Let Be and Let Alone (3)

1 Cui Qu had been long skeptical the feasibility of Laotse’s non-action. Someday he couldn’t help asking him. “If there is nobody to govern a country and to maintain the orders, how do you know that everyone abides by the law and behave himself properly?”

2 Laotse replied, “Officials should notice that their governance should not disturb people’s inherent virtue. People’s hearts are easy to be teased. Either calming them down or cheering them up is a far-reaching activity.

3 If the people are treated in a gentle manner, the most hardhearted man can be moved and softened. If we rashly correct people in our own ways, people’s hearts will be provoked to burn like the wild fire or to respond as cold as ice. Trouble comes then.

4 Change of mind is transient, like a blink of eye. Mind can roam everywhere, which you can’t seize.

5 In repose, it is still; however, when it wakes up and starts to move, it will fly out to the sky and roam around the heaven like a horse without reins. At that time it is totally out of your control.

6 Yellow Emperor was the first man to disturb people’s hearts in the past. He tried to educate people with the benevolence and righteousness. Consequently, he made Emperor Yao and Emperor Shun fatigued to death in expecting to raise their people.

7 They distorted the original operation of people’s mind to gear it to the standard of benevolence and righteousness. They exhausted people to gear them to those man-made laws, regulations and the social systems of rank.

8 Even if so, they had not succeeded in governance in fact. They detained Huan Dou in Chong Mountains, exiled three headers of Miao nationality, and expelled the people of Miao to Sanwei. Other people such as Gonggong were imprisoned in Youdu by their officials. These examples showed that they failed to educate people and correct them.

9 When it came to the age of the Three Emperors, the situation got even worse. According to their standards, Jie and Robber Zhi were evil persons, while Zen Can and Shi You were kind. The following Ju and Moism made the situation more serious. Consequently, the people were at a loss: they were happy at the time when they should not; they were angry at the time when they should not. Their moods, such as happiness, anger, sadness and joy, were disordered.

10 At that time, from the behaviors of people, it was difficult to discriminate which was slyness and which one was simplicity. Lofty people did eloquently to defend themselves in the light of their own standard, as did malicious people. The malicious and the bad guys seemed to find the foundation of theory of their own. The honest had a clear-cut stand to fight against the liars so the society dropped into disorders.

11 When people’s inherent character were stirred and disharmonized by those outward values and morale rules, their lives would confront frustrations.

The poem by Tao Yuanming goes:

The Tao lost for long time, for everyone grudged his feeling.

Nobody would drink wine, only to seek for the fame of vanity.

Just for enjoying my life, so I must cherish my body.

How long a man’s life last, it lasts for transient like current.

Bustle in fame in a hundred year, how to succeed if hold the idea.

12 When people seek for new knowledge, what they desire is much more than what they possess at present. In order to satisfy their desires, people start to invent such tools as knife, ax and saw. In the name of legal demand, they do much slaughter. As a country can’t keep up with the demand, it becomes messy and turbulent, which is blamed on the first measure of provoking and disturbance people’s heart.

13 Therefore, the men of practice in order to do a reclusion he have to find a caves in the mountains while rulers worry about state affairs and their personal safety, isolating themselves in the government hall.

14 To obtain power, interest, territory, food, mine, trade, even the beauty, people fight against each other in a field littering with corpses. Prisons teem with prisoners. Thieves, robbers and bandits infest the countries so that people’s lives are ruined.

15 Then such people as Confucius and Motse publicize their thought everywhere, spouting the ways of governance. My Goodness! Weren’t they shameful? Don’t they flush on faces?

16 We must make clear that the knowledge of the so-called sage all are instruments of torture imposed on the criminals. The other side of benevolence and righteousness is the handcuff and fetters, devised to trap people in guilt.

17 Actually, it is the doctrines of Zen Can and Shi You caused crimes of Jie and Robber Zhi.

18 Hence, the basic way of governance is to desert the knowledge, code of conducts and the morale rules. Only in this way, a country has real peace and stability, other than that there is no way to go.”