VOLUME V, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 1
Self-Discipline, and Why the Highest Law Is the One You Give Yourself
The previous section closed with the fifth road of the weak, self-discipline. But self-discipline is far more than one road among five open to the weak. It is the deepest and the highest layer in this entire journey. The sections before this repeated the same lesson again and again, the outer law is never complete, and however well a system is designed, human desire and the logic of position will always bend it in some direction. So is there a law that leans on no system, waits on no oversight, needs no punishment to work. There is. It is self-discipline, the single highest law a person can give himself.
One. The Floor of Self-Discipline Is What You Would Not Want Done to Yourself
Confucius's line, what you would not want done to yourself, do not do to others, was already given as the floor when this book discussed living law. Here it goes one layer deeper. What it truly points to is the highest form of self-discipline, not refraining because the law forbids it, not refraining out of fear of punishment, but starting from your own feeling and, through that feeling alone, already understanding another person's.
Why call this the highest form of self-discipline. Because it leans on no outside rule, no oversight, no punishment. A person who still holds this line in a place no one is watching, in a place the law can never reach, is the one truly practicing it. Even on a deserted island, even if not one soul would ever know what he did, he still does it that way. At that point, his conduct has nothing to do with law and nothing to do with outside restraint at all. It is entirely his own choosing. He lives for himself, not for others, and not for any system. In the end, the true strength of self-discipline comes down to how deeply a person understands what good actually means.
This is also the most basic difference between self-discipline and every outer rule. An outer rule governs what you are permitted to do. Self-discipline governs what you yourself are willing to become. The first shifts with the system. The second is set by the person himself.
Two. Laozi's Line, Only Conquering Yourself Is True Strength
Around 500 BC, Laozi wrote a line.
He who conquers himself is strong. Laozi, Daodejing, Chapter 33.
The one who can conquer himself is the truly strong one. Conquering others is easy, all it takes is force. Conquering yourself is hard, you have to hold down the desire, the laziness, the fear, and the greed inside your own chest. A person who cannot even conquer himself is still a slave, even if no one on the outside governs him, only the master has moved from an outer chain into an inner desire. Led around by desire and led around by law are, at root, no different, only the master has moved house from outside to inside.
Turn it around, and a person who has conquered himself gains true freedom. No outer restraint can lock up his heart. Such a person can live with dignity even under the harshest tyranny, and that dignity comes from no permission granted by any system, it comes from what he demands of himself. Across history, the people who lived with the most backbone in the least free ages were, more often than not, not the powerful, but ordinary people who held to self-discipline. They had no power to change the system, but they changed themselves through self-discipline, and to a large degree, that left the system's pressure on them falling flat.
This is worth remembering. You may not be able to change the sky over your head, but whether you hold the line against cheating others, against taking what is not rightly yours, that is something no one can take from you. A system can bend your circumstances. It cannot bend the rule you set for yourself.
Three. Mencius's Line Turns the Blame Back on Oneself
Around 300 BC, Mencius wrote a line.
When you act and do not get what you sought, look for the cause in yourself in every case. Mencius, Mencius, Li Lou I.
When a thing does not turn out as hoped, do not first blame others, turn instead and look for the reason in yourself. A person's instinct runs outward, wounded, he wants to strike back, defeated, he blames circumstance. Mencius instead calls a person to turn and look at himself, why was I wounded, did I fail to guard myself, or did I misjudge someone, why did I fail, was I unprepared, or was my timing off. Once the question is asked, the work of fixing it begins.
This turn changes self-discipline from passively restraining oneself into actively improving oneself. It is also the fastest road to growth, because a person pours his whole strength into changing himself rather than draining it in conflict with others, and changing oneself has always been far faster than changing anyone else. A person who keeps looking for the cause in himself, year after year, will, without noticing, leave far behind those who spend their lives blaming heaven and earth.
One thing needs stating plainly here. Looking for the cause in yourself does not mean accepting every fault as your own, blaming yourself even when someone else has wronged you. It means this, how another person acts is his affair, not something you can govern. What you yourself can do better is the one thing you can govern, and pouring your strength into what you can govern is how a person actually moves forward.
Four. Zhuangzi's Line Points to the Far End of Self-Discipline
Around 300 BC, Zhuangzi wrote a line reaching a still higher plane.
The utmost person has no fixed self. Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi, Free and Easy Wandering.
The highest person carries no clinging attachment to a fixed self. This layer runs somewhat abstract, but its core is entirely practical, the far end of self-discipline is no longer needing self-discipline at all. Once the clinging is gone, desire thins, and once desire thins, there is nothing left to wrestle with, and every action naturally falls in line with the Way on its own. A person still wrestling daily with his own desires is still on the road of self-discipline. Once that wrestling itself falls quiet, and conduct flows out as naturally as water, that is what Zhuangzi calls the utmost person.
