What this section sets up is not one more layer of law itself, it is a layer of the relationship between a person and law. Once a person knows what law is, how does he actually live inside the net of law.
One. Understand All This, and Life Goes On, Not One Trouble Fewer
Knowing law is wei, the mortgage still has to be paid. Knowing that whom the law serves is decided by people's position, the traffic ticket still has to be paid. Knowing that law must pass through human feeling, the small print in the contract you cannot make sense of still has to be signed. Knowing law has boundaries, you still have to live inside those boundaries. Knowing that no one is perfect, you still have to entrust some matter to some judge, some lawyer.
The knowledge along this road has not blocked a single concrete trouble for the reader. Every day there is still the mortgage contract, the rental dispute, the traffic ticket, the employment contract, the credit record, the insurance clauses to face. Every day a person still has to get through life inside this net woven out of law. So then, understanding these ten layers, what is it actually for.
Two. What This Section Sets Up Is a Third Position
People who know how to use the law, the market has plenty of lawyers for that. People who want to escape the law sooner or later run into the net. What this section lays out is neither teaching the reader how to use the law to grab more, nor teaching the reader how to escape the law on luck, but a third position.
This third position is neither burrowing in to scheme, nor hiding outside on luck, but knowing with clear eyes what this net is and where you yourself stand, and then walking through it steadily and honestly. This layer is called living with clear eyes inside the net of law. It does not lean on legal clauses. It leans on three things the ancestors set down long ago, so plain anyone can pick them up. Each of the three goes one step further in than the last, first the floor, then the posture, finally the landing, and only together can they hold up the words clear eyes.
Three. Confucius's Line Is the Floor
Around 500 BC, Confucius spoke a line that every household in the Chinese-speaking world knows.
What you would not want done to yourself, do not do to others. Confucius, The Analects, Wei Linggong.
What you yourself are unwilling to bear, do not impose on others. This line is not law, yet it stands closer to natural law than any law does. Law has to be written on paper and depends on people to carry it out. This line needs no writing and no one to manage it, it grows straight inside the human heart. For twenty-five hundred years, from scholars at the top to farmers who could not read at the bottom, there was no one who did not understand it.
Apply this layer to how a person lives inside the net of law, and this is the first thing, the floor. Unwilling to be deceived, do not deceive others. Unwilling to be cheated, do not cheat others. Unwilling to be forced, do not force others. Do this one thing, and a person has already walked clear of most legal disputes, not because he has studied the law, but because he keeps to a line higher than the law.
This line works better than any law. Law changes, gets its loopholes exploited, takes half a day of digging to look up a single clause, costs a fortune to hire a lawyer, but the scale of what you would not want done to yourself, everyone carries one in his heart, and it needs no looking up, no asking, no money. Even if a person never reads a single legal clause in his whole life, as long as he keeps to this scale, he will most likely never in his life stand in the defendant's dock.
This is no exaggeration. Look at the people around you who have actually landed in lawsuits. Most of them did not fail to understand the law. It was that one thought back at the start, knowing full well the other side did not want it, and doing it to them anyway.
But keeping only this one thing is not enough, because a person lives in a world where not everyone keeps it. You do not do to others, but others may do to you. You do not deceive others, but others may deceive you. This is where law comes in. The use of law is to put an outside constraint on those who do not keep to what you would not want done to yourself. It cannot hold everyone in, but it holds some of them in, so that people can live inside a relatively stable net.
Four. Laozi's Line Is the Posture
Around 500 BC, Laozi wrote another line.
Know the male, keep to the female. Laozi, Daodejing, Chapter 28.
Know what is strong and forceful, yet keep to the position of the soft and yielding. Know where the force lies, yet do not flaunt strength. Know how law can be used, yet do not abuse it. Apply this layer to law, and it means knowing with clear eyes that law is wei, yet not using that wei to harm people. Knowing law can be used by the strong, yet not being the one who borrows law to harm the weak. Knowing law's loopholes can be exploited, yet not exploiting that loophole.
Take the most common example. Two people sign a contract. One side spots a pit in the clauses that favors himself and hurts the other. He can pretend not to see it, wait for the day they fall out, and pull it out, leaving the other side to swallow the bitterness in silence, and this is borrowing law's wei to harm someone. Or he can point it out on the spot and make the clause even, and this is know the male, keep to the female. The same contract, the same pit, the ones who spot it spot it just the same, yet what they do makes two kinds of people, living two kinds of lives. This is the second thing, the posture, landing concretely inside the net of law. Seeing through a pit is not hard. What is hard is seeing through it and still holding your hand back from using it. The world has no shortage of clever people who scheme. What it lacks are people who know how to scheme and simply do not.
Five. Wang Yangming's Line Is the Landing
Around 1500, Wang Yangming wrote a line.
Knowing and doing are one. Wang Yangming, Instructions for Practical Living.
Knowing and doing are one thing. What Wang Yangming spoke of is not knowing first and doing after, nor doing first and knowing after. Knowing is itself doing. When a person truly knows a thing, he will do it. If he cannot do it, that shows he never truly knew it.
