VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 1
How a Great Love Remains in the Human World
At the end of the last chapter, the whole book was led to its final layer: to leave that one great love, the love that runs from beginning to end, in the human world, with all solemnity. This section asks first: this great love, how in fact does it remain in the human world? Not by one person living forever and never growing old. Not by one book that never crumbles. It remains by one generation of real humans after another, the five alive in their hearts, that great love flowing among them, each lamp lighting the next, on and on, never breaking. The way a great love remains in the human world was never frozen keeping. It is lively passing: it lives in one real human heart after another, and flows from this heart to the next.
One. A Great Love Does Not Last by One Person or One Book
First, break a hope one might hold: a great love remains in the human world not by any one person living forever, not by any one book never crumbling.
People age, people go. No person who carries a great love can live forever without growing old and guard that love, by his own hand, to the end of time. Books crumble, books scatter. No book that bears a great love can stay forever unbroken and hold that love, unchanged, for ten thousand ages. Pin the whole hope of the love's remaining on one person, one book, and the hope must fail: the person goes, the book crumbles, and is the great love not then cut off, gone? So a great love can never remain by the lasting of one person or one book. If it is truly to stay, to be handed on, it needs a vessel longer-lived than any person's years, more enduring than any book's frame. That vessel is nothing else than the one generation of real humans after another, born and born again without end, and the five in their hearts, and that one great love. People grow old, but the real humans of the human world do not run out. Books crumble, but the five in the human heart do not die. It is because the great love is borne on these endlessly renewing real humans that it can pass beyond the brief span of one person or one book, and remain in the human world for good.
Said through, this layer sets the heart at ease. People often worry: a good thing, how can it last? A good person goes, does his goodness go with him? A good book crumbles, do the truths in it scatter with it? That worry ties the good to a person or a thing that can crumble, and so it cannot help but worry. But the way a great love remains slips exactly past that worry: it was never tied to any one person who can pass, any one book that can rot. It is tied to the human heart, endlessly renewing, unbroken from generation to generation. The person passes away, but humankind runs on without end. One book crumbles, but the five in the human heart are born again in every generation. To entrust a great love to this unbroken human heart is to entrust it to a vessel far longer-lived than any person, any book. So do not worry for the lasting of a great love. So long as the human world still has people, and the human heart can still grow those five, this great love has a dwelling that is never cut off. While the human world does not perish, the great love does not die. What a steady, settled hope that is.
Two. A Great Love Lives On, Heart by Heart, Alive and Passing
Then by what, in the end, does a great love remain in the human world? By one real human heart after another, alive, and passing on.
A great love is no dead thing to be locked in a box and sealed away. It is alive, and it lives in one real human heart after another. A real human with the five grown in his heart, that great love alive in him, becomes one dwelling of the great love. He meets others with kindness, help, respect, and that great love flows out from his heart to the people around him. And those warmed by his love have the five in them wakened, the great love in them brought to life, and they become new dwellings of the great love, and it flows on to others. So the great love goes from one heart to the next, from this generation to the next. It is not kept in some one place. It flows, lively and alive, among countless hearts. This flowing is how the great love lives on in the human world: not by frozen keeping, but by passing on without stop. Every heart it lights is both a dwelling of it and a ford from which it crosses to the next heart.
This layer also tells a great difference between a great love and an ordinary treasure. Ordinary treasures, gold and jade and fine things, are the more for you, the less for me, yours to have and mine to lack: give a share to another, and your own hand holds a share less. A great love is wholly the opposite: the more it is passed, the richer it grows, the more it is given, the more there is. A person gives his love to another, and the love in his own heart is not half a share less. Rather, for the giving, that love is more alive, more warm, more full. And the one who received the love grows new love in his own heart. So love, in the passing, is not thinned but multiplied: one becomes two, two become four, the more it is passed the more there is, the further it flows the wider it spreads. This is the great love's own, near-miraculous layer: it does not follow the common rule of "one rises, the other falls," only love's own law of "the more given, the richer." Just because of this, as the great love passes from heart to heart, the love of the human world is no fixed sum, had here and gone there, but a living stream, ever more in the passing, endlessly renewing. The love of the human world can, in truth, grow more and more. This layer is a warm confidence this book is glad to leave to the human world.
