The Vegetable Root Discourses菜根譚

Foreword菜根譚題詞

The Caigentan has a foreword and no preface. This one was written by Yu Kongjian of Jintan, and it is the only piece of evidence about the book that is contemporary with its author: almost nothing is known of Hong Yingming — not even the years of his birth and death — and it is from this page alone that we know he existed, wrote this, and was a friend of Yu’s. Yu states where he stands and whom he keeps company with, then describes reading the book and gives his verdict on it, and ends by explaining the title: “That he calls his book Vegetable Roots comes of course out of a life of plain hardship.” The two sentences he quotes from Hong stand in the text itself, at entry 91 of the Former Collection — which shows that the copy Yu had in front of him already read as ours does.

I am an exile living alone, shut up in a thatched hut. I like the company of men inside the world and not the company of men outside it. I will not join the ages in arguing where the Five Classics agree and differ, and I will not go wandering with two or three young men over hills lost in cloud. I am glad to sing back and forth with fishermen and farmers on the shore of the lakes and in the hollows of the green fields, and not glad to take by the arm and open my heart to men who fight over the point of a knife or a peck of salary, in the market of hot and cold, in the den of rank meat. If a man comes to me with the doctrines of Lianxi and Luoyang I lead him on; if he comes with the trade of India I shut him out; if he is one of the great debaters I keep him at a distance. (Lianxi and Luo stand for the Song school of Zhou Dunyi and the Cheng brothers; “India” for Buddhism; the “great debaters” are the showy rhetoricians of the Records of the Grand Historian. He states where he stands before saying why he would write a preface at all.)

A friend of mine named Hong Zicheng brought me the Caigentan and asked me for a preface. At first I took it lightly and said yes without meaning much. Then I cleared the old volumes off my desk, cleared the clutter out of my chest, and read it through with my own hands — and found that where he speaks of our nature and our lot he goes straight into what is hidden and fine, and where he speaks of human feeling he follows every turn of what is dangerous in it. Looking up and looking down, one sees how unhurried the man is inside; making dust and chaff of reputation, one sees how far his taste reaches. What his brush casts is nothing but green trees and blue hills; what his mouth works is all hawks in flight and fish leaping. How far he has got in himself I would not dare say for certain, but on the evidence of the words he has set down, every one of them goes to the quick of an age that needs waking, and not one is the kind that goes in at the ear and out at the mouth. (“Hawks in flight and fish leaping” is from the Book of Songs, used by the Song philosophers for the liveliness of the order of things. Hong Zicheng is Hong Yingming, Zicheng being his courtesy name.)

That he calls his book Vegetable Roots comes of course out of a life of plain hardship, and out of the work of tending and watering too: one can imagine the reverses and the storms, and how thoroughly he has tasted difficulty. Master Hong says of himself: “Heaven wears out my body, so I rest my mind to make up for it; heaven hems in my circumstances, so I open out my way through them.” One can imagine as well how he warns and drives himself. So I put these few words at the front and give them to everybody, that everybody may know there is a real taste in vegetable roots. (The title comes from Wang Xinmin of the Song: “A man who can chew through vegetable roots can do anything” — recorded in the Elementary Learning.)

Signed: Yu Kongjian, Master of Three Peaks. Yu Kongjian (jinshi of 1580) rose to be a director in the Ministry of Rites, fell foul of the throne in the quarrels of the 1590s, was struck off the rolls in 1593 and lived in retirement for thirty years. This foreword is the earliest outside evidence for the book and the only piece contemporary with its author: almost nothing else is known of Hong Yingming, and it is from this page that we know he existed, wrote this book, and was a friend of Yu’s.

Former Collection前集

Two hundred and twenty-two entries on how a man is to stand up in the world: how to treat people, how to carry out a task, how to hold office and keep a household, how to blame others and himself, how to behave at his height and in his decline. One entry, one point; they are not chained together, and any of them may be read first. The method throughout is subtraction — “there is no very lofty enterprise in being a man: shake off the common run of feeling and you are already among the distinguished”; “in the world do not go looking for merit: to have committed no fault is merit” — and yet nothing here urges anyone to withdraw. It teaches a man to stay in and weigh less. Its commonest construction is “must not be without … and must not be too …”: state a virtue, then put a ceiling on it. The original has no chapter titles, no division into scrolls and no numbering; everyone who cites it uses the entry number, so the numbers are printed here in front of each entry, with a heading every twenty to make the text findable.

1–20

1A man who keeps house with virtue is left out in the cold for a while; a man who leans on power and flatters it is left desolate for ten thousand years. So one who sees things whole looks to what lies outside things and thinks of the self that comes after the self: better take the cold shoulder of an hour than buy the desolation of an age. (The book opens by posting its price list — one hour against ten thousand years is a piece of arithmetic.)

2Go shallow in the world and you are shallowly stained; go deep into affairs and your calculation goes deep too. So the gentleman had rather be plain and clumsy than practised, and had rather be loose than carefully correct in every particular. (“Calculation” here is contrivance of mind, not machinery. The first entry priced virtue against power; this one prices competence — you buy being practised with being stained.)

3A gentleman’s intentions should be like a blue sky and a white sun: there should be nothing in them a man may not be told. A gentleman’s gifts should be like jade still in the stone and a pearl still in the shell: they should not be easy to see. (One clause opens everything, the next closes everything.)

4Power and its glitter: the man who keeps away from it is clean, and the man who goes near it and takes no stain is cleaner still. Cunning and contrivance: the man who does not know them is above them, and the man who knows them and does not use them is further above them still. (Both halves push the standard up a notch with that “still”: real cleanness is not innocence but refusal.)

5To have words in your ears that grate on them, and matters in your heart that go against it — that is the whetstone on which character is ground. If every word is pleasant and every affair goes your way, you have buried this life of yours in poisoned wine. (Zhen wine was mixed with the feathers of a poisonous bird: sweet and fatal.)

6When the wind drives and the rain beats, the birds huddle miserable; when the sky clears and the light wind moves, the grass and trees are glad. You can see that heaven and earth cannot go a single day without their mildness, nor the human heart a single day without its gladness.

7Thick wine and fat meat, the hot and the sweet, are not the real taste; the real taste is only plain. The marvellous and the extraordinary are not the perfected man; the perfected man is only ordinary. (This is the book’s key, and the reason it is named after vegetable roots.)

8Heaven and earth look perfectly still, and yet the breath that works in them never stops for an instant; sun and moon race day and night, and yet the constancy by which they light the world is unaltered through the ages. So the gentleman needs something urgent in his mind when he is idle, and something unhurried in his taste when he is busy.

9Deep in the night, when it is quiet, sit alone and look at your own mind. Only then do you find that the false is spent and the true stands out alone — and there is great delight to be had in that. And only then do you find that even with the true in front of you the false is not to be escaped — and there is great shame to be had in that too. (Gain and loss set down in one breath; the book seldom tells only half.)

10Harm has always been bred inside favour, so when things are going your way turn back early. Success sometimes comes out of the far side of a failure, so where things go against you do not let go too easily. (Both halves cut against the feeling of the moment: rein in when you are winning, hold on when you are not.)

11Men whose mouths know goosefoot and whose bellies know amaranth are mostly clear as ice and clean as jade; men in embroidered robes who eat off jade are content to bow and scrape. Ambition shows itself in plain living, and integrity is lost through rich food. (Here the vegetable roots of the title are a choice, not a circumstance.)

12Leave the ground in front of you wide enough that no man sighs at the unfairness of it; let the good you do run on long enough after you that men’s memory of it does not run dry.

13Where the path is narrow, hold back a step and let the other man pass; where the dish is rich, take three parts less and let him taste it. This is one very comfortable way of getting through the world. (Yielding here is not a loss; it is a saving of trouble.)

14There is no very lofty enterprise in being a man: shake off the common run of feeling and you are already among the distinguished. There is no very additive labour in learning: subtract what things load you with and you are already past into the sage’s country. (Both halves are subtraction — one of sentiment, one of possessions.)

15In friendship carry three parts of the knight-errant; in being a man keep one point of the heart you started with. (Sixteen characters, and the line from this book most often quoted by itself.)

16In favour and profit do not stand in front of others; in virtue and achievement do not fall behind them. In what you enjoy do not step outside your portion; in what you work at do not fall short inside it. (One line drawn four ways: take your share last and carry your load first.)

17In dealing with the world, to give way a step is the high thing: the step back is the ground the step forward will be taken from. In dealing with men, one part of generosity is one part of good fortune: doing another man good is the foundation of doing yourself good.

18Merit that covers an age cannot stand against one word — boast. Guilt that fills the sky cannot stand against one word — repent. (The shortest entry in the book, and the sharpest.)

19A name without a flaw and conduct without a stain should not be taken all to yourself: give some away and you will keep clear of harm and keep yourself whole. Shabby doings and a shabby name should not be pushed off entirely onto others: draw some of it back to yourself and you will bank your light and grow your virtue. (Reputation treated as a thing to be allocated — one of the coldest entries here.)

20In everything leave a margin, something not used up: then what made the world cannot begrudge you, and the spirits cannot take anything off you. If the work must be filled to the brim and the honour piled to the top, then trouble that does not break out inside will be summoned from outside.

21–40

21There is a real Buddha in the household and a real Way in the day’s ordinary business. If a man can be sincere and even-tempered, glad in the face and gentle in speech, so that between parents and brothers the outward shells fall away and the spirit runs between them — that is ten thousand times better than regulating the breath and contemplating the mind.

22The man who loves movement is lightning in the clouds, a lamp in the wind; the man who craves stillness is cold ash and a dead tree. Only when there are hawks in flight and fish leaping inside the settled cloud and the still water do you have the mind of one who has the Way. (Both extremes are refused: what is wanted is motion inside stillness.)

23When you go at another man’s faults, do not go at them too hard: think whether he can bear it. When you set him a good, do not set it too high: put it where he can follow. (Everywhere in this book the limit on correction is what the other man can take.)

24The dung-grub is filth itself, and turns into a cicada that drinks dew in the autumn wind; rotten grass has no light in it, and turns into a firefly that shines through a summer night. Clean things do come out of dirty ones, and light is generally born out of dark. (An entry that speaks up for low beginnings — rare enough here.)

25Loftiness and arrogance are nothing but borrowed spirit: put the borrowed spirit down and the true spirit will straighten up. Desire and the run of thought all belong to the false mind: kill off the false mind and the true one shows. (One form twice over: clear away what came from outside and what was always there appears.)

26Think about the taste after you are full and the difference between rich and plain is gone; think about lust after the fact and the whole business of man and woman falls away. So a man uses the clear sight that comes afterwards to break the infatuation that comes at the time; then his nature settles, and nothing he does goes crooked. (One of the few places where the book gives a usable method: move the sobriety of afterwards to beforehand.)

27A man in office must not be without the flavour of the hills and woods; a man among the springs and trees must still carry the statecraft of the council hall. (Neither position is allowed to settle into itself.)

28In the world do not go looking for merit: to have committed no fault is merit. With people do not go looking for gratitude: to have earned no grudge is virtue. (The standard for both words is lowered all the way to zero.)

29To be anxious and industrious is a virtue, but too much bitterness leaves nothing to ease the nature and gladden it; to want little is a high style, but too much dryness leaves nothing to help men or do the world good. (The previous entry set a floor under virtue; this one sets a ceiling on it.)

30For the man whose affairs have run out and whose position has closed in, go back to what he meant at the start. For the man whose work is done and whose record is full, watch how he ends. (The base text writes “not yet” for “end” — a slip of one stroke, corrected from the other witness.)