Apply this layer to law. Knowing law is wei, a person does not, in public, speak of law as sacred and beyond question. Knowing whom the law serves is decided by position, a person does not, when standing in the strong position himself, make the kind of law that benefits only himself. Knowing law must pass through human feeling, a person does not, when judging a case himself, treat human feeling as something to be bought and sold. Knowing no one is perfect, a person does not, when he himself holds the power to legislate, enforce, and judge, take himself for perfect.
Plenty of people say every day that the law is unfair, yet the moment they get a chance to use that unfairness to take advantage of someone else, they move faster than anyone. Such a person never truly knew the law is unfair. He only made the line into an excuse for taking advantage. A person who truly knows law is wei turns more restrained instead, because he understands clearly what that wei tastes like when it is used on someone else. When knowing and doing do not match, a person has not truly known. This is the third thing, the landing.
Six. Put the Three Together, and an Ordinary Person Can Pick Them Up and Use Them
Confucius's what you would not want done to yourself is the floor. Laozi's know the male, keep to the female is the posture. Wang Yangming's knowing and doing are one is the landing. Put the three together, and they make a whole set of plain tools for living with clear eyes inside the net of law. It is not complicated, not mysterious, and not one piece of it has to be learned in law school.
An old farmer who cannot read may understand what you would not want done to yourself better than a law professor, may keep to know the male, keep to the female more firmly, may live out knowing and doing are one more fully. This set of tools is so plain that an ordinary person, as long as he is willing, can pick it up and use it. This is exactly what this book has wanted to do from start to finish, to take the principles buried under big words and jargon and return them to a shape that a person who never went to school can understand and put to use.
Seven. Holding These Tools Can Mean Taking a Loss, So Why Hold Them
An honest word is due here, with nothing hidden from the reader. A person lives in a world where not everyone picks up this set of tools. Some do not keep to what you would not want done to yourself, some know only how to flaunt the male and never keep to the female, some have knowing and doing split completely apart. At such times, a person who holds to these tools may take a loss, may suffer damage, may be bullied, may lose a dispute he ought to have won. Justice may never come, compensation may never be paid. Holding this line has never guaranteed a good return. From ancient times to today, those who held the line and lost by it are beyond counting. This has to be said honestly up front, or it turns into feel-good soup to coax people along. Holding the line really does mean taking losses, sometimes big ones.
So why still hold it. Because nothing else is yours to control, except what kind of person you live as. Law leaning to one side, enforcement leaning to one side, unjust verdicts, these are all outside matters, not up to you. But whether you keep that line of what you would not want done to yourself, whether you use the law to harm people, whether you go on keeping it after being wronged, these are things you can decide.
After a person has been wronged by the law, the easiest thing to do is turn around and use the law to wrong others, telling himself all the while, everyone does it, the times forced me. But the moment he does that, he becomes the same kind of person as the one who wronged him in the first place. Holding this line, much of the time, is not about winning this round. It may well mean losing. You hold it so as not to live yourself into the kind of person you hate most. This layer does not lean on law. It leans on a person's own cultivation. Law can hold a person's hands, it cannot hold a person's heart. Whether a person can still keep that heart after being wronged is something law can neither replace nor take away.
Eight. The Position Set by This Section, and Part One Closes Here
This section sets the tenth layer. Living with clear eyes inside the net of law is your own cultivation, not something law grants. No law however complete can save a person with no floor in his heart. No law however incomplete can crush a person with a floor in his heart. Law is the outer net, cultivation is the inner root. The outer net turns over, what is legal today may be illegal tomorrow, but the inner root does not change with the dynasty, does not flip with the clauses. Grip the inner root, walk with clear eyes through the outer net, and this is the deepest position of living law.
Here, lay Part One's ten layers out together. The highest position of law is natural law. Law is wei, a man-made matter. Whom law serves is decided by people's position. Law must pass through human feeling, and human feeling is also wei. Law has natural boundaries, that is, law cannot govern the many. The deepest foundation of law is that no one is perfect. The four institutions hold one another up. Rights are in nature, not in law. Living with clear eyes inside the net of law is your own cultivation.
These ten layers, stacked from the highest to the deepest, form one complete net, the foundation for the whole volume that follows. However concrete, however elaborate each later part becomes, it all lands on some layer of this net, and a reader who keeps these ten layers firmly in mind can see at a glance where it lands. Part One is like laying the foundation for the whole volume. A foundation is buried in the earth and does not catch the eye, but however tall the building raised on it, it all depends on that foundation holding steady.
Around 100 BC, Sima Qian wrote a line in the Records of the Grand Historian that can close this Part One.
To probe the meeting of heaven and man, to see through the changes of past and present, and to form one school of words of my own. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, The Grand Historian's Self-Preface.
Study the boundary between heaven and man, see straight through the changes from past to present, and form one school of words. This work of putting things in order, set down as Volume V, does not set up any ism. It takes the positions the ancestors already laid out across more than two thousand years and, in today's plain speech, goes through them once more, layer by layer.
Part One spoke of what law is, and planted the root firmly. The next part goes further down, into how law runs, who sits in the position of legislating, who is the law's biggest client, what roads the weak have once something is taken from them, why the highest law is actually self-discipline. Carry these ten layers of foundation with you, and walk into Part Two.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Part Two. How Law Runs, and the Highest Point Is Self-Discipline.