VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 8
The First Step Is Not to Strike but to Save, and to Save First the People Inside the Legal System
The sections before laid open, whole, that chain that harms the people lawfully, and told plainly that it must be cut, and cut from the source, not by striking the people on the chain. This section, facing this chain, takes the first step, and it is not to strike, but to save. To save first the people inside the legal system, the ones illiterate in the law, the ones on that chain. This is of one lineage with the fourth chapter, only the fourth chapter saved the people caught in the collusion of officials and business, and this chapter saves the people forged onto the chain that harms the people lawfully.
Having read the sections before, your fire has surely burned to its peak, and in your heart there are those two words, bring down. Take the ones on that chain, the one who ground you, crushed you, robbed you, hounded you, drag them out, bring them down, punish them, and vent your anger. This fire, the same as in the fourth chapter, has first to be pressed down, because the first step to take you on is not to strike, but to save. Let me give you two reasons, the same two as the fourth chapter, and hearing them through, the fire turns of itself.
The first reason, striking is no use. The last section told it through. Strike the people on the chain, and the people are replaced batch after batch, and that source which forges them onto the chain, the thought in the hand and the education gone wrong, is not touched, and the chain grows back the moment you turn away. Bring down the one who ground you at the window, and the next one, raised by that same education, grinds you just the same. Bring down the one on the bench who ruled by the dead letter, and the next one, holding that same dead letter, rules just the same. For thousands of years, people have struck the people on the chain, and never cut the source, and so that chain, ground away one stretch, grew back another, and the people were harmed to death, on and on, without stop. Your fire now, what it means to strike, is exactly what thousands of years struck and never struck to a stop.
The second reason, those people you want to strike are themselves people forged onto the chain. Look back at what the sections before said over and over. The ones on the chain, the letter-reading illiterate-in-the-law, are not born demons. They are raised crooked by that education gone wrong, their heads stuffed with the dead letter, that leg of character, of the heart that reads the intent, no one ever grew for them, their hearts to the person under their pen ground numb by that education. They are at once the ones who harm the people, and the ones harmed by that source. They too are locked people, forged onto the chain, a person to be saved.
And to a locked person, a forged person, the thing to do, the whole book has done all along, is to undo the lock, to turn him back, to save him out. Saving the slave, the laborer, the one on capital, even that hand of the third chapter and that official of the fourth, all of it undid the lock and saved the person, not one struck down. Come to these people on the legal chain, and by what right change to another set of rules? They too are people forged onto the chain by that source. To save them is the same one thing, to turn that thought in their hand back from the dead letter to the living intent, to reforge them, and save them out.
So this step is called saving, not striking. This is again the root of the whole book, use the pen, not the knife. Facing this chain that most cries out to be avenged, that grinds and crushes and robs and hounds the people to death, this book still does not depart half a step from that root, do not strike, save.
Then this first step of saving, whom does it save first? The ones it saves first are the people inside the legal system. The ones illiterate in the law, on that chain, the one at the window, the one who enforces, the one who prosecutes, the one who rules, this whole ring of people who hold the law. You hear this and are probably taken aback, even unwilling, save them first? Are they not exactly the ones who ground me, crushed me, robbed me, hounded me? How is it that the first to be saved are them?
The reasoning is the same as the fourth chapter. Because they are exactly on that chain, at the place the source binds tightest. That chain does not harm you out of thin air, it harms you through their hands. The one who grinds you is one of them, the one who crushes you is one of them, the one who robs you, hounds you, is one of them. If you want to cut that chain, to turn that ruler of the law back to protecting people, you cannot go around this ring of people. They are exactly the place the chain is forged, and the key to whether that ruler can be turned back. Save them, turn that thought in their hand back from the dead letter to the living intent, and the ruler in their hand turns back from a tool that harms people to a ruler that protects people, and the chain, from within, is cut. Save them, and it saves, at one stroke, all the people ground and crushed and robbed and hounded by that chain under their hands.
That knot in your heart is surely not yet undone, they harmed people to death, by what right save them? Let me nail that line again. They too are people forged onto the chain, harmed by that source. Look back at the third section, that one who entered the law with a heart to uphold justice, and was, by that education teaching only the letter, ground numb, ground into one who sees the case and not the person. Among them, how many, in their day, went into the law carrying a true heart to protect people, to uphold fairness, and it was after getting in, forged by that education, that chain, that they became what they are today, holding the dead letter and losing the intent.
Think one layer deeper, and they too are people who are wronged. That chain grinds you, and what it grinds is your time, your home, your life. But them, forged onto that chain, what is ground away is their conscience, is that true heart they had going in, is their standing as a person who reads the intent and protects people. They are ground, day by day, into a numb tool that harms people by the dead letter, and does not even know it is harming people. What that source destroyed in them is them, the person. So they are the same as the fourth chapter's official, locked people being destroyed, people to be saved.
Do not feel this is speaking up for the ones who harmed people, being soft. Here it is sorted out clear as day, that under their hands that chain harmed the people, ground and crushed and robbed and hounded them to death, this account, not one cent of it will be let slide, and the sections behind have hard rules waiting, barred for life, and the harmed to be given back, cleared, and healed, not one left out. But what you are to see is that to take them for born demons and strike them down and be done, you can then never cut that chain from the source, and never save the people ground under it either. You have to see first that they too are people forged onto the chain, being destroyed by that source, and only then can you understand that the thing that truly must be dealt with is that source which forges both the people and these representatives of the law into the chain, harms them together.
To save them is to turn that thought in their hand back from the dead letter to the living intent, to reforge them, so that the ruler in their hand no longer harms people but protects people, so that they can go back to being, as in their day, a person who reads the intent, holds the protecting of people, and upholds fairness. To them, this is an enormous saving, turning them back from the numb tool that harms people, off the road of destroying themselves. To the people, this too is an enormous saving, the chain cut from within, the ruler turned back to protecting people, and all those ground and crushed and robbed and hounded under their hands, saved at one stroke. This is why the first to be saved are the people inside the legal system. Not because they most deserve saving, but because they are at the place the chain is forged, at the key of that ruler. Turn this ring of them back, and that chain is cut from within, and the ruler of the law turns back to protecting people. But that biggest knot in your heart is still there, to save them, is that not to let them go on, in their positions, harming people lawfully? To save them, is what they harmed people with in the past then simply let go? This knot, the next section first tells what to save them with, the four systems saving together, and the sections after give you, especially, the iron you most crave.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.