31A rich house ought to be generous; if instead it is grudging and sharp, that is wealth with the conduct of poverty — how shall it hold what it has? A clever man ought to keep himself in; if instead he shows himself off, that is cleverness with the disease of stupidity — how shall he not come down?

32Live low and you learn how dangerous height is; stay in the dark and you learn how exposed the light makes you; keep still and you learn how much labour there is in restlessness; practise silence and you learn how noisy talk is. (Four clauses on one pattern, all knowledge got from the far side — the book’s standing method.)

33Put down the wish for fame and wealth and you may get clear of the common run. Put down the wish for virtue and righteousness and only then may you enter the country of the sages. (The second clause is the point: even the wish to be good has to be let go.)

34Appetite for gain does not necessarily do the heart harm: it is opinion that is the grub at its root. Music and beauty do not necessarily block the Way: it is cleverness that is the hedge across it. (The charge is moved off the usual vices and onto self-satisfaction — the least conventional entry in the book.)

35Human feeling turns and turns again; the road of the world is rough. Where you cannot get through, know the trick of standing back a step. Where you can get through, be sure to add the labour of giving way three parts. (Note the “be sure”: it is when the road is open that giving way matters most.)

36With a small man the hard thing is not to be severe with him: it is not to loathe him. With a gentleman the hard thing is not to be respectful: it is to be exactly correct. (In both cases the difficulty is in the measure, not in the attitude.)

37Better keep to what is unhewn and dismiss cleverness, and hand back some upright breath to heaven and earth; better decline the glitter and be content with little, and leave a clean name behind you in the world.

38He who would put down demons must first put down his own mind; once the mind lies quiet the whole crowd of them withdraws and obeys. He who would master what comes at him crosswise must first master his own temper; once the temper is level nothing crosswise gets in.

39Bring up a young man as you would bring up a daughter: what matters most is to be strict about where he goes and careful about whom he knows. Let him once get near bad company and it is a foul seed dropped in a clean field — good grain will be hard to raise there for the rest of his life.

40In the way of appetite, do not dip a finger in merely because it is convenient: one finger and you are ten thousand fathoms down. In the way of principle, do not fall back a little merely because it is hard: one step back and a thousand hills stand between. (The weight of both halves is in the word “one”: in neither direction is there any small amount.)

41–60

41A man of full temper treats himself generously, treats others generously too, and everything about him is full. A man of thin temper treats himself meanly, treats others meanly too, and everything about him is thin. So a gentleman’s ordinary tastes should be neither too highly coloured nor too bare. (What is being described is not morality but constitution: a man treats others exactly as he treats himself.)

42His wealth against my humanity, his rank against my rightness: a gentleman is not to be caged by princes and ministers. Man’s resolve can outdo heaven, and where the will is single it moves the breath: a gentleman is not cast in the mould of what made him either. (The first pair is Zengzi in the Mencius; so is the doctrine that a single will moves the vital breath. This is the one place in the book where man is said to be able to outdo heaven.)

43It is in calm wind and quiet water that the real country of a human life is seen; it is where the taste is thin and the sound is scarce that the mind is recognised for what it is. (The conditions for recognising anything are set, here as in entry 7, at the absence of stimulus.)

44Take your stand without standing a step higher and you are shaking out your clothes in the dust and washing your feet in the mud: how will you ever get clear? Deal with the world without standing a step back and you are the moth at the candle, the ram with its horns in the fence: how will you ever be at ease? (The ram caught in the fence is from the Book of Changes. Stand high and step back — the pair governs the whole of this book’s practical advice.)

45A student must gather his spirit in and bring it all onto one road. To cultivate character while keeping an eye on achievement and reputation is to arrive nowhere real; to read while hanging one’s pleasure on elegant versifying is certainly not to go deep. (Nothing is said against achievement or against verse; what is refused is the divided mind.)

46Every man has a great compassion in him: between Vimalakirti and the butcher or the headsman there is no difference of heart. Every place has a real savour in it: the golden house and the thatched eave are not two places. It is only that appetite covers it and feeling seals it up, so that a man misses what is in front of his face, and a foot’s distance becomes a thousand miles. (The base text writes “cause” for “thereupon” and the wrong “mile”; both are corrected from the other witness.)

47To advance in virtue and cultivate the Way you need a mind like wood and stone: let one flicker of envy in and you are off into the country of appetite. To serve the age and order a state you need a taste like cloud and water: let one grip of greed in and you are down in the pit. (One half wants hardness, the other wants nothing to hold on by.)

48Of a lucky man there is no need to say that his dealings are composed: even the soul that walks in his dreams is nothing but mildness. Of an ill-omened man there is no need to say that his dealings are savage: even the sound of his voice and his laugh is murder through and through. (Character is tested where a man is not watching himself — in his sleep and in his laughter.)

49When the liver takes the disease the eyes cannot see; when the kidneys take it the ears cannot hear. The disease is taken where no one can see it and must break out where everyone can. So a gentleman who would give no offence in the open must first give none in the dark. (The first half is medicine and the second is morals, running on one line of cause.)

50No good fortune is better than having few affairs; no misfortune is worse than having a busy suspicious mind. Only the man worn out by affairs knows what a blessing it is to have few; only the man whose mind is level knows what a calamity the busy one is. (As in entry 32, the knowledge is available only to whoever has been on the other side.)

51In a well-ordered age be square; in a disordered age be round; in an age at its end use both. With good men be generous, with bad men be strict, with the ordinary run of men keep both in hand. (The most manual-like entry in the book: three kinds of age, three kinds of man, and a rule for each.)

52What good I have done another I must not hold in mind; what wrong I have done him I must not fail to. What kindness another has done me I must not forget; what grudge I have against him I must not fail to. (Four clauses crossing two ways: remember your own faults and other men’s kindnesses, forget your own merits and other men’s offences.)

53If the giver sees no self inside and no receiver outside, one peck of grain is worth a benefaction of ten thousand measures. If he reckons up what he gave and calls in what is owed, a hundred weight of gold will not make one copper’s worth of merit. (The Buddhist doctrine that giver, gift and receiver are all empty, put to work in a book about getting through the world.)

54Men’s fortunes come out even and uneven; can you arrange that yours alone comes out even? Your own temper is reasonable in places and unreasonable in others; can you arrange that everyone else is reasonable? To hold the two up against each other and treat the one by the other is itself a convenient gate into the Way.

55Only with a clean heart may a man read books and study the ancients. Otherwise he sees one good deed and steals it to serve his own ends, hears one good saying and borrows it to cover his own defects — which is lending weapons to the bandit and carrying grain to the thief. (The phrase is Li Si’s, from his memorial against expelling foreigners. A rather unfriendly condition to set on reading.)

56The lavish man is rich and still short; better the frugal man, poor and with something over. The able man works hard and becomes a storehouse of other men’s grudges; better the clumsy man, unhurried and with his own nature intact.

57To read and never meet a sage is to be a hired copyist; to hold office and not love the people is to be a robber in official dress; to lecture on doctrine and not practise it is Chan in the mouth only; to build a career without thinking to plant virtue is to grow a flower that lasts the afternoon. (Four stations and four verdicts — the book’s most enjoyable piece of abuse.)

58There is a real book in the human heart, and torn leaves and broken slips have sealed it up; there is a real music there, and loose songs and painted dancing have drowned it out. A student must sweep the outside things away and go straight after what was there to begin with; then there is something real to be had. (“Go straight after what was there to begin with” is Chan language.)

59In the middle of a hard-worked mind there is regularly a pleasure to be had; in the moment of getting what you wanted the grief of losing it is already born. (The other witness reads “be on guard against the grief of losing it”, which makes it advice. The base text makes it a statement: the second thing is in the first, not waiting outside it.)

60Wealth, rank and reputation that come out of a man’s character are flowers in the hills: they spread and multiply of themselves. Those that come out of his achievements are flowers in a tub: they get moved about, and they rise and fall. Those that come by power are flowers in a vase — the root was never planted, and you may stand and watch them wilt. (Hill, tub, vase: at each step there is less earth and less root.)

61–80

61Spring comes and the weather softens, and even a flower will lay down a stretch of good colour and a bird will turn out a few phrases of good sound. A gentleman lucky enough to have got his head above the crowd, and warm and fed besides, who does not think to set down a good word or do a good deed, may live a hundred years in the world and be exactly as if he had not been born a day. (One of the book’s rare pieces of straight pressure.)

62A student needs a strain of anxious diligence in him, and needs a strain of ease as well. To be all restraint and bare hardship is to have autumn’s killing without spring’s quickening: what is he to raise anything with? (The same argument as entry 29 — even a virtue has a ceiling.)

63Real honesty has no reputation for honesty; the man who sets one up is out for gain by it. Great skill has no technique; the man who uses one is a bungler. (A pattern that recurs through the book: whatever has to be displayed is already not the thing.)

64The tilting vessel overturns because it is full; the money-jar survives because it is empty. So the gentleman had rather sit with nothing than with something, and be short than complete. (The tilting vessel of the Xunzi stands askew when empty, upright when half full and capsizes when filled; the money-jar is an earthenware pot that has to be smashed once it is full. The base text writes “plain” for “jar”, corrected from the other witness.)

65If the root of reputation is not pulled out, a man may despise a state of a thousand chariots and be content with one gourd of water and still be sunk in the dust of feeling. If the borrowed spirit is not dissolved, he may water the four seas with his bounty and profit ten thousand generations and it is still only a spare trick. (The base text writes “branch” for “trick”, corrected from the other witness.)

66Where the mind is light, there is blue sky in a dark room; where the thought is murky, a vengeful ghost is born in broad daylight.

67Men know that name and place are a pleasure, and do not know that the pleasure of having neither is the realest. Men know that cold and hunger are a trouble, and do not know that the trouble of the man who is neither cold nor hungry is worse. (The weight of the entry is in the second half: the trouble that comes after enough has no name and no end.)

68A man who does wrong and dreads being found out still has a road back through the wrong. A man who does right and is in a hurry to be seen doing it has planted a root of wrong inside the right. (Dread of being found out is taken as evidence that the conscience is alive — the only place in the book where that is said.)

69The workings of heaven cannot be measured. It presses a man down and lets him up, lets him up and presses him down — all of it playing with heroes and turning great men upside down. The gentleman need only take what comes as it comes and think of danger while he is safe, and heaven has nowhere to practise its tricks. (Heaven is drawn here as an opponent that enjoys the game; the counter is to give it no reaction.)

70The hot-tempered man burns like fire and scorches whatever he meets; the ungenerous man is cold as ice and kills whatever he meets; the stuck and obstinate man is dead water and rotten wood, with the quickening gone out of him. None of the three will build anything or keep any good fortune long. (Fire, ice and standing water, one for each temper.)

71Good fortune cannot be solicited: keep the glad spirit alive in you, and that is all there is by way of summoning it. Misfortune cannot be dodged: get rid of what is murderous in you, and that is all there is by way of keeping clear of it. (Both halves end in “and that is all”: what a man can do is cut back to the one end he controls.)

72Be right in nine sayings out of ten and nobody calls it remarkable; be wrong in one and the blame arrives in pairs. Bring off nine plans out of ten and nobody credits you; fail in one and the carping starts on all sides. So the gentleman had rather be silent than quick, and clumsy than clever. (The nearest thing in the book to a calculation of odds. The base text writes “mother” for “do not” — one stroke — corrected from the other witness.)

73The breath of heaven and earth makes life where it is warm and death where it is cold. So a man of cold nature gets a thin allowance, and only the warm-tempered, warm-hearted man has a thick portion of good fortune and a long one. (The temper of a man is wired straight into the making and killing of the seasons, in the Song manner.)