This state is extremely hard to reach in practice, and most people spend a lifetime only on the road toward it. But having it there points to an end for the road, letting a person know that walking self-discipline deeper does not, in the end, tie him tighter, it loosens him. Self-discipline does not mean living more and more tensed. It is the reverse. Done right, it means living more and more at ease. The tension belongs to desire not yet mastered. The ease belongs to what comes after mastering it.
Five. Wang Yangming's Line, Self-Discipline Is Something You Do
Self-discipline most fears stalling out at merely knowing. Wang Yangming's teaching, knowing and doing are one, already raised earlier, lands most exactly here. Knowing what is right means you should do it, and failing to do it means you never truly knew it. Many people speak grand principles fluently and then collapse the moment a concrete situation arrives, and that is not a lack of willpower, it is that they never truly knew in the first place.
So self-discipline is not proclaimed, it is built one small act at a time. Not taking that small advantage this time. Not saying that hurtful thing that time. Not slacking off again even when no one is watching. Accumulate one concrete choice after another, and only then does the character of self-discipline finally take shape. A person hoping to be transformed overnight most often changes on no night at all. A person willing to conquer himself again and again over small things becomes, without even noticing, a different person entirely.
Here is the most captivating and the plainest thing about self-discipline. It requires no qualification and no one's approval. Even the most ordinary person can start with the very next small thing. Self-discipline that emperors and generals could not manage, a farmer in the field may well achieve. This road stands open to everyone alike.
Six. The Essence of Self-Discipline Is a Promise to Yourself
Here the true face of self-discipline can finally be named. Its essence is a promise a person makes to himself, not to anyone else, to himself. When a person, deep inside, vows to himself what he will do and what he will not do, that vow becomes self-discipline. Confucius has another line that separates two kinds of people by whether they keep this vow.
The gentleman seeks it in himself. The petty man seeks it in others. Confucius, The Analects, Wei Linggong.
When a thing goes wrong, a gentleman looks first for the cause in himself, a petty man looks first for the fault in someone else. The gentleman holds to self-discipline because he believes that changing himself can change the world. The petty man abandons self-discipline because he thinks it is simpler to change others than to change himself. This looks like a difference in temperament, but underneath it is a divide between two positions. And these two positions are not born fixed, they are built, choice by choice. Every time a person pushes the fault outward, he steps a little closer to the petty man. Every time he is willing to look back at himself, he steps a little closer to the gentleman.
Seven. Here Is the Deepest Turn, Self-Discipline in Turn Decides Position
People commonly assume that position decides attitude, that those in a poor position blame heaven and earth, and only those in a good position have the room to reflect. What Confucius says runs exactly the other way, in the end, the degree of self-discipline decides a person's position.
A person willing to practice self-discipline, willing to look for the cause in himself, may start out in a low position, with few resources and little opportunity, and yet by holding to self-discipline step after step, he will, bit by bit, lift his own position, earning the trust and respect of those around him. A person who abandons self-discipline and keeps pushing blame onto others may start out with good opportunities and ample resources, and yet by blaming his way forward, he will, one by one, push away the people around him and use up his opportunities. This is the true power of self-discipline. It is not there to fit some system or please some power, it is there to change one's own fate. A person's self-discipline builds his character. A person's character, in the end, decides his life.
This turn is the single most important line in this whole chapter, and it is also the most solid ground this book can hand the weak. The previous section's five roads of self-rescue mostly involved maneuvering inside a system. Self-discipline is the one thing in the weak person's hand that he need not beg from anyone, and that no one can take away.
Eight. The Position Set by This Section
This section sets the seventeenth layer. Self-discipline is the single highest law a person can give himself. The outer law is never complete, always has its gaps, always needs more patching, and is always bent by power and desire. Self-discipline needs none of this. It is decided entirely by the person himself, regardless of whether the system is good, regardless of whether others are fair, regardless of whether law can even reach him. This is its greatest strength.
Self-discipline has one more feature no other choice has, it seeks no return. A person practices it not to trade for something, but because he holds that this is right, and he holds to it even when no one is watching, no one is praising him, even when the world has treated him unfairly. Every other law, every other system, every other restraint exists to reach some goal or maintain some order. Self-discipline alone is its own goal. A self-disciplined person does not practice it in order to succeed, self-discipline itself is the life he wants to live.
Setting this layer here also pushes Part Two forward one more step. The sections before this showed law being pulled off course by strength, weakness, and vested interest, a heavy read. Arriving at self-discipline, the reader finally holds one thing in his hand that this structure cannot govern.
The next section turns to the highest reach of Confucius, everyone governing himself. That section carries self-discipline from one person's cultivation up to the position of a whole group. If not one person but everyone can govern himself, where does law retreat to. This is the highest reach law can attain, and also the deepest ideal this book holds. Carry this position of self-discipline, and walk into the next section.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Two. The Highest Reach of Confucius, Where Everyone Governs Himself.