VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 1
One Small Oil Lamp, Not a Savior
The end of the last chapter brought out this layer: this book likens itself to one small oil lamp. This section makes plain what that likeness means. It owns that it is one small oil lamp, giving off only a little faint light, lighting a small patch right in front of you. It is not a torch. It is not the sun. It is not a blaze of light that can shine through the whole world. Still less is it a savior, or an answer for everything that clears away all the world's hard problems at one stroke. Inside this humility, this owning that it is small, lies the most honest placing it makes of itself, toward itself and toward the reader. It does not set itself up high. It does not make itself big. It does not promise anyone a dream of a cure for every ill. It is only willing to be a faint light that shows the way.
One. It Owns That It Is One Small Oil Lamp
First look at the likeness: one small oil lamp. Why does this book liken itself to this, and not take itself for a torch, or for the sun?
One small oil lamp is small, plain, easy to overlook. The light it gives is not strong, not fierce, not dazzling. It 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. In likening itself to a small oil lamp, this book owns exactly this smallness. It does not dare say it can shine through the whole world, clear away every hard problem of past and present, give a final answer that settles things once and for all. It only dares say that it may, for someone on the road in this dark night, give off a little faint light and light the few steps in front of him, so that in this age, when the tool flourishes and the human heart is easily led astray, he can see a little of the way: see clearly that the tool is the tool and a real human is a real human, see clearly that the five, the human world, the paradise, are worth guarding. Next to the long night over the whole world, how small this little faint light is. Yet it owns that it is small and tells no lies, and that is exactly where it is honest.
The books of this world mostly like to talk themselves up. Some boast that they hold everything. Some promise that one book will lift a thousand sorrows. Some hint that read them and you will stand above other people. Talk like that may lead people astray for a while, but it does not stand up to a close look, and in the end it shows that it said more than was true. This book will not do that. It says, plainly and honestly: I am only one small oil lamp. I cannot shine very far. I cannot solve all your hard problems. What I give you is no more than a little faint light in the dark night, light enough for a few steps. This frankness looks at first like running itself down. Think it through, and it is a rare clearness and decency. It does not coax the reader with empty promises. It does not let the reader come holding hopes that have no ground and leave carrying the disappointment of hopes that came to nothing. It says it up front, and lays its own weight out for the reader to see, honestly. This honesty is itself one way the five show, a good heart: not deceiving people, not telling lies, not overstating by half a grain even the weight of its own book.
Two. It Is Not a Savior
Next look at this layer: it is not a savior. This must be made plain, solemnly, because it bears on what kind of heart the reader should bring to this book.
A savior is one who can, by his own strength, save all the living under heaven at one stroke. An answer for everything is the cure-all that clears away every hard problem at one stroke. This book is plainly neither of these. It cannot save anyone by its own strength. It cannot give a cure-all that clears away the world's hard problems at one stroke. The reasons it lays down, that set of institutions, that care behind them, need countless real humans to read, to believe, to act, one by one, before this world can little by little be made good. The book itself is only a small oil lamp giving off a faint light, pointing out a direction. The ones who truly set out, who truly walk this world step by step into good, are the countless people who take up the faint light. If someone takes it for a savior, takes it for an answer for everything, and expects that once he has read it all will be well and the world will settle itself, he has mistaken it, and failed it too. It has never dared take on a load like that, and has never promised anyone a dream like that.
This must be made plain, solemnly, because raising a book, a person, a teaching up as a savior is a delusion the human world plays out again and again. When people are in hardship, lost, with nothing to lean on, it is easiest to set some book, some person, high up on an altar, as the savior who can pull them out of the sea of suffering at one stroke. From then on they hand over their own judgment and their own share of the load, all of it, and only wait to be saved. This handing-over looks devout, and is in fact dangerous. On one side it lifts that book, that person, to a height they cannot bear. On the other side it pushes off, clean and complete, the share a person ought to carry himself. This book knows well the harm of this delusion, and so it declares, solemnly: I am not a savior. Do not set me up on an altar. Do not expect me to save you. All I can do is point out a direction. The feet that set out must be your own. The road to be walked, you must walk yourself. This solemn refusal is exactly for the reader's good. It wants the reader to take back that hope of being saved and trade it for his own resolve to set out.
Three. Why It Will Not Take the Savior's Place
Why is this book so unwilling to take the savior's place, and insists instead on owning that it is one small, faint oil lamp? This is not put-on modesty. It is decided by two things together: the ground color, originally, not a single thing, and its clear sight about this world.