74The road of principle is very wide: let the mind wander a little way in and it feels spacious and bright. The road of appetite is very narrow: set one foot on what is right in front of you and it is all thorns and mire.

75A bitterness and a pleasure that grind against each other, ground to the end — the good fortune that comes out of that lasts. A doubt and a belief that test each other, tested to the end — the knowledge that comes out of that is real. (The base text has two slips of one stroke each, “again” for “grind” and “man” for “last”; both are corrected from the other witness.)

76The mind must not be without emptiness: empty, it has room for principle to come and live in. The mind must not be without solidity: solid, it gives appetite no way in. (Not a contradiction: make room on the one side and block the door on the other.)

77Dirty ground grows most; clear water commonly has no fish in it. So a gentleman should keep in him the capacity to take in filth and swallow dirt, and should not hold to a cleanliness that walks by itself. (The complement of entry 4: that one was about oneself, this one about other people.)

78A horse that has overturned the carriage can still be put to the gallop; metal that leaps out of the furnace comes back to the mould in the end. It is only the man who drifts along and never rouses himself who gets nowhere in a lifetime. Chen Baisha said: “That a man has many faults is no great shame; that he should go through life with none is what worries me.” That is exactly right. (Chen Xianzhang, 1428–1500, the Ming philosopher known as Master Baisha.)

79Let a man entertain one greedy private thought and it melts his hardness into softness, stops his sense up into stupidity, turns his kindness into cruelty and stains his cleanness into filth, and the character of a lifetime is spoiled. So the ancients held that to be free of greed was itself the treasure, and by that they got clear of their age. (The saying is Zihan’s in the Zuo Commentary. Four verbs — melt, stop, turn, stain — each dirtier than the last.)

80What the eyes and ears take in are the thieves outside; desire and the run of thought are the thieves inside. So long as the master of the house stays awake and unclouded, sitting alone in the middle hall, the thieves all turn into members of the family. (The thieves are not driven out but domesticated — the most unhurried treatment of appetite anywhere in the book.)

81–100

81Planning a success not yet made is worth less than holding on to a work already made; regretting a fault already committed is worth less than guarding against the next one. (Both halves pull the effort off the future gain and the past loss and put it on what is in hand.)

82Bearing should be lofty and open, but not wild; thinking should be close and fine, but not fussy; taste should be quiet and plain, but not starved; principle should be strict and clear, but not violent. (Four on one pattern, each virtue paired with the excess that ruins it — the book’s tidiest statement of measure.)

83Wind comes through thin bamboo, and when it has passed the bamboo keeps no sound of it; a wild goose crosses a cold pool, and when it has gone the pool keeps no shadow. So the gentleman’s mind appears when the matter comes, and empties again as the matter goes. (The goose and the pool is a standing Chan figure. The most nearly poetic entry in the book.)

84Clean and yet able to hold other men; kind and yet able to decide; sharp-sighted without cutting; straight without being strained — this is what is meant by preserved fruit that is not sweet and food from the sea that is not salt. That is a finished virtue. (Each quality is fitted with its own opposite; the closing figure says that at its best a quality cannot be tasted at all.)

85A poor household sweeps its floor clean; a poor girl combs her hair clean. The picture is not showy, but the bearing is elegant of itself. How then, when a gentleman falls into poverty and obscurity, does he so readily let himself go? (Two lines of plain description, and then the question they were laid down for.)

86Do not let the idle hours slip and you will have the use of them when you are busy; do not let the still hours run empty and you will have the use of them when you are in motion; do not cheat in the dark and you will have the use of it in the light. (Three on one pattern; all three of the times named — idle, still, dark — are times when nobody is looking.)

87At the place where the thought first rises: the instant you feel it going down the road of appetite, haul it back onto the road of principle. Rise and you notice, notice and you turn it. This is the hinge on which calamity becomes good fortune and the dead are brought back to life; on no account let it pass. (The most concrete piece of method in the book: the moment is fixed at the thought’s first rising, the act at noticing and turning.)

88In stillness the thoughts settle clear, and one sees what the mind really is; in leisure the bearing is unhurried, and one recognises how the mind really works; in plainness the taste is level and mild, and one gets the mind’s real flavour. For looking at the mind and proving the Way there is nothing better than these three. (Three conditions — still, idle, plain — answered by three findings: what it is, how it works, how it tastes. The book’s most orderly entry.)

89Stillness in the middle of stillness is not the real thing: a stillness got in the middle of motion is the real country of a man’s nature. Pleasure in the middle of pleasure is not the real thing: a pleasure got in the middle of pain shows how the mind really works. (Set this against entry 22, which wanted motion inside stillness; this one wants stillness inside motion.)

90If you are going to give yourself up, do not hold a doubt about it: hold the doubt and the intention you gave up with is already half ashamed. If you are going to give to a man, do not call in the return: call it in and the heart you gave with is spoiled along with the rest. (The base text writes “what was given up” where the other witness has “what was given”, which answers the clause it stands in; the correction is taken.)

91Heaven gives me a thin allowance of luck: I thicken my character to meet it. Heaven wears out my body: I rest my mind to make up for it. Heaven hems in my circumstances: I open out my way through them. What then is heaven to do with me? (The last two clauses are the ones Yu Kongjian quotes in the foreword — the single point where the book touches an outside witness.)

92The upright man is not out for good fortune, and heaven opens a window in him just where he is not looking for one. The crooked man sets himself to dodge misfortune, and heaven takes his wits away just where he is setting himself. The machinery of heaven is the more uncanny thing; what use is human cleverness? (The base text’s word for “crooked man” is written with the graph for “frugal”; the other witness has the right one, and the base reading is kept with this note.)

93A singing-girl who takes a husband in her later years is not hindered by a lifetime in the painted quarter; a faithful wife who gives way when her hair is white has wasted half a life of hard chastity. The saying goes: “In judging a man look only at the second half.” It is a good saying. (The base text writes “rouge” for “painted quarter”, corrected from the other witness. A generous line by the standards of Ming moral writing.)

94A commoner willing to plant virtue and do good is a minister of state without the office; an official who only grabs at power and trades for favour has ended as a beggar with a title. (Rank and man are pulled apart: one has the thing without the name, the other the name without the thing.)

95Ask what the virtue of your ancestors amounts to: it is what you are living on now — so think how hard it was to pile up. Ask what the good fortune of your descendants amounts to: it is what you will leave behind — so think how easily it goes over. (The base text writes “all of it” for “its”, one stroke out, corrected from the other witness.)

96A gentleman who counterfeits goodness is no different from a small man letting his badness run. A gentleman who changes his principles is worse than a small man who turns over a new leaf. (Twice the gentleman is measured against the small man and twice he loses — the book’s least indulgent word on the title.)

97When someone in the household is at fault, do not blaze up at him and do not simply drop him either. The thing is hard to say outright: take some other matter and hint it to him. If he does not see it today, wait for tomorrow and warn him again. Like a spring wind loosening the frost, like warm air taking the ice away — that is the model for a family. (A complete method: change the subject, allow time, control the temperature. The base text lacks the word “blaze”; it is supplied from the other witness.)

98Keep this mind of yours always seeing things whole, and the world has no flaw in it; keep this mind always set wide and level, and there is no treachery in human feeling. (As in entry 54, nothing outside is altered; what is altered is the mind that looks at it.)

99The man who wants little is bound to be suspected by the man who wants much; the man who keeps himself in order is generally resented by the man who lets himself go. Placed there, a gentleman must not alter his practice by so much as a little — and must not let too much of his edge show either. (A statement of fact, then two prohibitions: do not change, and do not display.)

100In adversity a man is surrounded by needles and medicines, and his principles and conduct are being ground sharp without his feeling it. In prosperity his whole view is edged weapons and spears, and his fat is being rendered and his bones eaten away without his knowing it. (The force of the entry is in the two verbs at the end: neither the benefit nor the damage is available to the senses. The base text writes “music” for “medicine”, one stroke out; corrected from the other witness.)

101–120

101A man raised in the thick of wealth and rank has appetites like a blaze and power like a tongue of flame. If he does not carry something cool and clear about him, the flame that does not burn other men will certainly melt him down. (The base text writes “business” for “thicket”; the other witness gives the better sense and is followed.)

102Let the heart be true and frost may fall out of season, a city wall may come down, metal and stone may be pierced through. But the false and fraudulent man keeps only the shell of a body — the true master in him is dead. In company his face is offensive, and alone he is ashamed in front of his own shadow. (The three impossibilities are old stories of sincerity moving the world: summer frost for a wronged prisoner, a wall collapsing at a widow’s weeping, an arrow sunk to the feathers in a rock. “The true master” is from the Zhuangzi.)

103Writing carried to its furthest point has no other marvel in it: it is only exactly right. Character carried to its furthest point has nothing else strange about it: it is only what was there to begin with.

104Speak of it as illusion and, never mind rank and wealth, even your limbs are only a shape lent to you. Speak of it as real and, never mind parents and brothers, the ten thousand things are one body with you. A man who can see through the one and recognise the other is fit to carry the load of the world, and fit also to slip the halter of it. (“A shape lent to you” is from the Zhuangzi; “one body with the ten thousand things” from Cheng Hao. The turn is that seeing through it is what makes a man able to carry it.)

105Everything that pleases the mouth is a drug that rots the gut and the bone: take it to half and there is no harm. Everything that pleases the heart is a go-between for the ruin of body and character: take it to half and there is nothing to regret. (The whole content of the entry is the word “half”: nothing is forbidden, only rationed.)

106Do not take a man up on his small faults, do not bring out what he keeps private, do not keep his old offences in mind. These three will grow a man’s character and will also keep him out of harm’s way. (Three prohibitions and no positive command: virtue here, as usually in this book, is subtraction.)

107A gentleman must not carry himself lightly: carried lightly, things outside can push him about, and he has no unhurried steadiness to enjoy. And he must not lay his intentions on heavily: laid on heavily, he gets stuck in the thing, and he has no free and living movement left. (The weights are exactly reversed: heavy on oneself, light on the matter.)

108Heaven and earth have ten thousand ages; this body is not to be had twice. A human life is only a hundred years; this day of it goes by the most easily of all. A man lucky enough to be born into the interval must know the pleasure of being alive, and must also carry the fear of having lived for nothing. (The one entry in the book on the shortness of time, and it refuses to let the pleasure and the fear be taken separately.)

109A grudge shows up because a kindness threw it into relief; better then that kindness and grudge be forgotten together than that men should be made to feel obliged to you. An enmity stands because a favour set it up; better that favour and enmity be wiped out together than that men should be made to know what they owe. (A cold piece of reasoning: doing good is the precondition of the grudge, and the favour is the precondition of the enemy.)

110The diseases of old age were all invited in the years of strength; the sins that come home after a man’s decline were all committed at his height. So it is when he is full to the brim that the gentleman is most careful of all.

111Better uphold the common verdict than sell private favours; better be solid with old friends than make new acquaintance; better plant a hidden virtue than set up a shining name; better be scrupulous in ordinary conduct than aim at a remarkable principle. (Four comparisons, and in all four what wins is the thing nobody sees.)

112The fair and upright verdict must not be laid a hand on: lay one hand on it and the shame is on record for ever. The back door of a powerful house must not be set foot in: set one foot there and the stain is on you for life. (Both halves turn on “one”: a single occasion settles it.)

113Better go straight and be disliked for it than bend yourself and be liked. Better be slandered with nothing bad to your name than praised with nothing good to it.

114When something goes wrong among your own kin, be unhurried, not violent about it. When a friend does wrong, be pointed about it, not easy-going. (The weights are deliberately reversed: slow with blood, direct with friends.)

