VOLUME V, CHAPTER 6
Self-Discipline, the Highest Reach of Law
The first two chapters of Part Two showed how the law runs, and reading them straight through is bound to leave a person heavy. This chapter walks upward. It is about the highest position the law has, self-discipline. The strong and the weak, the vested interests, the self-rescue of the weak, all of that was maneuvering inside a system out there. This chapter is about the one thing no one out there can take, the thing a person decides for himself, and it also closes the whole of Part Two.
The first section is self-discipline, and why the highest law is the law a person gives himself. It leans on no system, waits on no oversight, seeks no return. It is the highest single law a person lays down for himself. This is the seventeenth layer.
The second section is what Confucius called the state where disputes never reach the court, and it carries self-discipline out from one person to a whole people. Everyone governing himself, the quarrel need never arise. But a true version of that state needs three layers holding together at once, everyone self-governing, output greater than need, and no one tormenting anyone. This is the eighteenth layer.
The third section is the law within the heart. The deepest law of all sits in no courtroom. It sits inside a person. It completes the no-torment layer, torment no one else, and add to it, torment not yourself. This is the nineteenth layer.
These three sections build from the seventeenth layer to the nineteenth, set the highest stretch of the law firmly, and close Part Two. This chapter should let a reader breathe out. After seeing so many heavy things clearly, at the end a person finally holds one thing in his own hand, self-discipline. The stance has not shifted. It lays out the positions and leaves the judgment to you.
Contents
Section One. Self-Discipline, and Why the Highest Law Is the One You Give Yourself.
Section Two. The Highest Reach of Confucius, Where Everyone Governs Himself.
Section Three. The Law Within the Heart. Torment Not Yourself.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.