VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 3
Hold a License, Study Year on Year, Be Reviewed Year on Year: a Way to Keep the Five
The last section left a question at its close: back in the real human's place, how does a person keep the five, not slacken and grow idle in the years, and slide back again into being a tool? This section lays this way down head on: everyone holds a license, studies year on year, is reviewed year on year. The one who holds a real human's place must hold a license to take up the seat, proving he has the five and can do the things of this seat right. Once he holds the license, he studies year on year, so the five do not go to waste with the years. He is reviewed year on year, so the five do not go out through slackness. This set is a living, standing labor that keeps the five and keeps the real human's place.
One. Why There Must Be This Set
First, why there must be this set. The five are not a thing that, once grown, is done with for good and stays alive from then on.
That keep, guard, love, mercy, heart is alive. It must be grown day by day and guarded hour by hour. Grown, it thrives. Not grown, it withers. Guarded, it is bright. Not guarded, it goes dark. A real human, even if for a time the five are grown full and alive and bright in him, if from then on they are no longer grown, no longer guarded, left to be worn by the years, invaded by idleness, stained by accumulated bad habits, the five too will go to waste day by day, grow dim day by day, and in the end go out. Once the five have gone out in a person, even if he still sits in a real human's place, that seat can no longer be kept. He will slide back again into being a tool that reads only the letter and not the intent, slide onto the old road of that nest of people the last volume laid down. So keeping the real human's place is not done by putting a person into the seat and leaving it there. There must be a way by which, once he sits in the seat, the five are kept grown, guarded fast, not going to waste, not going out. Everyone holds a license, studies year on year, is reviewed year on year: this is just such a way.
Two. Everyone Holds a License: Holding a License to Take Up the Seat
First, the first of the three, everyone holds a license. The one who holds a real human's place must hold a license to take up the seat.
This license does not only prove he has the ability, the learning, the skill to do the things of this seat. More vital, it proves he has the five, and can keep that share this seat asks for. One who would hold the common instrument proves he has the heart that guards the people. One who would raise people proves he has the charge to hand on the five. One who would be among the various licensed practitioners proves he has that heart that sees the living person, that care of one standing at the edge of a chasm. With this license, he may take up that seat. Without this license, however high his ability, he may not. This license is a threshold through which the five enter the real human's place: it sets the five up as a precondition for holding the real human's place, not an optional extra. It makes the rule "to sit in a real human's place one must have the five" no longer just a reasoning, but a real, solid gate that everyone must pass.
Someone may ask: the five are hidden in a person's heart, cannot be seen or touched, so how can they be proven? The question hits the mark. The five truly are not like ability and skill, which one test can settle. But though they are hidden within, they show without: whether a person has the heart that guards people, look at how he treats people all along. Whether he has the self-keeping that keeps the rules, look at how he conducts himself all along. Whether he has that care and that goodness, look at the things he has done, the charges he has borne, the trials he has been through. Proving the five rests not on the questions and answers of one exam paper, but on what shows from a person's words and deeds all along, the real matters that have passed through his hands, the common judgment of those who work with him, taken together. This license, therefore, is not a dead license where one test settles a whole life. It is a living license, set up on what he has been all along, and to be checked again year after year. What it proves is that, up to this moment, the five in this person are truly there, truly alive, truly fit for this seat.
Three. Study Year on Year: So the Five Do Not Go to Waste
Next, the second of the three, study year on year. Once he holds the license, he studies year on year, so the five do not go to waste with the years.
One license can only prove the five at the moment he takes up the seat. After he takes it up, the years are long, and if the five are no longer grown, no longer warmed, they go to waste. So he must study year on year: year on year warm that keep, guard, love, mercy, heart again, year on year read that intent, that reasoning again, year on year grow and guard the five in his heart afresh. This study is not only the layer of learning new abilities, new skills. More vital is the layer of growing the five. What is learned is how to keep that heart that guards people, in the seat day after day, from growing cold, thin, numb. What is learned is how, in the grinding of the years, to keep that first share. A person who stays long in a seat easily turns the five into routine, turns living people into a practiced procedure, and that is the beginning of going to waste. Study year on year is just to block this going to waste, so the five are new year after year, grown year after year, there year after year.
The study here differs by one layer from the further training and recharging people usually speak of. Usual further training is mostly to add ability, grow skill, catch up with new knowledge. That is a matter at the end of yield, and of course it is needed too. But the studying year on year spoken of here has its weight at the end of growing the five: warming again that first heart that guards people, reflecting again on the measure in treating people, asking again, "do I still treat every person who comes before me as a living, real human." This layer of study grows no new skill, but carries on that old first heart. It adds no new ability, but guards that share that does not go out. Neither of the two may be neglected: learning only ability and not growing the five, a person grows more and more capable, yet colder and colder. Growing only the five and not learning ability, a person grows warmer and warmer of heart, yet less and less able to keep up. Study year on year must move forward at both ends, with the weight above all on growing the five, because ability gone to waste can still be made up, but the five, once gone out, are hard to light again.