115No leaks in the small places, no cheating in the dark, no slackening at the end of the road — that is a real hero. (All three tests are set where nobody is watching: the small, the dark and the last stretch.)

116A thousand pieces of gold will hardly buy an hour’s goodwill; a single meal can earn a lifetime’s gratitude. Love laid on too heavily turns into enmity, and the barest thinness turns round into delight. (The point is that human feeling is not linear: the return is not proportional to the outlay.)

117Hide your skill in clumsiness, get your light by keeping dark, lodge what is clean inside what is muddy, take bending for stretching: here is the one gourd that floats a man across the world and the three burrows he can hide in. (The gourd is the float worth a thousand pieces of gold to a man who has lost his boat midstream; the three burrows are the wily hare’s, from the Intrigues of the Warring States.)

118The look of decay is already inside the fullness; the mechanism of new growth is already inside the falling away. So the gentleman, while he is safe, keeps one mind fixed on what may go wrong; and when things have turned, holds a hundred patiences firm and works for the outcome.

119The man who is thrilled by the strange and pleased by the unusual has no long sight in him; the man who holds to a bitter principle and walks alone has no principle that will last. (Both halves refuse the conspicuous — once in the matter of judgement, once in the matter of conduct.)

120When the fire of anger and the water of appetite are at the boil, a man knows perfectly well and offends perfectly deliberately. Who is it that knows? And who is it that offends? If at that point he can turn his mind sharply round, the demon is the true sovereign after all. (“The true sovereign” is the Zhuangzi’s, the same figure as the “true master” of entry 102. The split between knowing and doing is treated as something that can be caught in the act — the most koan-like entry here.)

121–140

121Do not believe one side only and be cheated by a crooked man; do not trust yourself so far that your temper drives you; do not use your own strong point to throw another man’s weak one into relief; do not resent another man’s competence because of your own clumsiness. (Four prohibitions: the first guards against others, the other three against oneself.)

122Another man’s weak place should be quietly patched over for him; expose it and shout it about, and you are attacking a weakness with a weakness. A man who is obstinate should be brought round and taught; rage at him and hate him for it, and you are meeting obstinacy with obstinacy. (One construction twice: the means you use against the fault turns out to be the same fault.)

123Meeting a man who is deep and says nothing, do not hand over your heart. Meeting a man who is huffy and pleased with himself, keep a guard on your mouth. (With one, give nothing; with the other, say nothing.)

124When the mind is dull and scattered, know how to rouse it; when the mind is gripped too hard, know how to put it down. Otherwise you cure the disease of dullness and catch the disease of agitation. (The base text writes “excellence” for “agitation”, corrected from the other witness. Rouse and release: the cure taken too far is the next disease.)

125Blue sky and white sun turn in an instant to thunder and lightning; driving wind and beating rain turn in an instant to a clear moon in an empty sky. When was the breath of things ever stagnant by so much as a hair? When was the great void ever blocked by so much as a hair? The substance of the human mind should be the same. (The book’s best figure: the very changeableness of the weather is the proof that nothing in the sky is stuck.)

126On the work of beating down what is private and controlling appetite, some say the trouble is that a man does not see it early and cannot manage the force; others say he sees straight through it and cannot hold out. So knowing is a bright pearl that lights the demon up and force is a sword of wisdom that cuts it down, and neither can be spared. (A rare piece of analysis: self-mastery taken apart into two components that can be checked separately.)

127To see a man’s trick and say nothing of it; to take a man’s insult and let no colour of it show — there is no end of savour in that, and no end of use. (Not weakness: the knowledge is simply kept in one’s own hands. The most composed entry the book has on forbearance.)

128Adversity, obstruction and want are the forge and hammer that beat out a great man. Bear the beating and body and mind both gain by it; fail to bear it and body and mind are both the worse. (Entry 100 said much the same; this one adds the fork — the same hammer, two outcomes.)

129My own body is a small heaven and earth: to keep joy and anger from going wrong and likes and dislikes to a rule is the work of harmonising. Heaven and earth are a great father and mother: to leave the people nothing to complain of and things no blight is likewise the look of a household at peace. (Self-government and government are the same operation at two scales.)

130“Never mean a man harm, but never be without a guard against him” — that is against slackness of thought. “Rather be cheated than anticipate a man’s trickery” — that is against seeing too much. Keep both sayings and you are shrewd and large-minded at once. (The second is from the Analects. The book quotes proverbs as text only here, and the point is that it quotes two opposed ones and refuses to choose.)

131Do not let the doubt of the many shut out what you alone can see; do not let your own notion throw away what others say; do not favour a small kindness at the cost of the whole; do not borrow the public verdict to gratify a private grudge. (The last is the book’s definition of using a public cause for private ends.)

132If you cannot yet get close to a good man, do not praise him in advance: you will bring the slanderers down on him. If you cannot yet get rid of a bad one, do not open fire first: you will bring on a fabricated charge. (A matter of timing: a word said before the thing can be done becomes a handle. The base text writes “say” for “slander”, one element out; corrected from the other witness.)

133Principle that stands up in broad daylight was grown in a dark room and a hidden corner; statecraft that can turn heaven and earth round was practised at the edge of the deep and on the thin ice. (“The hidden corner” is the north-west of a room, where the Book of Songs says a man should still feel shame. Both halves say the same: what shows in the light grew its root in the dark.)

134A kind father, a filial son, an elder brother who is good to the younger and a younger who defers to the elder — carry all this to its furthest point and it is still only what ought to be, with no room in it for a hair’s worth of gratitude. Let the giver take credit and the receiver feel obliged, and they are strangers to each other, and it has become a market. (The sternest thing in the book about family: the moment accounts are kept, kin become counterparties.)

135Where there is beauty there must be an ugliness set against it: if I do not boast of being beautiful, who can call me ugly? Where there is cleanness there must be a filth to answer it: if I do not pride myself on being clean, who can dirty me? (The most thorough method in the book: refuse the opposing term and the opposition does not arise. The reasoning is the Zhuangzi’s.)

136The turn from warm to cold is sharper in a rich house than in a poor one; the pinch of jealousy is crueller between blood relations than between strangers. Meet that without a cool gut and an even temper and you will hardly fail to sit all day in the prison of your own vexation. (The two places named — wealth and kin — are exactly the two supposed to be warmest.)

137Merit and fault must not be blurred by even a little: blur them and men grow slack. Kindness and grudge must not be too sharply distinguished: distinguish them sharply and men begin to look elsewhere. (The book’s one entry on reward and punishment, and it sets the two measures in exactly opposite directions. The base text writes the archaic forms of “slack”.)

138Rank should not be piled too high: piled too high it is dangerous. Ability should not be used to the last drop: used up it declines. Conduct should not be pitched too high: pitched too high it draws slander and defamation. (Entry 20 worked out in three directions: leave a margin in office, in competence and in conduct alike.)

139A bad thing hates the dark and a good thing hates the light. So the wrongdoing that shows brings a shallow punishment and the wrongdoing that hides brings a deep one; the good that shows earns a small credit and the good that hides earns a great one. (The value of concealment is turned over: to hide a good is merit, to hide an evil is ruin.)

140Character is the master and talent the servant. Talent without character is a household with no master in it and the servants running the place: how should the goblins not get in and riot? (The distinction between talent and character is Sima Guang’s, in the Comprehensive Mirror.)

141–160

141In rooting out a crooked man and stopping the way to preferment, leave him one road out. Shut him up with nowhere at all to go and you are the man blocking a rat-hole who blocks every exit — and then everything of value in the house gets gnawed through. (Leaving a margin at its most practical: not mercy but damage control.)

142Share a fault with a man, but do not share a credit: share the credit and you will be envied. You may share hardship with a man, but not ease: share the ease and you will be hated. (Fan Li’s judgement on the King of Yue, in the Records of the Grand Historian. The least generous entry in the book, and one of the truest.)

143A gentleman too poor to relieve anyone materially may, when he sees a man caught in a delusion, say one word to wake him, and when he sees a man in a tight place, say one word to get him out. That too is merit beyond measure. (A door left open for people with no resources.)

144Hungry, they attach themselves; full, they fly off; where it is warm they crowd in, where it is cold they drop you. This is the standing disease of human feeling. The gentleman should wipe his cold eye clean, and take great care not to let his hard temper move too easily. (“Wipe the cold eye clean” — not refusing to look, but polishing the glass first.)

145Character advances with capacity, and capacity grows out of understanding. So a man who would thicken his character must widen his capacity, and to widen his capacity must enlarge his understanding. (Three links in one chain: understanding, then capacity, then character — the only place in the book where becoming better is given an order of causes.)

146One lamp glimmering, every sound gone: that is the moment we first enter stillness. The dawn dream just broken, nothing yet stirring: that is the place where we first come out of the undivided dark. Take that moment and turn the light back on yourself, and you will find that eyes, ears, mouth and nose are all fetters, and that appetite and inclination are all machinery. (The base text writes “let down” for “take”, corrected from the other witness. The two moments chosen — deep night and first light — are the two cracks where a man is least on guard.)

147For the man who turns back on himself, whatever happens becomes medicine; for the man who blames others, the mere movement of a thought is a spear. The one opens the road to every good, the other dredges out the source of every evil; the distance between them is more than sky to ground.

148A man’s works and his writings are destroyed along with his body, but his spirit is new after ten thousand years; rank and wealth shift with the times, but his backbone is the same after a thousand. A gentleman really should not trade the second of these for the first. (The book’s one entry on what lasts, and the list is short: spirit and backbone.)

149A net is set for fish and a wild goose comes down in it; the mantis is intent on its prey and the sparrow is already behind the mantis. There is a contrivance inside the contrivance and a turn outside the turn: what is there in cleverness to rely on? (Both figures are old: the goose in the fish-net from the Book of Songs, the mantis and the sparrow from the Garden of Persuasions. Both are about the calculator being calculated for.)

150Be a man without one point of real sincerity and you are a beggar, and everything you do is hollow. Go about the world without a strain of supple humour and you are a wooden man, obstructed at every step. (One half asks for sincerity and the other for suppleness; this is the only place the book puts the two side by side and insists on both.)

151Water that is not disturbed settles of itself; a mirror with no film on it is bright of itself. So there is nothing in the mind to be cleaned: take away what is muddying it and the clearness appears. And there is no happiness to be gone looking for: take away what is embittering it and the happiness is there. (The book’s method in summary — everything is subtraction. “Nothing to be cleaned” and “no need to look” are as far as it goes.)

152One thought that breaks a law of the spirits, one word that injures the mildness of heaven and earth, one act that brews up ruin for one’s descendants: these above all are to be guarded against. (One thought, one word, one act — the same use of “one” as in entry 40.)

153There are matters that will not come clear if you press them and may clear themselves if you let them alone: do not be in a hurry and so bring on his anger. There are men who will not comply if you force them and may come round of themselves if you loosen the hold: do not clamp down and so add to his obstinacy. (As in entry 122, the force applied turns into the thing it was applied against.)

154Principle that overtops the clouds and writing that is higher than the “White Snow” songs are still, if a man’s character has not fired and cast them, only the private motions of his blood and the tail end of a technique. (The base text writes “cloud” for “snow”; the “White Snow” was the byword for music too high for the crowd. Corrected from the other witness.)

155Give up your office at the height of it; take your place where everyone else has gone in front. Watch your character in the smallest matters; spend your kindness on the man who can make no return. (All four choose the least profitable moment or the least profitable object — which is the argument of the whole book.)

