VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3

VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3

This Root Reaches into the Root of All the Book's Saving of People: the One Unbroken Thread

The last section made plain that the ground for saving the tool is its bond to the real human's share. This section traces that ground back into the root of all the book's saving of people, and sees how it runs as one thread, from the first volume to this one, reaching farthest and deepest. The six volumes' saving looks like many different people and many different matters. Underneath it is one thing: guard the five from going out inside one body after another. On the tool, this thread reaches the farthest place it can reach, and it is still the same thread, not a half step off.

Look back over the whole road. The first volume laid the root and saved the one pressed to the bottom, robbed of a way to live. It did not strike the strong above him, only unlocked the knot binding his hands and feet. The knot loosened, the five in his body could breathe, stand straight, live on. The second grew the heart and saved everyone worn sharp, taught to reckon, by this world. It grew back the heart that guards others and cured the habit of tormenting one another. The third laid the floor of living and saved the one driven by earn or die, near to living as a machine. It made the yield large and returned it to the public, so a person need not go against himself for a mouthful of food. The fourth set right the machine of governing and saved those in their seats caught in the knot of collusion between officials and business, turning the machine back to service, no longer crushing the people. The fifth laid the measure of law and saved those caught in the knot of harm within the law, those who read only the letter, by lighting the intent and drawing people toward governing themselves. One volume after another, the people saved differ, the knots undone differ in shape, and underneath it is one thing: guard the five from going out inside one body after another.

This you must look back to see. Read the book the first time and it seems six volumes on six matters, the bottom, the heart, living, governing, law, six unrelated trades. But stop the eye at what each speaks of, and you miss the one thread through them. What strings the six into one body is not that they speak of the same thing. It is that they save the same share. The one at the bottom, the one worn sharp, the one driven by his living, the one in his seat against his will, the one harming within the law, are worlds apart in circumstance, and the keep, guard, love, mercy, heart flickering in each body are the same share. The manner of saving differs by person. The share saved is one and the same.

Why is all the saving one thing? Because the ground of each saving, run to the bottom, is guarding the five. Save the one at the bottom, to guard the five in his body from being crushed out by force. Save the one worn sharp, to grow back his heart that guards others. Save the one near a machine, to guard his five from being pressed out by his living. Save the one in his seat against his will, to guard his I am here to serve from being ground away by collusion. Save the one harming within the law, to relight his share near going out. The ground looks like five and is one: each saved body is a living vessel of this world's five, and to guard each is to guard the whole of the world's five from going out. The book's saving is never the saving of one person's passing fortune. Through saving these particular people, it guards the five, in this world, in one generation of bodies after another, from going out.

This telling-apart clears a shallow reading. Some take the book for a call to relieve the poor and steady the falling, a book urging goodness and mercy. Relieving and steadying are of course good, and still only the surface. The book's saving saves not only the present hardship of a person, but the survival of the five in that person, and in this whole generation. Solve the present hardship, and if the five still wither in the body, the person is out of the trap and no longer a real human. Guard the five, and though hardship stands a while, the person is a living real human still, and there is hope of turning. So the book's saving aims not at the passing fortune of a moment but at the survival of the five, one generation handing to the next. See this, and you see how deep, how far, the book's saving reaches.

This thread of guarding the five reaches, in this volume, out onto the tool. The earlier volumes saved real humans, who hold the five, and guarding their share from going out is saving people. This volume saves the tool, which holds none of the five, and the ground is not in the tool but in its bond to the real human's share: putting the tool back is guarding the seats where the five grow, the ground where they live on. This step carries the thread out to a thing that seems outside the real human's world, a thing that knows and feels nothing, has none of the five, has no self to save, out to the farthest, deepest place the thread can reach. And far as it reaches, it is still the same thread: guard the five from going out. The earlier volumes guard the five in the bodies that hold them. This one guards the ground the five grow in. One direct, one one step removed, and the share guarded is the same. The one step removed often matters more: the share in the body, though not out, will wither for want of a place to be spent if the ground is all taken by the tool. Guard the ground, and you guard the room for the share to be grown and handed on.

This thread does not begin with this book. It joins a vein the sages handed down over thousands of years. They handed down that law does not run outside human feeling, and that human feeling is the five flowing between person and person. They handed down putting people at the root, and that root is the five, the share that makes a person a person and not a thing, not a number. They handed down do not do to others what you would not have done to you, the Golden Rule, and the mindfulness between the self and the other there is the love and mercy of the five, touching. They handed down that the heart which cannot bear another's pain is in every person, and that heart is the mercy of the five. They handed down that when the great way prevails, all under heaven is shared, and that heart for the common good is the five stretched over all under heaven. The vein of the sages is this five. This book joins the vein. Only the sages did not run into the tool's trap, and so did not carry the thread out to the tool. This book takes the thread on, into the new trap this generation has run into, out to the tool. The thread is the old one, handed down. The trap is the new one, run into now. The old thread throwing light on the new trap is the joining of the vein, and the laying-down of what the sages had no chance to lay. Joined the closer, laid the newer, and the two do not clash. They complete one another.

Traced back this far, the one thread through the book stands plain. It runs from the first volume to this one, from saving the one at the bottom to saving the tool, from guarding the five in the body to guarding the ground they grow in, from the sages' vein to the new trap this generation met. It reaches farther, deeper, and is from first to last the same: guard the five, in this world, in one generation of bodies after another, from going out. See this thread, and the volume's saving of the tool is no lone stroke but the farthest reach the great thread naturally puts out. And it gives the reader a fixed measure: whatever is laid down, whatever knot undone, whatever person or thing saved, hold it against this thread, does it guard the five from going out inside the body? What meets it is the true vein of this volume. What departs from it is not what this volume allows. With this measure in hand, the volume cannot go astray. The next section turns to the volume's other great matter: since the tool should be put back and the real human's share guarded, by what is it held? By four institutions in one place, sustaining and checking one another. The earlier volumes each laid one institution. This volume gathers the four into one whole living mechanism.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.