Three. Each Lamp Lighting the Next, On and On, Never Breaking
This flowing, this heart lighting that heart, is exactly the "each lamp lighting the next" spoken of before, and in this lamp-to-lamp the great love goes on and on, never breaking.
One lamp lights another, its own light not one share the less, and the human world has one more lamp of brightness. So it is with the great love: one heart passes that great love to another, the love in its own heart no less, and the human world has one more loving heart. Lamp passes to lamp, heart passes to heart, and the light spreads ever wider, the love grows ever more. The great love in the hearts of those before is passed to the next generation, and the next generation passes it to the one after, on and on, never breaking, handed down generation after generation. Though the one who first lit the lamp is long gone, though that first lamp long ago went dark, the light it kindled, through one lamp passing to the next, has burned to this very day, and will burn on. The great love can remain in the human world for just this reason, that it is passed lamp to lamp, on and on, never breaking: it leans on no single lamp burning forever, only on the passing never breaking. So long as the passing goes on, though a thousand lamps, ten thousand lamps go dark in their turn, that light, that love, is never put out.
This layer gives a person a very deep comfort, and lays on a person a very heavy charge. The comfort: a great love is not cut off by any one lamp going dark. A good person goes, and the hearts he lit are still here, and the love is still passing. A generation passes, and the light it handed on is still here, still to be handed to the next generation. So do not despair at any one lamp going dark. That light was long ago passed out, and no longer rests on that one lamp. The charge: whether this passing goes on unbroken rests on each lamp now burning, on whether it is willing to go and light the next. You and I, all in whom the five still burn this moment, are the lamps alight this moment. Whether this long stream of lamp lighting lamp can run on rests on whether you and I are willing to pass our own small light to the hearts beside us not yet lit. To take the light of those before, and pass it to those after, this is the one share of duty every real human owes, standing in this long stream of lamp lighting lamp. Comfort and charge are the two faces of one body. Because this passing is never broken, there is comfort. Because this passing rests on you and me, there is the charge.
Four. This Is Also the Hope of This Book
See clearly how a great love remains in the human world, and you see clearly the whole hope of this book.
This book, it was said before, is one shape of that great love, a small oil lamp. It does not hope to last forever unbroken. It hopes only that its own faint light may light one reader's heart, and that the heart it lit will go and light other hearts. It gives itself away for just this, each lamp lighting the next: this one lamp may crumble, may go dark, but so long as it once lit a heart, and that heart passed it on, then the great love it bore, through that passing, has remained in the human world. So this book's hope was never to be remembered forever. It is that the great love, kindled by this one small lamp, may join the long stream of each lamp lighting the next, on and on, never breaking. It is willing to be forgotten, surpassed, left to crumble, so long as that great love still lives and passes in one human heart after another in the human world. That willingness is the last, and also the deepest, showing of the ground-tone of "originally, not a single thing" and "a great love remains in the human world."
A book willing to be forgotten is a rare thing in this world. So many books are written to be immortal, to spread a name, to have those after remember the author forever. This book turns it exactly around: not only does it not ask to be remembered, it hopes that once the thing that matters more has remained, it may itself be quietly forgotten. This is no self-scorn. It is having seen through what weighs more and what less, telling apart what comes first and what after: the book is form, the great love is heart. The book is the boat, the great love is the one in the boat. The boat brings the one across to shore, and its work is done. Whether the boat is then kept or left, remembered or forgotten, does not matter at all. What matters is that the one has reached the shore. This book is glad to be such a boat, there only to ferry people across, asking nothing for itself. It ferries that great love into one reader's heart after another. Once across, it is content, and though forgotten, though crumbled, has no regret. This willingness, "ask only to ferry people across, ask nothing for oneself," is this book's most thorough living-out of the truth that a great love remains in the human world, and also, as a small oil lamp, its last and brightest burning. The next section goes on from here: this great love, passed lamp to lamp, comes down at last to what one line?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Two. The Great Love Comes Down to One Line: There Is Love in the Human World.