156Better a friend among the hill-folk than an acquaintance in the market; better the plain house than the vermilion gate; better a woodcutter’s song and a herdboy’s than the talk of the street; and better to repeat a fine word or a fine deed of some man long dead than to go over the lapses of a man now living. (Three steps downward in company, and then the turn to what one says — which is where the entry is really going.)

157Character is the foundation of a career: no building with a loose foundation ever stood long. The heart is the root of one’s descendants: no tree with an unplanted root ever put out leaves. (The base text writes “must” for “heart”, one stroke out; corrected from the other witness.)

158An earlier writer said: “He throws away the inexhaustible store at home and goes from door to door with a bowl like a beggar.” And another: “Let the beggar suddenly rich stop telling us his dream — whose kitchen has no fire in the stove?” The first warns a man against being blind to what he has, the second against boasting of it; both are strict warnings for a student. (The first couplet is Wang Yangming’s, on the innate knowledge of the good.)

159The Way is a piece of common property: take each man as he comes and bring him in by it. Learning is an ordinary meal at home: take each matter as it comes and stay awake to it. (Two large words pulled down as far as they will go — one into public property, the other into the day’s dinner.)

160The man who trusts others may not find every one of them honest, but he himself is honest already. The man who suspects others may not find every one of them false, but he himself has been false first. (Whatever turns out to be true of the other party, you have already become the thing you assumed.)

161–180

161A man of generous temper is a spring wind warming things into growth: whatever meets him lives. A man of grudging, cutting temper is northern snow freezing hard: whatever meets him dies. (The same figure as entry 73.)

162Do good and see no benefit from it: it is the winter melon in the grass, which will swell in the dark of itself. Do wrong and see no damage from it: it is the spring snow in the courtyard, which will certainly melt away unnoticed. (An answer to the old complaint that goodness is not repaid: the return is not absent, only invisible.)

163With an old friend let the spirit between you be newer than ever; in a matter that nobody sees, let your motives be plainer than ever; toward a man in decline, let the courtesy be fuller than ever. (Three places where anyone might reasonably relax, and in all three the demand is raised instead.)

164The diligent man is quick to do what is right, and the world borrows “diligence” to serve its greed. The frugal man is cool about goods and profit, and the world puts on “frugality” to dress up its meanness. What a gentleman carries as his warrant has become the small man’s tool for private ends. A pity. (The one place where the book admits that the virtues it recommends can be stolen and worn.)

165What is done on a rise of feeling stops as readily as it starts: how is that a wheel that never rolls back? An understanding got by way of feeling and the run of thought has a delusion for every insight: it is no lamp that stays alight. (The base text writes “convey” for “wheel”, one element out; corrected from the other witness. The wheel that never rolls back is the Buddhist stage past which one does not fall away.)

166Another man’s mistakes should be forgiven, and your own should not be. Your own humiliations should be endured, and another man’s should not be. (One word measured twice, with the measures exactly exchanged.)

167To get free of the common run is itself remarkable; a man who sets out to be remarkable is not remarkable but merely odd. Not to join in the general filth is itself clean; a man who cuts himself off from the world in search of cleanness is not clean but merely violent.

168Kindness should go from thin to thick: begin thick and thin out and men forget it altogether. Authority should go from strict to easy: begin easy and tighten up and men will certainly call you cruel. (One rule of psychology for both: what men register is the direction of change, not the total.)

169Empty the mind and the nature shows itself; to look for the nature without stilling the mind is to part the waves in search of the moon. Clean the intention and the mind comes clear; to look for a clear mind without finishing with intention is to want a mirror bright and add dust to it. (The pair to entry 151: that one states the principle, this one the wrong road.)

170I am in high place and men bow to me: what they bow to is this tall cap and this broad sash. I am in low place and men slight me: what they slight is this cloth coat and these straw sandals. Then it was never me they bowed to — what am I pleased about? And never me they slighted — what am I angry about? (Same method as entry 135: withdraw yourself from the position being judged. The base text writes “dog” for “broad”, one stroke out; corrected from the other witness.)

171Always leave a little rice for the mice; do not light the lamp, out of pity for the moths. That turn of mind in the men of old is the one quickening point in us; without it we are what has been called a shape of earth and wood. (The couplet is Su Shi’s, from a poem sent to the abbot Qin of the Dinghui monastery; “a shape of earth and wood” is from the New Account of Tales of the World.)

172The substance of the mind is the substance of the sky. One thought of gladness is the lucky star and the auspicious cloud; one thought of anger is thunder and a downpour; one thought of kindness is a mild wind and sweet dew; one thought of severity is a hard sun and the autumn frost. Which of them could be spared? Only let them rise and go as they will, wide open and unobstructed, and you are one substance with the great void. (No feeling is forbidden; it is only required not to stay — the method of entry 83. The base text writes “profit” for “mild”; corrected from the other witness.)

173With nothing on hand the mind goes dull: in the quiet, light it with wakefulness. With something on hand the mind bolts: in the wakefulness, govern it by quiet. (Each half is the inside of the other: alertness inside stillness, stillness inside alertness.)

174The man who discusses a matter stands outside it, and should have every particular of profit and loss at his fingertips. The man who has to carry it out stands inside it, and should forget all thought of profit and loss. (The same matter, and the requirements exactly opposite according to where a man stands.)

175A gentleman at the gates of power and on the great roads must be strict and clear in what he practises and mild and easy in his temper: he must not go along even a little and get near the rank-smelling faction, and he must not be so violent as to bring the sting of wasp and scorpion on himself. (Four clauses, and between them they cover the whole art of standing next to power.)

176The man who advertises his principles will be slandered for his principles; the man who puts up a sign for his doctrine will be resented for his doctrine. So the gentleman goes near no bad business and sets up no good name either: an unbroken mildness is the only treasure to live by. (A remark about its own decade: the 1590s were exactly the years of banners raised for principle and for the school.)

177Meet a man who deceives and move him with sincerity; meet a man who is violent and steam him soft with mildness; meet a man who is crooked and self-serving and rouse him with an appeal to name and principle. Then there is nobody in the world who does not come into your furnace. (Three difficult kinds of man and three methods, not one of which is opposition.)

178One kindly thought can brew mildness enough for the space between heaven and earth; an inch of clean heart can hand a clean fragrance down a hundred generations. (The weight of the entry is all in the contrast of scale: one thought against the whole sky, an inch against a hundred ages.)

179Secret schemes, strange habits, unusual conduct and extraordinary abilities are all so many wombs of disaster to a man in the world. One ordinary virtue and one ordinary practice are enough to keep the undivided whole intact and bring peace on. (“Ordinary virtue” is the Doctrine of the Mean’s; the undivided whole is the Zhuangzi’s Chaos, who died when his friends bored features into him.)

180The saying goes: “Climbing a hill, bear with the path along the edge; walking in snow, bear with the dangerous bridge.” There is a great deal in that word “bear”. Human feeling is treacherous and the road of the world is rough, and without that one word to hold a man up, how few would not fall into the thorns and the ditch. (One of only two entries built on a single character — the other is 18, on “boast” and “repent”.)

181–200

181To parade an achievement or show off a piece of writing is to be a man by means of something outside yourself. What such a man does not know is that the substance of his mind is clear and was never lost: with not an inch of merit and not a single character to his name, there is still a perfectly upright way of being a man left to him. (Entry 148 said as much; this one says it more plainly — a man need not have achieved anything to be one.)

182To steal a little leisure out of a busy time, you must first have got a handle on it while you were idle; to take stillness out of a noisy place, you must first have set up a governor while you were still. Otherwise there is no one who does not shift with the circumstance and go down with the event. (Entry 86 again, now as a question of sequence: the capacity has to be laid in before it is needed.)

183Do not go against your own conscience; do not use up what other men will do for you; do not exhaust the strength of things. These three are enough to set a heart in heaven and earth, to settle the lot of the living, and to make good fortune for one’s descendants. (The three great clauses are Zhang Zai’s. The book’s boldest piece of joinery: the largest sentence in Song philosophy hung on three very small prohibitions.)

184For holding office there are two sayings: only fairness makes a man clear-sighted, only clean hands make him feared. For keeping a household there are two: only forbearance keeps feeling level, only thrift keeps the means sufficient. (The book at its most aphoristic — and every clause is a cause and effect rather than an exhortation.)

185Standing in wealth and rank, know what poverty and low place feel like; in the years of strength, keep in mind the bitterness of age and decline. (One in space and one in time, both asking a man to stand where he is not. The method of entry 32.)

186Do not carry yourself too spotlessly: you must be able to swallow every kind of insult and filth. Do not draw the line too sharply with people: you must be able to contain the good and the bad, the able and the stupid alike. (Entry 77 extended: not only must a man take in dirt, he must take in fools.)

187Do not make an enemy of a small man: a small man has enemies enough of his own. Do not fawn on a gentleman: a gentleman has no private favours to hand out. (Both halves are arguments from economy: no need to spend enmity at one end or flattery at the other.)

188The disease of loose appetite can be treated; the disease of clinging to a principle cannot. The obstruction that things put in the way can be cleared; the obstruction that doctrine puts there cannot. (The book’s hardest word on opinion: the man of principle is the worse case of the two.)

189Grinding should be like gold refined a hundred times: what is got in a hurry is no deep cultivation. Action should be like a crossbow of thirty thousand catties: what is loosed lightly will do nothing great. (Slow and heavy: nothing in this book may be had quickly.)

190Better be hated and slandered by a small man than flattered and pleased by him; better be taken to task by a gentleman than let off by him. (The second half is the finer point: a gentleman’s indulgence is a form of giving you up.)

191The man who loves gain strays outside right conduct altogether, and the harm he does is visible and shallow. The man who loves reputation gets in among right conduct, and the harm he does is hidden and deep. (Two verbs facing opposite ways carry the whole entry. The book says repeatedly that reputation is the harder of the two to deal with; here it says why.)

192To take a man’s kindness, however deep, and never repay it, but to repay the shallowest grudge; to hear an evil of him, however well hidden, and never doubt it, but to doubt the plainest good — this is unkindness at its limit and coldness at its worst, and is above all to be guarded against. (Four clauses laid out in pairs: everything owed is discounted and everything resented is doubled.)

193The slanderer who tears a man down is an inch of cloud across the sun: it clears of itself before long. The flatterer at his ear is the draught through a crack going into the flesh: the damage is done and not felt. (Visible against invisible — and the invisible one has no limit. The pair to entry 190.)

194Where the hill is steepest no tree grows, and the winding valley is thick with them; where the water runs fastest there are no fish, and the still deep pool is crowded with fish and turtles. Conduct pitched too high and a temper too narrow and quick are things a gentleman should particularly guard against. (Entry 77 again, with height added to cleanness.)

195Those who build something and get something done are mostly men who are empty of themselves and supple; those who wreck the business and miss the moment are invariably the obstinate. (The judgement of entry 188, stated this time in terms of results.)

196In the world do not be the same as everyone, and do not be different from everyone either; in what you do, do not make men dislike you, and do not make them pleased with you either. (Four refusals close off all four directions, and the space left is narrow — which is the space most of this book is about standing in.)

197The sun is already down and the mist and the glow are at their most brilliant; the year is nearly out and the oranges are at their sweetest. So at the end of the road and the end of his life a gentleman should have a hundred times the spirit. (Set this beside entries 110 and 155: there, caution at the height; here, effort at the close. The book lets a man off at neither end.)

198The hawk perches as if asleep and the tiger walks as if sick, and that is exactly where their striking and their biting come from. So a gentleman keeps his sharpness out of sight and does not display his gifts, and only then has the strength to shoulder great things. (An unusually predatory figure for this book.)

