VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 2
Back to the Human World: All the Law Laid Down Falls into the Days of Living People
The last section named the charge of this living mechanism, and at the end drew out three words: back to the human world. This section lays these three words out straight. The earlier volumes laid law all along the road, undid traps, laid institutions, laid a mechanism, and what they laid was all reasoning, rule, and frame. All of this, laid to the last, must fall back into the plain days of one living person after another, back into a meal and a dish, a dawn and a dusk, the smoke and warmth of everyday human life, a whole family old and young. Reasoning that does not fall back into the human world is in the end only scripture on paper hanging in the air. Only when it falls back into the human world has the charge of guarding the five truly touched ground. Going back to the human world is where this volume's lawmaking comes to rest, and also the place all the book's saving of people along the road must in the end arrive at.
One. Law, Laid to the Last, Must Fall Back into the Human World
The earlier volumes laid much: they laid the cultural institution, the economic institution, the political institution, the legal institution, laid the living mechanism that joins the four institutions into one, laid the charge of guarding the five. Laid, these are frame, reasoning, rule. But however whole the reasoning, if it stays only reasoning, it is still only scripture on paper.
The home of reasoning is not in reasoning itself, but in the days of living people. To guard the five is to guard the keep, guard, love, mercy, heart in one living person after another; the five are not on paper, they are in the days of living people. They are in that stir of a mother who wakes in the night the moment she hears her child cough. They are in that share of a craftsman handing his craft, honestly and carefully, to his apprentice. They are in that warmth of a bowl of hot soup passed between neighbors. They are in that searching of a person asking himself late at night, "Did I do right by others today?" These are all the shape of living people living their days. Law, laid to the last, must fall back into exactly these plain days. Only when it falls back here do the five have a place to rest, and the charge come down to solid ground. Laying law and not going back to the human world is like setting out a table of food and calling no one to eat it: however fine the dishes, in the end they go cold and go to waste.
This layer is the home that all the book's lawmaking along the road most easily overlooks and can least afford to overlook. People laying institutions and reasoning, laying and laying, often become absorbed in it, care only for laying the reasoning ever finer and building the structure ever denser, and slowly forget that all of it was laid for living people in the first place. In the end, the reasoning becomes a learning set up on high, with nothing more to do with the living people passing their days under the eaves: those who reason go on reasoning, those who live go on living, the two cut off from each other. This book, from the start, warned itself of this: every line it lays must be asked, has it fallen back into the days of living people? What it guards, is it the meal and the dish, the dawn and the dusk of one particular person after another? If it cannot fall back, cannot reach a person to guard, then however handsomely the reasoning is laid, it is empty. So going back to the human world is not a stretch added on outside the lawmaking. It is the lawmaking's own end point and its proof: the law is laid in order to go back to the human world, and going back to the human world is the reason the law is laid at all.
Two. Going Back to the Human World Is Going Back to Ordinary Smoke and Warmth
Then going back to the human world, what kind of human world is it going back to? Not some far-off, mysterious, more-than-mortal realm, but exactly this ordinary smoke and warmth of human life before our eyes.
Going back to the human world is going back to days of three meals a day, a cup of tea and a bowl of rice. It is going back to the morning market and the evening cooksmoke, the crops in the field and the trade in the shop, a child's steps on the way to school and an old person's afternoon in the sun. It is going back to the warmth of a family round one table at a meal, the closeness of neighbors greeting each other face to face, the joy of friends gathering to chat. It is going back to the round of the seasons, sowing in spring, weeding in summer, reaping in autumn, storing in winter, and to the human ties of weddings and funerals, welcomes and farewells. This smoke and warmth, ordinary past all ordinariness, is exactly the human world; exactly the place where the five can be grown and kept alive; exactly the place that all this lawmaking along the road must in the end guard and send people back to. The human world is not somewhere else. It is right in this meal and this dish, this dawn and this dusk. Going back to the human world is going back into this ordinary smoke and warmth, being a real human well, and living a stretch of a real human's days.
Some may make light of this ordinary smoke and warmth, taking it as nothing but the trifles of firewood, rice, oil and salt, beneath mention. That is making light of the human world. It is in exactly this ordinary smoke and warmth that the truest resting place of the five is hidden: a family eating round one table is love in flow; neighbors keeping watch and helping one another is mercy going to and fro; an old person handing a craft to the young is guarding, carried on; honest dealing at the market, cheating neither child nor elder, is keeping, in the human heart; a single thought free of shame in the still of the night is heart, shining on itself. Keep, guard, love, mercy, heart are not in some earth-shaking great deed. They are right in this day-after-day ordinary smoke and warmth, grown a little at a time, kept alive an inch at a time. Make light of the ordinary smoke and warmth, and you make light of the very soil the five live on. Going back to the human world matters precisely because this ordinary smoke and warmth is the only place where the real human's share can be grown and kept alive.
