{131} CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Repairing the Inborn Nature

There are some who try to repair their inborn nature by recourse to conventional learning, thinking this can return it to its initial state. There are some who try to unseat their desires by recourse to conventional thinking, believing this will bring them clarity. Such people may be called truly benighted.¹

The ancients who practiced the Course used their tranquility as nutriment for their conscious understanding. Conscious understanding did arise for them, but it was not employed in the service of any deliberate doings. Thus they can be said also to have used their conscious understanding as nutriment for their tranquility. When conscious understanding and tranquility can come together and nourish one another in this way, a harmonious coherence² of the two emerges from the inborn nature. Inherent virtuosity is just this harmony, and the Course is just this coherence. Their inherent virtuosity came to contain everything in itself—and just this is real humankindness. Their Course came to arrange all things into mutual coherence one with another—and just this is truly responsible conduct. Their responsible conduct shone brightly so that other beings come to feel kinship with them—and just this is real loyalty. They were pure and genuine within and reverted to this even in their emotional dispositions—and just this is real music, real joy. The sincerity of their conduct showed even in their faces and bodies, and accorded with the elegant patterns of culture—and just this is real ritual.

And yet, when practiced universally,³ ritual and music disorder all the world. For when the correctness belonging to another is applied to oneself, it only beclouds one’s intrinsic virtuosities. These must not venture outward to impose upon {132} others, for whenever they are made to venture outward, imposing on other beings, the inborn natures of those other beings will be in every case lost.

These ancients, in this state of undivided obliviousness, remained in communion with everything in the world and yet found a tranquil solitude there. At that time yin and yang were in harmonious stillness, the ghosts and spirits brought no disturbances, the four seasons found their right measures, the ten thousand things remained unharmed, so no living thing met with a premature death. Although people did have some conscious understanding, they had no use for it. This is what is called utmost unity. At this time no one did anything deliberately; whatever happened always happened spontaneously, not done by anyone.⁴

But then such intrinsic virtuosities went into decline, and it was then that people like Suiren and Fuxi⁵ started to manage the world and do things with it. The people of the world complied but were no longer in unity. When the intrinsic virtuosities further declined, people like Shennong and the Yellow Emperor⁶ started to manage the world and do things with it. The people of the world were secured but no longer compliant. When the intrinsic virtuosities further declined, people like Tang and Yu started to manage the world and do things with it, introducing derivative practices like governing and transforming the people, thus splintering the purity and scattering the unhewn, chopping up the Course for the sake of goodness, imperiling the intrinsic virtuosities for the sake of moral conduct. Thereafter they dismissed their inborn natures and followed their minds instead. Minds then came to know and recognize only other minds, interacting only through their understandings, which can never be enough to bring stability to the world. Then they supplemented it with elegant patterns of culture, and augmented it with erudition. But the elegant cultural patterns ended up destroying the materials they embellished, and the erudition ended up drowning the mind. And then the people started to become really confused and disordered, with no means by which to restore their inborn natures and dispositions, no way to return to their initial state.

Looking at it this way, the world has lost the Course and the Course has lost the world. The world and the Course, in their interaction, have lost each other. How could a person of the Course then emerge in the world? How could the world emerge in the Course? The Course has no way to appear in the world and the world has no way to appear in the Course, so even when sages do not hide themselves in mountains and forests, their intrinsic virtuosity remains hidden. Hidden but not hiding themselves—that is what the ancients meant when they talked about hidden ones, hermits. They did not conceal themselves, but they were not seen. They did not keep their words within, but their words went nowhere. They did not hide their understanding, but their understanding did not go forth. This was because the times they were fated to live in were greatly out of step with them. {133} If the fated times had been just right, they would have been extremely active presences in the world, bringing it back to unity but without leaving any traces in it. But since the fated times were not right, they failed miserably in the world, rooting themselves deeply in the profoundest stillness and waiting for a change. This was their course for preserving their own lives. The ancients who practiced this in their persons did not use disputation to embellish their conscious understanding; and they did not use conscious understanding to plumb the depths of the world, did not use conscious understanding to plumb the depths of their intrinsic virtuosities. They dwelt in their own places in solitude and returned to their own inborn natures. What deliberate activity did they then need to engage in? The Course surely does not proceed through petty practices, nor is intrinsic virtuosity made manifest through petty knowledge. Petty knowledge harms intrinsic virtuosity, and petty practices harm the Course. Thus we may say that all they did was get their own selves into balanced alignment, nothing more. Delighting in completeness, in remaining intact, is what they called fulfilled aspiration. What the ancients called fulfilled aspiration did not mean obtaining ceremonial carriages and caps of rank and wealth. It meant simply that nothing could further augment their happiness. But nowadays when people speak of fulfilled aspiration, they just mean getting the carriages and the caps of rank and wealth. But even when these are on the body, they do not touch the inborn nature and allotment of life. When things like this happen to come, they are just temporary lodgers in one’s life. As temporary lodgers, their coming cannot be prevented, but their going also cannot be stopped. Thus [the ancients] did not indulge in aspirations for carriages and caps, nor did they compromise with convention for fear of failure or privation. They were as happy with the one as with the other, and thus they were without worry. But nowadays the loss of these temporary lodgers in one’s life causes unhappiness. Looked at in that way, although people may be happy, they have never stopped being desolate. Hence I say, those who forsake themselves for external things, who lose their inborn natures to convention—these are people who have turned themselves upside down.

¹. Omitting the second 俗, and parsing the parallelism as suggested by Jiao Hong. Alternately, taking 欲 for the second 俗 as suggested by Zhu Dezhi and as seemingly assumed in Guo Xiang’s comment, the meaning would be: “They have already tailored their inborn nature to accord with convention, and now wish to use learning to seek a way to return it to its initial state; they have already reconfigured their desires to accord with convention, and now use thinking as a way to extend their understanding of them.”

². Heli 和理. On Li, see Glossary.

³. Or, reading 偏 for 遍 as Guo Xiang does, “practiced one-sidedly”!

⁴. Cf. Daodejing 51.

⁵. The first to use fire to cook food and the first to domesticate animals, respectively.

⁶. Both of whom were said to have launched punitive expeditions to suppress rebels against their regimes.