199Thrift is a virtue, and carried too far it becomes stinginess and meanness and spoils the graceful thing it was. Deference is a fine practice, and carried too far it becomes obsequiousness and finicking care, and generally has calculation behind it. (With entries 29 and 82, one of the book’s ceilings on a virtue.)

200Do not grieve when things go against you, do not rejoice when they go your way; do not count on a long peace, do not dread a hard beginning. (Sixteen characters, four prohibitions, four ordinary feelings refused. The shortest entry in the book.)

201–220

201Much pleasure taken in feasting: not a good household. A taste for noise and show getting the upper hand: not a good scholar. Rank and name weighing heavily on the mind: not a good official. (Three stations and one index apiece — the book at its most like a report form. The base text drops the word “noise”; it is supplied from the other witness.)

202Ordinary men take what suits them for pleasure, and the very mind that goes after pleasure leads them into pain; a man who sees things whole takes what goes against him for pleasure, and in the end the mind that took the pain exchanges it for pleasure. (The causal chain of pain and pleasure turned completely round — the book’s most thoroughgoing piece of dialectic.)

203A man at the full is water about to run over and not over yet: on no account add another drop. A man in danger is a branch about to break and not broken yet: on no account put another hand on it. (Both halves are held at the instant of “about to and not yet”. The base text writes “empty” for “stand in”; corrected from the other witness.)

204Watch men with a cold eye; hear what is said with a cold ear; meet what moves you with a cold feeling; think the thing through with a cold mind. (Sixteen characters and one word running through all four. The most compressed entry in the book.)

205The kind man’s heart is wide and unhurried, and so his fortune is thick and his good days long, and everything about him takes on that wide unhurried look. The mean man’s mind is cramped and pressed, and so his allowance is thin and his good days short, and everything about him takes the shape of that pressure. (As in entry 41, the width of the heart grows into the width of the life.)

206Hear an evil of a man and do not at once detest him: you may be the vent for a slanderer’s spite. Hear a good of a man and do not at once take him up: you may be the step by which a crooked man climbs. (What is guarded against is not being deceived but being used: someone else is making your reaction do his work.)

207A hasty temper and a coarse mind: nothing at all gets finished. A level heart and an even temper: a hundred good things gather of themselves. (The base text runs this and the next entry together as one paragraph; they are divided here as in the other witness.)

208Do not be harsh in employing men: be harsh and those who mean to serve you leave. Do not be indiscriminate in friendship: be indiscriminate and the flatterers arrive. (One form twice: the first loses what should have stayed, the second admits what should have been kept out.)

209Where the wind slants and the rain drives, plant your feet firm. Where the flowers are thick and the willows showy, keep your eyes high. Where the road is dangerous and the path narrow, turn back early. (Three verbs: firm, high, early. The last picks up entry 10.)

210The man of principle needs a mild heart to temper him, or he opens the road to quarrels; the man of achievement needs modesty to carry him, or he opens the door to envy. (An antidote supplied for the two things the book has praised most.)

211In office a gentleman must not be careless about his correspondence: he should be hard to get at, and so shut the door on people angling for favours. At home in his own district he must not stand on his dignity: he should be easy to get at, and so keep the old friendships warm. (Hard of access in one place and easy in the other — the structure of entry 174 again.)

212Great men are to be held in awe: hold them in awe and there is no looseness in you. Small people are to be held in awe too: hold them in awe and you will not get the name of a bully. (The Analects lists three things a gentleman holds in awe; extending the list downwards to the common people is this book’s own addition.)

213When things go a little against you, think of the men worse off, and the grievance goes of itself. When the mind slackens a little, think of the men ahead of you, and the spirit rouses of itself. (Comparison downward and upward, each prescribed for its own disease. The book’s one entry on comparing oneself with others uses it as a medicine.)

214Do not promise lightly because you are pleased; do not lose your temper because you are drunk; do not start things because you are feeling good; do not leave them unfinished because you are tired. (Four clauses on one principle: nothing decided in a mood counts.)

215The good reader must read until his hands and feet begin to dance; only then is he past the fish-trap and the snare. The good observer must look until mind and spirit run together with the thing; only then is he free of appearances. (The trap and the snare are the Zhuangzi’s: once you have the fish you forget the trap. Of all the book’s entries on reading, this is the least schoolmasterly — what it asks for is a bodily reaction.)

216Heaven makes one man able so that he may teach the stupidity of the many, and the world instead flourishes its ability to throw other men’s dullness into relief. Heaven makes one man rich so that he may relieve the want of the many, and the world instead uses what it has to trample on other men’s poverty. Truly these are men marked for heaven’s punishment. (“Marked for heaven’s punishment” is from the Zhuangzi. The angriest entry in the book.)

217The perfected man has nothing to think about and nothing to worry over; the simpleton neither knows nor recognises. With either of them one can discuss learning and with either one can get something built. It is only the man of middling parts: every extra turn of thought and knowledge brings an extra turn of guessing and suspicion, and there is no getting anything started with him. (An unusual classification — the two ends put together and the middle singled out. The base text writes “hundred million” for “guess”; corrected from the other witness.)

218The mouth is the door of the mind: guard it loosely and everything real inside leaks away. Intention is the foot of the mind: watch it loosely and it walks down every crooked lane. (Two figures, a door and a foot, set at the two ends of the mind.)

219In blaming another, look inside the fault for what was not a fault, and feeling stays level. In blaming yourself, look inside what was no fault for the fault, and character advances. (The same operation run in opposite directions: outwards towards “not”, inwards towards “yes”. The book’s finest word on blame.)

220A boy is the embryo of the grown man, and a licentiate the embryo of the official. If at that stage the fire is not hot enough and the casting not pure, then later, out in the world and standing at court, he will never come to be a good vessel. (The other witness reads “the foundation of a chief minister” for “the embryo of the official”.)

221–222

221A gentleman is not troubled by hardship and danger, and is watchful at a feast; he is not afraid of the powerful, and his heart jumps at the sight of the friendless and alone. (Four clauses, and between them the objects of fear are entirely exchanged. The most upright entry in the book.)

222Peach and plum are showy, but what are they beside the hard green of pine and cypress? Pear and apricot are sweet, but what are they beside the cold fragrance of yellow oranges and green tangerines? It is true enough that the rich and short-lived is worth less than the plain and lasting, and the early flowering worth less than the late. (The Former Collection closes where entry 7 began: the real taste is only plain.)

Latter Collection後集

A hundred and thirty-four entries, and the scene has changed: hills and woods, a window, the hour after rain, the middle of the night. The subject moves from dealing with people to leisure, stillness, life and death, being and nothing. To read it as a book urging retirement is to read it backwards. Its first sentence is “a man who talks about the pleasure of the hills and woods has not necessarily got the taste of them”; halfway through it says “the road out of the world lies inside the business of the world: there is no need to cut oneself off from men and run away”; and near the end, “men who like quiet and cannot bear noise commonly get away from people in order to find stillness; they do not see that meaning to be where nobody is has already set up a notion of self.” Even the lute and the crane, the flowers and the Chan talk that it recommends are audited in their turn. It argues for one thing only: that the country a man lives in is made by what he thinks, so that changing the thought is worth more than changing the place. The last entry ends on eight characters — settle wherever you are put and there is nowhere you will not be at ease — and that is where the whole book comes to rest.

1–20

1A man who talks about the pleasure of the hills and woods has not necessarily got the taste of them; a man who is sick of hearing about fame and gain has not necessarily forgotten the feeling of them. (The Latter Collection opens by separating saying from being. It is about withdrawal, and it begins by guarding against the counterfeit of withdrawal.)

2Angling is an idle pastime, and even so the power of life and death is in your hand; chess is a clean game, and even so it stirs up the mind of war. Fondness for occupation does not suit a man as well as having little to do, and many accomplishments do not keep his nature whole as well as none. (The base text drops one character at the end of the first conclusion; it is supplied from the common printings — the other witness lacks both conclusions entirely. Even the idle pleasures are audited here.)

3When the orioles are out and the flowers thick, when the hills are deep in colour and the valleys bright, it is all no more than the world’s conjuring. When the water has sunk and the leaves are down, when the rocks are lean and the cliff is bare, then you see what heaven and earth really are. (The real is put on the side of the bleak — entry 7 of the Former Collection, with the temperature lowered.)

4Time is long of itself, and the busy man hurries it; heaven and earth are wide of themselves, and the small man narrows them; wind, flowers, snow and moon are idle of themselves, and the man in a scramble makes them crowded. (Three clauses and three uses of “of himself”: length, width and leisure are none of them out there.)

5There is no need of much to get the savour of a place: between a basin of water and a stone the size of a fist there is mist and cloud enough. There is no need of distance to meet a view: under a rush window in a bamboo hut there is wind and moon to spare. (The method of the whole Latter Collection: reduce the scale and nothing has to be fetched from outside.)

6Listen to a bell in the stillness of the night and it wakes the dream inside your dream; look at the moon in a clear pool and you catch sight of the self outside your self. (Both phrases double back on themselves: the waking layer is still a dream, and there is another self outside this body. The Former Collection used “the self that comes after the self” for reputation; here the same figure has turned metaphysical.)

7The talk of birds and the noise of insects are all of them the formula by which mind is handed on; the colour of a flower and the green of the grass are nothing but the text in which the Way is read. A student wants the machinery in him clear and his chest transparent, and then whatever he touches he meets something of himself in. (Scripture is replaced by the countryside: the formula is in the insects and the text is in the grass.)

8Men can read the book that has words in it and not the book that has none; they can play the lute that has strings and not the lute that has none. They use the outward trace and not the spirit: how should they get the savour of a lute or a book? (Tao Qian kept a plain lute with no strings on it — the story is told in the History of the Song, and this book comes back to it at 131 of this collection.)

9With no appetite for things in the mind, you have the autumn sky and the sea after rain. With a lute and some books where you sit, you have the stone chamber and the cinnabar hill of the immortals. (“Cinnabar hill” is the abode of the immortals in the Songs of Chu.)

10Guests and friends gathered thick, the drinking hard and free — it was a pleasure. Then in a moment the water-clock is out and the candle low, the incense gone and the tea cold, and before you know it you are choking on it, and the whole thing has gone flat. Most things in the world are like that; why will men not turn back early? (The best-observed scene in the book, and the illustration of what entry 59 of the Former Collection stated.)

11Get the savour of the thing and the mist and moonlight of the Five Lakes are all inside an inch of your chest; see through the trick in front of you and every hero of the last thousand years is in the palm of your hand. (Entry 5 of this collection again, with the scale pushed as far as it will go.)

12Mountains, rivers and the great earth are already so much dust — how much more the dust inside the dust? This body of blood and flesh comes to a bubble and a shadow — how much more the shadow outside the shadow? Without the highest wisdom there is no perfectly clear mind. (“A bubble and a shadow” is from the Diamond Sutra. The peeling away, layer under layer, is unusually hard talk for this half of the book.)

13To fight over who is longer and who is shorter inside the spark struck off a flint — how much time is that? To dispute which is the cock and which the hen on the horn of a snail — how large a world is that? (The snail’s horn is the Zhuangzi’s: two kingdoms went to war on it. The two shortest questions in the book.)

14A cold lamp with no flame in it and a worn coat with no warmth are only playing at the scene; a body like dry wood and a mind like dead ash still fall into the dead emptiness. (The base text’s first verdict is the opposite of the other witness’s, which reads “does not lose its original face”. An audit of asceticism: to be cold to the point of death is not the Way either.)

15If a man is willing to stop now, it is finished now. If he must look for some later place to stop, then even with the children married off there will be no shortage of business, and even in a monastery the mind will not be done with. An earlier writer said: “Stop now if you are going to stop; if you wait for the time when it is finished there will be no such time.” He saw it clearly. (The couplet is a Chan saying. The entry is aimed at the thought of getting free later.)

