Horses' Hooves (1)

1 The horse has hooves to protect its feet so as able to gallop steadily on the snow-covered ground. It has thick mane to keep from wind and cold. There is flourishing pasture on the grassland and clear water in the river, by which horse can gallop freely on the vast field. This life style is very normal to the horse. The luxury stall is unnecessary to him.

2 The wild horses on the grassland someday met Bo Le who was said to have particular understanding of the nature of horses.

3 Bo Le tamed the horses by trimming their mane, paring their hooves thin, branding their bodies, tying rein to their heads, shackling their feet. Under those conditions he observed their steadiness and to rank them.

4 Owing to those taming, two or three out of ten horses were tortured to death.

5 Not only that, in the following steps, Bo Le starved the horses making them hungry and thirsty so as to observe their endurance. Under the condition of hunger and thirst, the horses were force to gallop or trot.

6 Bo Le fixed bridle to horses’ mouths and urged on them with knotted whip to strictly train them run in tidy team. In such training, five out of ten horses died from the tiredness.

7 Ceramist bragged that he was veteran of ceramic making. If he wanted to make a round ceramic vessel, he used the compasses; if he wanted to make the square ceramic vessel, he used the square rule. Carpenters were the same in bragging about his craft. If they wanted to make a curve parts, they used the hook ruler; if they wanted to saw a straight line, they used the line marker.

8 However, in the viewpoint of ceramic soil and wood, they dislike the tool such as compasses, square rule, hook ruler and line marker.

9 Traditionally, we all praised Bo Le’s awareness of the nature of horses and respected the professional knowledge of ceramist and carpenter generation after generation.

10 Such mistakes in recognition also happened to the politicians. They thought that they had good policy to govern the country. But in the viewpoint of people, nobody would like the exorbitant taxes and levies; not to mention the endless services and penal sheets.

11 I think that statesmen who really know how to govern the country are different from the politicians, because people are inherent the necessary skills to live by themselves. They can weave and plant to make them live, which are their common nature and self-possessed. So we can say that the common nature is inherent.

12 People in the primitive society appeared to be tranquil and composed. At that time there was no path crossing the mountains and no boat crossing the rivers, but creature lived in their own realm prosperously generation after generation.

13 Birds and animal flocked and tree flourished. Human, bird and animal coexisted peacefully. They wholly were not afraid of human. You might touch them and they were not frightened. People might climb up to see magpie’s nest; however, the magpie still stayed there. Every creature was one of the members of the family of Nature. All were on very intimate terms. In the society of human, there was no difference between the gentleman and the common people and all were equal without the discrimination of knowledge, skill, senior and junior.

14 Their virtues were fine, not to mention going astray. Their live were simple that their desires were low. So people in such group were uniform and integral, among which each one conserved his endowed nature.

15 Gradually people’s civilization came into being. When the so-called sages appeared, they all-out advocated such moral rules as benevolence and righteousness. Since then people’s hearts have been teemed with doubt, confuse, jealousness and distrust.

16 They have to be delighted with music and discriminate people’s rank in rite and by clothes, for which the discrimination appeared in the society.

17 To make a vase for sacrifice, they have to split away a wood to carve it into vase. It is the same with the nature of humanity spoiled for surrendering those artificial moral rules.

18 If the nature of humanity were intact, people would not need such things as music and etiquette. If the five notes of the ancient Chinese five-tone scale were in ordered, people would not use six pitches to regulate them.

19 It is craftsman’s fault to forcefully distort natural resource into various vessels. It is sage’s fault to spoil the nature of humanity to bridle those artificial codes of conduct on people.