VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 10
A Small Oil Lamp
The last chapter set down the ground color of the whole book and that heart: originally, not a single thing; great love that makes no distinction and asks no return; and this book, which is exactly one concrete shape that great love took so as to stay in the human world. The end of the last chapter brought out this layer: this book likens itself to one small oil lamp. This chapter follows on from there and sets right the position of this book before the reader. The chapter's three sections lay down how this book places itself, humble and honest. First, what it is: one small oil lamp, giving off only a little faint light, not a savior, not an answer for everything. Then, who does the great work: for the book's words to become deeds rests wholly on readers who read, believe, and act; the one who truly does the great work is the reader, not the book. Last, its fate: the book is written, all that could be done has been done, and how far it travels from here on is handed to letting it be as it naturally is.
Section One starts from this likeness. The light of a small oil lamp is only enough to light a small patch in front of you, so that someone feeling his way through the dark can see the few steps under his feet. This book does not take itself for a torch or the sun; what it owns is exactly this smallness. The books of this world mostly like to talk themselves up. This book will not. It says it up front, does not coax the reader with empty promises, and counts this honesty as one way the five show, a good heart. The section then makes plain, solemnly, that it is not a savior. Raising a book or a person up as a savior is a delusion the human world plays out again and again. How much suffering, down through history, has been brewed from exactly the hope of "waiting for a savior." Why will it not take that place? First, the ground color, originally, not a single thing, keeps it from making itself big. Second, it knows clearly that the good of this world rests on the growing of the five in the hearts of countless people. At the end it sets down that "a faint light has a faint light's use": one lamp lights the next, lamp passes to lamp, and the long night grows light, bit by bit.
Section Two first owns a plain fact: words in a book are only words. From ancient times to now, good books fill the shelves to the rafters, yet this world has not become good by itself because there are many books. The value of a book is truly cashed only at the moment a reader reads it into his heart and it turns into his words and deeds. Writing the book only gets the seed ready. Between words and deeds stands a gate, and the one who passes through it is the reader. The section gives a few ordinary examples: a mother reads it, and from then on brings a little more patience to her child; a craftsman reads it, and brings a little more care to teaching his apprentices; one who serves in office reads it, and brings a little more feeling for the people. This also opens the deeper meaning of the line that closes every section: the sages before laid down the reasons, the one who wrote them passed on the words, the readers got the work done; and of the three, the share of the readers who got it done is the most real and the weightiest. Making this layer plain hands the load back into the reader's hands and blocks off that back road of "sitting waiting to be saved." This handing-over is not shirking. It is waking.
Section Three starts from a plain sentence: by the time the book is written, what the one who wrote it could do, he has done. The section uses a farmer as its likeness: he ploughs deep, works the soil fine, sows, waters, does all he can, and whether the harvest is full still hangs on the season of heaven. Letting it be as it naturally is does not mean passively leaving everything to fate. It means that after you have done the share you ought to do, toward what is not yours to force, you do not cling, do not force, do not fret. Why can he let go like this? First, it rests on originally, not a single thing: the book is the shape of that great love, not a monument to the merit and fame of the one who wrote it. Second, it rests on the clear sight that "the one who does the great work is the reader." Since ancient times, those who set down teachings have always hoped a book would be "hidden away in a famous mountain and handed down to the right people"; this book has set down even this clinging. At the end, one layer must be told apart: letting it be as it naturally is is never holding back the heart. It speaks to the second half of "do all that a person can, and then accept what heaven decides," and it can stand only because of the full giving of the heart in the first half. To give three tenths or half and then say let it be as it naturally is, is fooling yourself.
The layer this chapter sets firm is this: this book owns that it is one small oil lamp, gives the lead's place to the reader, and hands its fate from here on to letting it be as it naturally is. The humility is here, and the honesty is here too. This way of holding itself is exactly what the ground color, originally, not a single thing, looks like when it falls on this book itself. With the book having placed itself, the next chapter turns to all this lawmaking itself: what its root purpose is, which vein of the ancestors this heart takes up, and what, in the end, all these thousands of words mean to keep as the root.
Chapter contents:
Section One. One Small Oil Lamp, Not a Savior.
Section Two. The One Who Truly Does the Great Work Is the Reader.
Section Three. Let It Be as It Naturally Is: This Book's Fate from Here On.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.