16Look at the heat from the cold and you learn how little is got by running about in it; come into leisure out of the crush and you find that the taste of leisure lasts longest. (Both halves require that a man has been on the other side first, as in entry 32 of the Former Collection.)

17To have the bearing of a man who thinks wealth a passing cloud, and yet not need to live in a cave; to have no incurable craving for springs and rocks, and yet get drunk and write verses. Let other men scramble, and do not be too fine to drink with them; be content in your own quiet, and do not boast of being the one sober man. This is what the Buddhists call being tangled neither in existence nor in emptiness, with body and mind both at liberty. (The sober man among the drunk is the fisherman’s in the Songs of Chu, taken the other way about.)

18Whether time drags or races is a matter of one thought; whether space is wide or narrow hangs on an inch of heart. So for a man whose mind is unoccupied a single day is longer than a thousand ages, and for a man of large intention a cell ten feet square is as wide as the space between heaven and earth.

19Take away and take away again: the flowers you plant and the bamboo you set out, hand them all back to Mr Nobody. Forget until there is nothing left to forget: burning incense and boiling tea, never ask after the boy in white. (Four allusions at once — the Laozi’s “take away and take away again”, Sima Xiangru’s invented Mr Nobody, and the servant in white who brought Tao Qian wine on the Double Ninth. Even the small consolations of flowers and tea are given back.)

20Take the whole of what is in front of you: to the man who is satisfied it is the country of the immortals and to the man who is not it is the common world. Take the whole of what the world sets going: in good hands it quickens and in bad hands it kills. (One and the same matter, one and the same cause, and two outcomes decided entirely by the user.)

21–40

21The ruin that comes of running after the heat and hanging on to power is both cruel and quick; the taste of keeping quiet and holding to leisure is both the thinnest and the longest. (Each half sets two properties side by side — one of the most exactly matched couplets in the book.)

22By the pine-shaded stream, walking alone with a staff: where he stops, cloud is rising out of his patched coat. Under the bamboo window, asleep with a book for a pillow: when he wakes, the moon has soaked into the cold felt. (Pure scene, without a word of comment — rare even here.)

23Lust is burning at its hottest, and one thought of how it will be when you are ill turns the appetite to cold ash; fame and gain are as sweet as syrup, and one thought of the grave turns the taste to chewed wax. So to have death and sickness habitually in mind will dissolve a good deal of illusion and grow something of the Way in a man. (Entry 26 of the Former Collection strengthened: you need not wait for afterwards — thinking of dying will do.)

24The path of those who push to the front is narrow: fall back one step and it is one step wider and smoother. The taste of what is rich is short: thin it by one part and it lasts one part longer. (The exchange is written out at one to one: a step back buys a step of room, a part less buys a part more time.)

25To keep your nature steady when you are busy, you must have kept your mind clear while you were idle. To keep your mind unmoved when you die, you must have seen through things while you were alive. (The construction of entry 182 of the Former Collection: the capacity has to be laid in before it is wanted.)

26In the woods where men live retired there is no honour and no disgrace; on the road of right conduct there is no warm weather and no cold. (Fourteen characters, the shortest entry in this half. Both halves say the same thing: change the arena and the units of account stop working.)

27You need not get rid of the heat: get rid of the vexation the heat causes and your body is always on a cool terrace. You cannot get rid of poverty: get rid of the grief poverty causes and your mind is always in the Nest of Ease. (The Nest of Ease was Shao Yong’s name for his own house. The method is to change the object: not the heat but the vexation, not the poverty but the grief.)

28At the point of going forward, think of going back, and you will be spared the fate of the ram with its horns in the fence; at the moment of taking hold, plan how to let go, and you will get clear of the danger of riding the tiger. (Both halves require that the worst moment be thought of at the best one.)

29The covetous man, given silver, is sick that it was not jade; made a duke, complains that he was not made a marquis; and with all the power in the world is content to be a beggar. The man who is satisfied finds goosefoot broth better than the richest dish and a cloth coat warmer than fox fur, and, a commoner on the register, yields nothing to a prince. (The base text writes “await” for “marquis”, one element out; corrected from the other witness.)

30Making much of a name is less agreeable than getting away from one; being practised in affairs is nothing beside the leisure of having few. (Entry 2 of this collection, said again in half the words.)

31The man who likes quiet looks at white cloud and a secluded rock and finds his way into the mysterious; the man who is after splendour sees clear singing and fine dancing and forgets to be tired. Only the man who is content in himself has no division of noise and quiet, of flourishing and withering, and finds nowhere that is not a country to be at ease in. (The taste for quiet, which this half of the book has praised throughout, is cancelled along with the rest: real contentment does not select its surroundings.)

32A lone cloud comes out of the mountain hollow, and nothing holds it either to going or to staying; a clear mirror hangs in the air, and neither stillness nor commotion is any business of its own.

33A savour that lasts is not got out of strong wine and thick tea but out of beans and water; the ache of melancholy is not bred by bare solitude but by flutes and strings. Clearly the taste of the rich is short, and only the savour of the plain is real. (The causes are turned round: what makes a man melancholy is not austerity but entertainment.)

34The Chan school says: eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired. The critics of poetry say: the scene in front of you, in the words of common speech. The highest thing is lodged in the most ordinary, and the hardest comes out of the easiest; the man who sets out after it goes further off, and the man with no mind for it is near it already. (The first saying is Dazhu Huihai’s; the second is Song criticism. The only entry that brings Chan and poetry together.)

35The water runs and the place is without noise: there is the savour of finding stillness in the middle of commotion. The hill stands high and the cloud is no obstruction to it: there is the secret of going out of being and into nothing.

36The hills and woods are a fine place, and one fit of scheming and attachment turns them into a market. Painting and calligraphy are an elegant business, and one fit of greed turns a man into a dealer. Where the mind takes no stain, the world of appetite is the city of the immortals; where the mind is tied, even a country of pleasure becomes a sea of pain. (The pair to entry 1 of this collection: that guards against counterfeit withdrawal, this against the elegant pursuit turning into trade.)

37When the place is noisy, what one has known for years goes blankly out of mind; when the place is quiet and settled, what one had long forgotten suddenly stands there again. Divide stillness from agitation by ever so little and dullness and clarity are at once two different things. (Memory used as evidence: the usefulness of quiet made into something that can be checked.)

38Under a quilt of reed-down, lying in the snow and sleeping in the cloud, a man keeps one nestful of the night air whole. Over a cup of bamboo-leaf wine, singing to the wind and playing with the moon, he has got clear of ten thousand fathoms of red dust. (The “night air” is the Mencius’s: the clear breath a man still has before the day’s business touches him.)

39Set one hillman with a goosefoot staff down in a procession of robes and coronets and you have added a stretch of high style; set one court official in his embroidered robe down on the fisherman’s and woodcutter’s road and you have added a great deal of vulgarity. Plainly the rich does not beat the plain, nor the vulgar the elegant. (The method is a controlled experiment: the same man, a different background, and the valuation reverses.)

40The road out of the world lies inside the business of the world: there is no need to cut oneself off from men and run away. The work of finishing with the mind lies inside using the mind to the full: there is no need to kill appetite and let the heart go to ash. (The key entry of this half: it is about withdrawal and it does not recommend leaving.)

41–60

41Keep this body of yours where there is leisure, and what can honour and disgrace, gain and loss, order you to do? Keep this mind of yours where there is quiet, and what can right and wrong, profit and harm, hide from you? (The answers are in the two verbs: change where you stand and those things cannot reach you.)

42Under the bamboo fence a dog barks and a cock crows, and it is suddenly a world up in the clouds; at the study window one listens to a cicada and the cawing of crows, and knows what a country stillness is. (The commonest noises in the world — poultry, cicadas, crows — exchanged for a whole landscape: the standing trick of this half of the book.)

43If I do not want advancement, why should the bait of salary and profit trouble me? If I am not racing to get on, why should the dangers of office frighten me? (One argument twice: withdraw the wanting and the fearing has nothing to stand on — the method of entry 135 of the Former Collection.)

44Stroll among hills and woods, springs and rocks, and the dust settles in the mind of itself; take your ease among books and paintings and the vulgarity quietly goes out of a man. So a gentleman, though he does not lose himself in things, does regularly borrow a setting to tune his mind by. (The defence of the whole Latter Collection: the pleasures of the place are not an indulgence but an instrument.)

45Spring is showy and sets a man’s spirit loose; it is nothing to autumn, when the cloud is white and the wind clear, orchid and cassia are in scent, water and sky are one colour and everything above and below stands in an empty brightness — and both spirit and bone are cleaned. (Autumn preferred to spring, as in entry 3 of this collection.)

46A man who cannot read a character and yet has the sense of poetry in him has the real savour of the poets; a man who has never worked at a single verse of scripture and yet has the taste of Chan has got its secret. (Entry 8 of this collection carried one step: there it was how to read, here it is not needing to.)

47Let suspicion move and the shadow of a bow becomes a snake or a scorpion, a rock lying in the grass becomes a crouching tiger, and the whole place is full of murder. Let the thought subside and a stone tiger may be a gull and the croaking of frogs a band of music, and wherever you touch you meet the real thing. (Three old stories at once: the bow’s shadow in the wine-cup, Li Guang’s arrow in the rock he took for a tiger, and the gulls in the Liezi that would settle on a man until he came with a mind to catch one. The same world under two readings.)

48Let the body be a boat with no rope on it, going with the current and stopping at the shallows as it may; let the mind be wood already burnt to ash, and what does it matter whether a knife cuts it or perfume is rubbed into it? (“Going with the current, stopping at the shallows” is from the History of the Han; knife and perfume is a Buddhist figure for what leaves the mind unmoved.)

49Men hear an oriole and are delighted, hear a frog and are disgusted; see a flower and want to tend it, meet a weed and want it out. All of this is the body’s doing. Look at it from the side of the nature of things, and which of them is not sounding its own note and unfolding its own life? (The most modern-sounding entry in this half: the preference is not in the object but in the senses of the man.)

50Hair falling and teeth loosening: let the borrowed shape wither as it will. Birds singing and flowers laughing: there one recognises the suchness of one’s own nature. (One clause lets the body go and the other finds what does not decay somewhere else.)

51For the man with appetite inside him, a cold pool boils, and among hills and woods he never finds the quiet of them; for the man who is empty inside, a coolness rises in the hottest weather, and in the middle of court and market he does not notice the noise. (The verdict on the whole question of retirement: neither quiet nor noise is a property of the place.)

52He who hoards much loses much: better then to be poor and have nothing on one’s mind. He who walks high falls fast: better then to be of low standing and be steadily safe. (“Hoard much, lose much” is the Laozi’s, cashed here straight into a rule of life.)

53Reading the Changes at a bright window, grinding cinnabar in dew gathered under the pines; discussing the classics at the noon desk, and a jade chime carrying the wind that comes up through the bamboo. (A scholar’s day and not a word of comment.)

54A flower kept in a tub is short of life in the end; a bird shut in a cage has lost the natural savour of it. Better the flowers and birds of the hills, scattered into a pattern of their own and flying as they please: there the mind meets something without trying. (Set beside entry 5 of this collection: a small setting will do, but a living thing must not be penned.)

55Men have every kind of craving and every kind of vexation simply because they take the word “I” too seriously. An earlier writer said: “Once one no longer knows that there is an I, how should one know that things are worth having?” And another: “Know that the body is not I, and what is left for vexation to get at?” Both go straight to the mark. (The base text writes “again” twice for “every kind”; corrected from the other witness. The first couplet is Su Shi’s.)

