The Movements of the Heaven (6)

1 Confucius visited Laotse’s home. In the chat, Confucius casually put forward his theory about benevolence and righteousness.

2 Laotse interrupted his narration. Laotse said, “If we spill rice bran into a man’s eyes, he must be in dark, and losing his direction immediately. If we don’t keep the mosquito net sealed and don’t close the window screen well, then the mosquito will come in and we can’t sleep well that night.

3 The concepts of benevolence and righteousness are just like the bran and the mosquito. Once they invade your heart, your heart is apt to excite. At that time, either you are filled with the righteousness and want to do silly thing without a good judgment or you are in anger and discontent and want to kill someone because you think their activities are against these concepts. Under these conditions, your sound, tranquil and peaceful heart is totally destroyed.

4 In the history, people hated Qin Quai, a treacherous and malicious minister of Song Dynasty who framed and killed Yue Fei, a hero who resisted the invasion of the State of Jin. If a hot-blooded youth knew the source of the event, he would raise the decision of killing Qin Quai on an impulse. This is the phenomena that benevolence and righteousness make people sad and flying into a rage.

5 As the philosopher and teacher of all people, we are all out to cultivate an environment where the country is peaceful, having good weather and climate and do whatever we can to make it stable and prosperous. If we advocate something such as benevolence and righteousness, consequently people are stirred up to complain, rage, retaliate, fight and slay each other. No matter what the purpose you have at the beginning you are wrong.

6 Why not conserve people’s original and pure nature? Just like the natural wind, breezing from all directions to make people comfortable.

7 If an electrical fan blows in a fixed direction to you, can you stand it? So the electrical fan with the function of turning direction was invented.

8 As for the virtue, it is also true. He, who always holds a kind of concept tightly, such as Nazi, is distasted, no body likes him.

9 Hence you advocate the singular and artificial rule of moral everywhere and regard it as the way of practice for people. It is like that a man knocks the drum and blows the trumpet to expect his dead son to revive in the funeral. It is impossible.

10 Arranged by the Nature, every creature has its specialty. The crane doesn’t bathe everyday, however, its feather always is so clean and white; the crow doesn’t expose itself to sunshine but its feather is always shines black.

11 The original nature of human is like the crane’s white feather and the crow’s black feather. In order to keep their beautiful outlook all they have to do is to live in a simple life in terms of their original nature. It never requires everyday bath and insolation on purpose.

12 The fact tells us that we just conserve the people’s original nature that is inherent and pure, their life and deed will naturally go under the best conditions of living in this world. We needn’t worry about them and make out a set of moral regulations such as benevolence and righteousness to restrict, change and distort the original nature. It is an obvious inarguable truth.

13 What else we philosopher and teacher of all people are wrong is that we often encourage people to pursue, such as fame, position and honor, which will disturb people’s heart too. We should not advocate them.

14 Those have benefit respectively, such as fame, benevolence and righteousness. They however are far from worse than original nature that is inherent and pure. It is like two fishes spitting each other to maintain their lives in short time after the lake dries up. If they could return to river and lake, who would like to live the life of spitting each other?”

15 Going back home, Confucius kept thinking over it, he was so focus on this subject that in the past three days he did not speak a word to anyone. His disciples detected the solemn atmosphere. They thought that he would get sick if kept thinking this way, so they tried to distract him by some topics.

16 One of his disciples asked, “Sir, you visited Laodan. What did you tell him there?”

17 Shaking his head, he whispered, “This time I really saw what the elite of this world is and what is a man of perfect practice. Laodan’s theory in sum is that it is the truth of the universe. It applied to trivia; it is their regulation and procedure, such as the flower blooming and withering, the animal’s birth, aging, illness and death. He combined himself with the Nature throughout. He did what he should do and stopped what he has to stop.

18 Yin and Yang are his food. The Qi goes through and around his body. He truly has reached the level that he can live and prosper with the Nature together. I was dumbfounded and at a lost. How could I tell him something?”

