VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 9, SECTION 1

VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 9, SECTION 1

Originally, Not a Single Thing: the Self Set Down, the Love Set Free

The last chapters walked the ground and the stars. This chapter turns inward, to the innermost heart of the whole book, the great love beneath every word. And that heart begins in a strange-sounding line the ancestors handed down: originally, not a single thing. This section lays it plain. To say originally not a single thing is to set the self down so light, so faint, that it comes near to nothing. And only a self set down that light leaves room for the love to spread wide, run far, and grow large enough to be called great love. The emptying and the great love are not two things. The one makes room for the other.

The line comes from Huineng, who long ago answered that where there is originally not a single thing, no dust can settle and no dust need be wiped away. The words point at the self. A person carries, most of his days, a heavy self: my gain, my name, my face, my having and my keeping, my wanting more. This heavy self fills the heart, and a heart full of self has little room for anything else. Originally, not a single thing, says: at the root, this self holds nothing, owns nothing, is owed nothing, and needs nothing for itself. Set the self down that light, and the heart, no longer stuffed with my own wanting, opens, and there is room at last for others, for the world, for a love that is not a reckoning of what I get.

See why the setting-down of the self and the great love are one. A heart full of self loves narrowly, if at all: it loves what serves the self, weighs each bond by what it returns, and cannot reach past its own gain. The self must first be set down, made light, made near to nothing, before the love can spread past it. As a cup full of one's own water has no room for more, so a heart full of self has no room for the world. Empty the cup, and it can be filled from a far spring. Set the self down, and the heart can fill with a love for all living things. This is why the great love in this book begins in originally not a single thing. Not because the book teaches a person to be nothing, to want nothing, to care for nothing. The reverse. It teaches the setting-down of the small, grasping self precisely so that the great love may have room to grow. Empty of self, full of love. The emptiness is not the end. It is the making of room.

And note what is set down and what is not. What is set down is the small self, the grasping, the my-own, the wanting-for-me. What is not set down, what rises exactly as the self is set down, is the love. So originally not a single thing is not a cold emptiness, not a turning-away from the world into a blank quiet. It is the warmest thing there is: the emptying of the self so that the whole world may be let in. The one who has set the self down does not end with nothing in his heart. He ends with everything in it, every living thing, the whole human world, held in a love no longer walled off by his own wanting. Not a single thing of the self, and so room for all things of the world. The emptier of self, the fuller of love. This is the paradox at the heart of the book, and it is no trick of words. It is the plain way the human heart works: set down the small, and the great has room to grow.

This also tells apart the great love from its counterfeits. A love still full of self is a trade: I love you for what you return to me, and when the return stops, the love stops. A love with the self set down asks no return, because there is no grasping self left to collect one. It gives because giving is its nature, as a spring gives water, not to be repaid, but because that is what a spring does. So the mark of the great love is this: it does not reckon, does not weigh what it gets, does not stop when the return stops. It flows out because the self that would have dammed it has been set down. Where you find a love that gives and asks nothing back, there the self has been made light. Where you find a love that always reckons its return, there the self is still heavy, still full, still blocking the way.

So the innermost heart of the book is laid bare in this one line. Originally, not a single thing. Set the self down until it comes near to nothing. And in the room that opens, let the great love rise, for all living things, for the human world, asking no return. This is the spirit beneath every institution the book has laid, every trap it has opened, every person it has saved. All of it was the work of this great love, and this great love was made possible by the setting-down of the self. The next section carries it a needed step further, so the great love is not mistaken for a vague, undiscriminating haze: great love makes no distinction, and yet it does not throw over near and far. To love the world begins with loving one's own, and reaches out from there.

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