First, the ground color, originally, not a single thing, keeps it from making itself big. Once the "I" in the heart has been set down very light and very faint, there is nothing for "I can save the world" to grow from. Only a person whose heart is full of "I" lifts himself up into a savior. Second, it knows clearly that the good of this world has never been saved into being by some one savior, some one all-answering book. It is built up little by little by the growing of the five in the hearts of countless people, by the effort each person makes in his own position. To expect a savior, an all-answering book, is exactly a dangerous fantasy. It lets people push the share they ought to carry onto that empty savior, while they themselves stand by with folded hands and sit waiting to be saved. This book refuses to take the savior's place precisely to break that fantasy. It wants to tell people: there is no savior. The one who can save this world is you yourself, countless people like you.
This layer is the most important place in this book, and the place where it gives the least ground. How much suffering, down through history, has been brewed from exactly the hope of "waiting for a savior." People stake all their hope of change on one savior outside themselves, and then they no longer move, no longer carry, no longer strive, and sit waiting for that savior to come down. And that savior either is slow to come, or comes and turns out to be one more strong power riding on people's heads. What this book wants to cut off is exactly this wrong road. It says again and again: do not wait, do not lean, no one is going to drop from the sky to save you. If this world is to be good, it can only rest on you yourselves, on the five growing in each one of your hearts, on each of you, in your own position, doing it little by little. To change a heart that is "waiting for the savior" into a heart that says "I myself am that bit of light": this change is what this book most wants to bring about. It would rather own that it is small and settle for being one small lamp than steal that savior's high seat, exactly because it fears that high seat would feed the laziness of "sitting waiting to be saved."
Four. A Faint Light Has a Faint Light's Use
Does owning that it is one small oil lamp mean it thinks too little of itself, that it counts for nothing? No. Faint as a faint light is, it has a faint light's use, and that use lies exactly in its smallness and its honesty.
One small oil lamp cannot shine through the whole world, but it can light the few steps in front of one person. By the light of those few steps, that person walks out, and in turn becomes a bit of light that lights others. This is how a faint light spreads, bit by bit, passed on hand to hand.
This layer is where all the hope of this small oil lamp lies. It does not expect that it alone can light the whole long night. That is beyond its strength, and something it has never dared dream of. What it hopes is that its little faint light can fall into one reader's heart, and light again the five that were already in that reader's heart and had only gathered dust. Once that reader is lit, he is no longer one who is shone on. He has become one who gives light, and goes on to light three or five people around him. So one lamp lights the next, one patch lights the next patch, and the faint light is no longer one lonely point. It has become ten thousand lights across the hills and fields. By then, what lights the long night is long since no longer that first small oil lamp. It is the countless lamps it lit, and that lit one another. The merit of this small oil lamp is not in how bright it is itself. It is in lighting the first fire, and then, the work done, stepping back and vanishing into that sea of light it lit. If this book, this one small oil lamp, can light one reader, let him see the way clearly and stir that heart, then that reader may become one more lamp that lights the people around him. Lamp passes to lamp, the faint lights slowly join into one stretch, and that long, long night grows light, bit by bit. So the use of a faint light is not in how bright one lamp can shine. It is in being able to light the next lamp, and the one after that. This is what this book is after in settling for being one small oil lamp: it does not ask to be the blaze of light that shines through the whole world. It asks only to be the first bit of faint light, and to go and light countless lamps. The next section follows on and makes plain: since the ones who truly walk this world into good are the people who take up the faint light, who, then, truly does the great work? The answer: the reader.
Five. The Layer This Section Makes Plain
This section makes plain that this book is one small oil lamp, not a savior.
It owns that it is small, giving off only a little faint light, lighting a few steps ahead, and does not take itself for a torch or the sun. Still less is it a savior, or an answer for everything. It cannot save anyone by its own strength. It needs countless real humans to read and to act. It will not take the savior's place, first because the ground color, originally, not a single thing, keeps it from making itself big, and second because it knows clearly that what can save this world was never a savior, but countless people themselves. And a faint light has a faint light's use: lamp passes to lamp, the faint lights join into one stretch, and the long night grows light. This humility in owning that it is small, and this hope of lamp passing to lamp, are exactly the most honest placing this book makes of itself. That being so, the one who truly does the great work is not this lamp, but the one who takes up the lamp. The next section makes it plain, straight on: the one who truly does the great work is the reader.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Two. The One Who Truly Does the Great Work Is the Reader.