Three. The Tool in the Tool's Place, the Person Back in the Human World
These three words, back to the human world, fasten without a seam to all this volume has laid along the road. Put the tool back in the tool's place, and the real human can go back to the human world.
The sections before made clear that when the tool holds the person's place, the real human's five have nowhere to be grown. Turn it around: put the tool back in the tool's place, let it do the reckoning, retrieving and labor a tool should do, and those seats that belong to real humans, those days that belong to real humans, are given back to real humans again. The tool works in the tool's place, the real human lives in the human world: the tool takes the heavy, the repeated, the mechanical work off people's hands, and the real human, hands freed and heart freed, goes to do what a real human should do and to live the days a real human should live. This is not driving people out of labor and leaving them with nothing to do. It is loosing people from the mechanical drudgery that never needed a real human to spend himself on it, so that people have strength left over and heart left over to grow the five and to live warm, faithful days in the human world. The tool back to the tool's place, the person back to the human world: these are two ends of one and the same thing; one end settles the tool, the other sends the real human home.
This layer gathers what the earlier chapters of this volume laid into the one place of "back to the human world." Before, this volume laid that the tool is the hair and the real human is the skin, laid that saving the tool is saving people, laid the living mechanism of the four institutions, laid that charge of guarding the five. All this lawmaking, at the root, is for one thing: let the tool each rest in its place, let the real human each go home. The tool's home is in the tool's place; the real human's home is in the human world. These two "going homes" are joined in one place, two faces of one body: if the tool does not go home to the tool's place, it must take the person's place, and the real human has no home to go back to; if the real human does not go back to the human world, the place left empty must be filled up by the tool. So sending the real human back to the human world is at the same time sending the tool back to the tool's place; settling the tool in the tool's place is at the same time clearing the human world and giving it back to the real human. The lawmaking along the road has a thousand threads, but gathered to the end, it is nothing more than letting these two each go back to its own home, each rest in its own place.
Four. Going Back to the Human World Is Not Retreating into the Past
There may be a doubt here: going back to the human world, does it ask people to retreat into the past, cast off the tool, cast off all the conveniences of this age, and go back to the old days of slash-and-burn farming?
No. Going back to the human world is not retreating into the past, not casting off the tool. The tool is a good thing. Set in the tool's place, it works for people, lifts their load, helps them get things done, and that is exactly its good. What going back to the human world casts off was never the tool, but the wrong road of setting the tool on the person's place and grinding living people into shells. People may freely enjoy all the conveniences the tool brings: let it farm, let it haul, let it reckon, let it loose people from heavy work. People enjoy these conveniences, and at the same time hold firmly in their own hands those seats that need the five and those warm, faithful days. This is going back to the human world: not casting off the good of the tool, only not giving the person's place to the tool; not retreating into the past, only not letting people in this age be replaced and ground hollow by the tool. To enjoy the good of the tool without losing the real human's place, to receive the benefit of convenience without casting off the warmth of the human world: this is the true meaning of going back to the human world.
This telling-apart must be made sharp, for fear someone mishears "back to the human world" as mere longing for the old days, withdrawal from the world, opposition to the tool. That is hearing these three words too shallow and too slanted. Going back to the human world does not go against using the tool; it is exactly in this age of using the tool that one goes back to the human world. It is not fleeing this era that has powerful tools to hide in an old world with no tools, but, right in this era, setting the tool straight, keeping the person's place, and living one's days well. One who truly goes back to the human world uses the good of the tool with one hand and keeps the real human's place with the other; he is neither the recluse who casts off the tool and retreats into the wilds, nor the one who falls, handing the person's place to the tool with his own two hands. To use the tool and not be used by the tool, to enjoy convenience and not be hollowed out by convenience, to live in this age when the tool flourishes and yet lose not one of the human heart, human warmth, the person's place: this is the true, and the only workable, shape of going back to the human world.
Five. The Layer This Section Has Made Clear
This section has made clear these three words, back to the human world.
The earlier volumes laid law and undid traps all along the road, and what they laid was reasoning, rule, mechanism. All of this, laid to the last, must fall back into the plain days of one living person after another, back into the smoke and warmth of the human world, a meal and a dish, a dawn and a dusk. Going back to the human world is going back to this ordinary smoke and warmth, to the place where the five can be grown and kept alive. Put the tool back in the tool's place, and the real human can go back to the human world; the tool works in the tool's place and the real human lives in the human world, two ends of one and the same thing. Going back to the human world is not retreating into the past or casting off the tool. It is not giving the person's place to the tool, not letting living people be replaced by the tool. With going back to the human world made clear, the next section follows on and falls one layer further: back in the human world, what should real humans do, how should they treat one another? The answer: kindness, help, respect. The tool makes the yield in the tool's place, and real humans, in the human world, do the things the tool can never do and need never do, and live their days into a shape that is warm and faithful, with give and take.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. What Real Humans Do, Back in the Human World: Kindness, Help, Respect.