Four. Be Reviewed Year on Year: So the Five Do Not Go Out
Next, the third of the three, be reviewed year on year. He is reviewed year on year, so the five do not go out through slackness.
Study year on year is growing oneself. Review year on year is being looked at by others. Study grows the five within. Review looks at the five from without: once a year, review it, in this person who holds a real human's place, are the five still there, still alive, still bright? Does he, treating the citizens, still have that heart that guards people? Does he, making decisions, still read that intent, still see that living person? Sitting in this seat, can he still keep that share? If the review finds the five already going to waste, already grown dim, already going out, he should be reminded early and urged to grow them again. If the review finds the five already gone out, that he has already sat this seat into a tool-like seat that harms people, he should be asked to give up this seat. This review is not tormenting, it is guarding: guarding that real human's place from being occupied by a person whose five have gone out, and harming people, and also guarding that person himself, so he does not slide unknowing into being a tool without looking at himself. Review year on year is a watch over the five that stands there year after year.
One misunderstanding must be guarded against: review year on year is not hunting for people's faults year after year, hanging a knife over their heads, keeping them in dread all day long. If the review is made into tormenting, made into a pretext for punishing people, then it has itself lost the five first and become a tool that harms people. A true review is guarding, a watch of good will: it is like an elder asking a younger one once a year, this year, is that heart of yours still there? Has it gone slack anywhere, grown weary, gone numb? Its intent is not to pull people off their horses, but to give people a hand early, so the five do not go out unknowing and leave only regret. So the one who carries out the review must himself above all have the five whole, and carry out the review with the heart that guards people, so as not to make this watch into one more procedure that harms people. A review that keeps its way is the warmth of the five watching over one another, guarding one another generation after generation. A review that loses its way falls back again onto the old road of harming people lawfully from the last volume.
Five. The Three Together: A Living, Standing Labor
Everyone holds a license, studies year on year, is reviewed year on year: the three together are a living, standing labor that keeps the five and keeps the real human's place.
The license is the threshold for entering the seat, setting the five up as a precondition. Study year on year is growing oneself while in the seat, so the five do not go to waste. Review year on year is being looked at by others while in the seat, so the five do not go out. The three follow on one from another: the license holds the gate at the start, study grows them all along, review watches and keeps them to the end. This set is not a dead rule laid once and done with. It is a living labor that is there every day, there every year, there beside a person his whole life in the seat. It makes the five not set aside once a person has taken up the seat, but, from the day he enters it, warmed, guarded, watched over by this way year after year. Keeping the real human's place, kept down to the real ground, is keeping these three. Keeping these three is keeping the five, in each person who holds a real human's place, grown long and never going out. The living mechanism of the four institutions laid in the earlier volumes guards the five in the large places of institutions. This set of license, study, and review guards the five in the real ground of each person who holds a seat. The large places and the real ground together, and only then are the five guarded completely. Institutions set up above with no one keeping them below, and the institutions end as empty words. People keeping them below with no institutions to prop them up above, and the keeping is hard to make last. So this way and that living mechanism of the earlier volumes need each other, above and below, and neither can be missing: the mechanism is the bones of the five, this way is the blood of the five, and with bones and blood both whole, only then can the five grow long in this world and never go out.
Six. The Layer This Section Has Made Plain
This section has made plain a way to keep the five and keep the real human's place.
Back in the real human's place, the five will not stay alive for good once and for all. There must be a way to grow, guard, and keep them year after year. This way is everyone holds a license, studies year on year, is reviewed year on year: the license sets the threshold, study grows them from within, review looks and keeps them from without, the three following on one from another, making one living, standing labor. This set brings the five down from a line of reasoning into a real gate that everyone must pass, that must be gone through year after year, so that in each person who holds a real human's place the five are kept grown, guarded fast, not going to waste, not going out. The group on coming back to the human world is made plain to here: real humans come back to the human world, hold the real human's place, are kind to one another, help one another, respect one another, and keep the five with the license, the study, and the review. The settling of the person in the human world is, in the main, laid down in full. But this human world the person comes back to, what kind of place is it, in the end? Why is it worth guarding so, keeping so? The next group will make it plain head on: this human world is Earth, the one and only paradise in this universe.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.