19 Zi Gong was unconvinced somewhat. He didn’t believe that there was a man like this in this world. He thought that his teacher must have muddled and had such impression because of his age.

20 Zi Gong protested, “I am skeptical of there is really a man like what you said in this world. Is it true? He is like mountain when still; like dragon when moving, like the dumb when quiet; like a thunder when speak? Once he wants to do something, Heaven truly acts to match him? He often sits there in peace and leisure as if nothing happened, but all things can be accomplished perfectly. You described him too wonderful to be believed. I must go and see him myself.”

21 In the name of a disciple of Confucius, Zi Gong asked to see Laodan. He was met in the parlor. Laodan asked humbly, “As you know, I am an old retired man now, is there anything new you want to tell me?”

22 Zi Gong said directly, “The Three Emperors and Five Kings had different ways of governance respectively but their splendid reputation and excellent achievements were the same. Why do you neglect these to consider that they are not sages?”

23 Laodan detected this young man bearing down menacingly. He seems ready to make trouble. So he decided to figure his purpose out at first. He asked, “You think their ways were different. What were the differences? Please specify it clearly.”

24 Zi Gong replied, “Yao demised his throne to Shun; Shun to Yu. Yu was diligent to work for the country; Tang often resorted to war to protect his country and people. King of Wen obtained peace by the means of forgiveness and tolerance; King of Wu crusaded against State of Zhou and made a clean sweep of it to emancipate people. They were all great kings but their performances and strategies were different. Those are the difference”

25 Laodan persuaded, “Young man, don’t speak so rashly. Come and sit down. Let me tell you what the true situations of their governance were.

26 In the governance of Yellow Emperor, there were no so many shit regulations. When somebody was deprived of his kin, he didn’t wail in the public. People didn’t blame him

27 In Yao’s governance, he made people love each other and have close relationship. In order to protect kin’s interest and safety, he might kill the stranger who invaded his kin whereas people didn’t sentence him and didn’t regard him as a murder, because it is very normal to protect personal freedom, wealth and privacy.

28 As for the Shun’s governance, he taught people to work and study hard. Since that time people believed hard work was a must, they thought though a man was unknown for his hard study of ten years, he would be well known for his celebrity. It takes ten months for a woman to give birth to a baby. However, parents hurried to teach their five-month baby speaking, reading and writing. They were afraid that their children would fail on the starting line. Hence, the children lost innocence and pleasure they should have in their age. Therefore, the mortality rate of baby increased greatly.

29 Yu’s governance encouraged people to innovate. He deemed that people could exceed Heaven, river course could be changed, sea could be turned into field, and the personal wills could be fulfilled by the violence and weapon. In his acme age, the army became a tool for invasion and contest. When people were labeled as a robber, their lives were in danger. Without the government’s protection, everyone was allowed to kill them.

30 Hearts of all people were stirred up when the definition of a robber was set as: Anyone who was out of our moral standard and custom, and anyone who was regarded as the foreigner. For the different doctrine and concept people believed, they fought against each other to bleeding. They were afraid to be fringed because the fringed one would probably be deprived of the mainstream value of the society and then it is possible to be labeled as a robber. The destiny of a robber is very miserable.

31 Just look the society of nowadays, the sects, such as Mo sect and Ju sect; they scramble for the mainstream position, which as a result put the country into a mess. I just can’t image if the arguments continue like this, what is going to happen in the future.

32 Do you have any comments about this development?

33 Let me tell you. We used to praise and admire the performance of the Three Emperors and Five Kings’ governance. In fact, their governances are the source of disorder and unrest. Their policies dimmed the sun and the moon, exhausted the energy of mountain and river and disrupted the alternation of the four seasons. Their policies were like tails of poisonous scorpions stinging and agonizing people. How dare they call themselves sages? Isn’t it shameful?”

34 Listening to what Laotse said Zi Gong sweated overall. From today, he knew that Confucianism that he advocated everyday had such a great side effect. Suddenly, he felt ashamed and uneasy.