56Look at youth from the place of age and the wish to race and contend goes out of you; look at splendour from the place of decay and the taste for finery is finished. (The method of entry 185 of the Former Collection, run the other way: stand in the later position first and look back.)

57Human feeling and the look of the world change ten thousand times in a moment and should not be taken too seriously. Shao Yaofu said: “What I once called I is now he; and I do not know whose the I of today will turn out to be.” Look at it that way habitually and the net in your chest comes loose. (Shao Yong, the Song philosopher of entry 184 of the Former Collection.)

58Keep one cold eye open in the middle of the crowd and you are spared a great deal of anxious calculation; keep one warm heart alive in a lonely place and you come by a great deal of real savour. (The best crossing in the book. Entry 204 of the Former Collection had only the cold eye; this one supplies the other half.)

59For every country of pleasure there is a country of displeasure set opposite it; for every good stretch there is a bad one that cancels it out. Only the ordinary meal at home and the view from where one happens to stand is a nest to be at ease in. (The book’s arithmetic: whatever stands above the ordinary has to be paid back.)

60With the blinds up and the window wide, watching green hills and green water breathe the cloud in and out, one sees how free heaven and earth are. With the bamboo and the trees spreading as they please, letting the young swallows and the calling doves see the seasons in and out, one knows what it is for self and thing to forget each other. (Both halves turn on two verbs: to watch without interfering, and to let be.)

61–80

61Know that what succeeds must fail, and the wish to succeed need not be held so hard. Know that what lives must die, and the care of living need not be so laborious. (One inference twice: work back from the ending to how hard one should be trying now.)

62An old master said: “The shadow of the bamboo sweeps the steps and the dust does not stir; the disc of the moon goes through the pool and the water keeps no mark.” Our own school says: “Let the water run as fast as it likes, the scene is always still; let the flowers fall as often as they like, the mind is at leisure.” Take that into your dealings with men and affairs, and see how free body and mind are. (A Chan couplet and a Confucian one set side by side — and the entry lands, as this half always does, on use.)

63Wind in the pines and the sound of a spring over stone, heard in stillness, are the jade pendants of heaven and earth ringing of themselves. Mist over the grass and the shadow of cloud in the middle of the water, watched at leisure, are the finest writing the world has. (With entry 7 of this collection: nature as music, and nature as text.)

64With the thorn and bramble of the fallen Jin in front of his eyes, a man is still vain of his sword; with the foxes and hares of the northern burial hill waiting for his body, he still grudges his gold. The saying goes: “A wild beast is easier to tame than the human heart; a gorge is easier to fill than human wanting.” It is quite true. (The thorns are those that grew over Luoyang after its sack; the northern hill is the burial ground outside it.)

65With no storm on the ground of the mind, wherever you are there are green hills and green trees; with the nature in you breeding and raising, wherever you touch there are fish leaping and hawks in flight. (The pair to entry 51 of this collection: there, appetite makes every place noisy; here, calm makes every place a landscape.)

66The man in the tall cap and the broad sash, catching sight one day of a figure in a straw cape and a small hat drifting free, will very likely sigh; the great house of long tables and wide mats, meeting one day a thin blind and a clean desk in their unhurried quiet, will very likely feel a pull. Why then must men be driven with fire-oxen and lured with wind-borne horses, instead of thinking to suit their own natures? (The evidence is nicely chosen: envy is used to prove that men already know which side is better. The base text writes “crow” for the particle “thus”, one stroke out; corrected from the other witness.)

67A fish has the water and swims, and forgets the water; a bird has the wind and flies, and does not know that there is wind. Recognise that and you may get clear of the burden of things and take pleasure in the way things work. (What actually keeps you up is exactly what you cannot feel.)

68A fox asleep on a broken step, a hare running over a ruined terrace: these were the places of singing and dancing once. Dew going cold on the yellow flowers, mist blurring the dead grass: all of it was somebody’s battlefield. What is constant about rise and fall? Where has the strong gone, and the weak? To think of it turns a man’s heart to ash. (An unusual ending: the book does not ordinarily allow a heart to go to ash, and here it lets it.)

69Unmoved by favour or disgrace, watch at leisure the flowers in the courtyard open and fall; caring nothing whether you go or stay, follow idly the clouds beyond the sky as they gather and unroll. (The best known lines in the book, and still written up on walls. The first clause deals with how others treat you and the second with whether you are there at all; between them they loosen both the handles by which a man can be held.)

70A clear sky and a bright moon: what part of heaven is not open to fly in? And the moth goes straight for the candle. A clean spring and green plants: what is there that may not be drunk and eaten? And the owl must have its dead rat. Alas — how many men in the world are neither moth nor owl? (The owl and the rat is the Zhuangzi’s. Two questions and a sigh: the book’s most completely built piece of satire.)

71To be on the raft and already thinking of leaving the raft — that is a man of the Way with nothing on his hands. To be riding the donkey and still looking for the donkey — that is a Chan master who will never be finished. (The raft is the Diamond Sutra’s: even the doctrine is to be left behind. Riding the donkey in search of the donkey is a standing Chan phrase.)

72The great rear like dragons and the heroes fight like tigers; look at it with a cold eye and it is ants swarming on a piece of rank meat, flies quarrelling over blood. Right and wrong come up like a swarm of bees, gain and loss bristle like a hedgehog; meet it with a cold feeling and it is gold going into the furnace, snow going into boiling water. (Four figures in two sets: the first shrinks the great men, the second dissolves the great quarrels.)

73Chained by the appetite for things, a man finds his life pitiable; moving easily in his own nature, he finds it a pleasure. Know it to be pitiable and the dust of feeling breaks at once; know it to be a pleasure and the sage’s country arrives of itself. (Grief and pleasure are treated as pieces of knowledge rather than as feelings: knowing is itself the practice.)

74With not half a point of appetite left in the chest, it has already gone the way of snow in a furnace and ice in the sun; and then in front of the eyes there is a stretch of empty brightness, and one sees at any moment the moon in the blue sky and its reflection on the water. (First the clearing, then the seeing: the order the book always keeps.)

75The thought of a poem comes on Ba Bridge: hum two lines and the woods and the peaks are already at full stretch. The taste for open country comes by the bend of Mirror Lake: go there alone and the hills and the river light each other up of themselves. (Asked where his poems came from, a Tang poet said: on a donkey on Ba Bridge in the snow. Mirror Lake was He Zhizhang’s retirement. The point is that the good line is not found at the desk but under the feet.)

76What has crouched long flies high; what opens first is the first to fall. Know that, and you are spared the anxiety of being held back and cured of the itch to hurry. (Entry 189 of the Former Collection in another form.)

77It is when a tree goes back to its root that one knows the calyx and the branches and the leaves were flourishing for nothing; it is when the coffin is closed that one knows children and goods were no use. (Both halves hold the verdict back until the last possible moment — the method of entry 30 of the Former Collection.)

78True emptiness is not empty; to hold to appearances is not the real thing, and to smash appearances is not the real thing either. Ask the World-Honoured One how he would dispose of it: in the world, or out of it? To follow appetite is suffering, and to cut appetite off is suffering too. It is left to us to practise as best we can. (Four positions refused one after another, and then the responsibility handed back to the reader — the only entry in the book that ends that way.)

79The man of principle turns down a state of a thousand chariots and the miser fights over a single copper; as characters they are a star and an abyss, and yet loving a name is no different from loving money. The Son of Heaven manages an empire and the beggar cries for his dinner; in station they are sky and dirt, and yet the one burning his thoughts out is no different from the other burning his voice out. (Both halves run on “as far apart as possible, and exactly the same”, and between them they cancel the moral ranking and the social one at a stroke.)

80Having tasted the flavour of the world to the full, let it turn its rain to cloud and back as it likes — one cannot be troubled to open one’s eyes. Having seen through human feeling to the bottom, call me an ox or call me a horse — one only nods. (“Call me an ox” is the Zhuangzi’s. The laziest posture in the book, and the hardest to get into.)

81–100

81People nowadays set out to have no thoughts at all, and thoughts cannot in the end be done without. It is only that the thought behind is not clung to and the thought ahead is not gone out to meet: deal with the present one as it comes and you will drift gradually into having none. (Thoughts are not to be abolished, only not stood on. The most practical thing the book says about the mind.)

82A mood that falls together by chance makes a fine scene, and a thing that comes out of itself shows how things really work; add one part of arrangement and the savour is less. Bai Juyi has the lines: “The mood is easy when there is nothing to do; the wind is clear because it follows itself.” There is a great deal in that. (Entry 54 of this collection again: arrange it and it is finished.)

83For a man whose nature is clear through, eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty is nothing but the good ordering of body and mind. For a man whose heart is lost in delusion, all the discussion of Chan and all the verses are only juggling with his own ghost. (“Juggling with one’s ghost” is a Chan term of abuse for work done in the head. With entry 34 of this collection.)

84There is a real country in the human heart, cheerful of itself without strings or pipes, sweet-smelling of itself without incense or tea. But the thought must be clean, the scene empty, the anxiety forgotten and the body let go before one can wander about in it. (Four conditions in a row, each further in than the last.)

85Gold comes out of ore and jade out of rock: without the illusion there is no getting at the real. The Way is found in wine and the immortal met among the flowers: however elegant, one is not to be quit of the common. (The Latter Collection correcting itself: after all the praise of the plain and the still, it admits that the real thing has to grow out of what is not.)

86The ten thousand things in heaven and earth, the ten thousand feelings among men, the ten thousand affairs of the world: to the common eye they are all different, and to the eye of the Way every kind of them is the ordinary thing. What is there to distinguish, and what to choose between? (The nearest the book comes to quoting the Zhuangzi’s discourse on the equality of things outright. The base text writes “again” for “every kind”; corrected from the other witness.)

87The spirit at its fullest, in a cotton quilt: there one has the mild breath of heaven and earth. The taste satisfied, after a meal of goosefoot broth: there one recognises what the plainness of a human life really is. (The most direct gloss in the book on its own title.)

88Whether a man is tangled or free is a matter of his own mind only. Let the mind be done with it and the butcher’s shop and the wine-lees market are a pure land after all; otherwise, with one lute and one crane, one flower and one plant — tastes clean enough — the obstruction is still there. The saying goes: “Be able to stop and the world of dust is the real country; not be finished and the monk’s house is a layman’s.” Quite so. (“One lute and one crane” was the byword for an incorruptible official; here it is counted as a taste like any other — the book’s most thorough audit of high-mindedness.)

89In a cell ten feet square with every anxiety given up, who is to talk of painted beams and flying cloud, of pearl blinds rolling up the rain? After three cups, with one point of the real in hand, one knows only a plain lute laid across the moonlight and a short flute played into the wind. (The painted beams and pearl blinds are Wang Bo’s famous lines on the Tengwang Pavilion, quoted here in order to be refused.)

90In the middle of a stillness where nothing sounds, one bird suddenly tries its voice, and a whole world of hidden savour is called up; after the flowers have all been stripped away, one branch suddenly puts out something new, and an unlimited quickening is touched off. Plainly the nature in things was never withered, and what works in it is best set going by a touch. (The warmest entry in this half: one bird and one branch are enough.)

91Bai Juyi wrote: “Better let body and mind go and give oneself blankly to the great making.” Chao Buzhi wrote: “Better gather body and mind in and settle them into stillness.” Let them go and you run to wildness; gather them in and you fall into dead dryness. Only the man who knows how to handle body and mind has the handle in his own hand, and lets go and gathers in as he pleases. (Two poets quoted, both faulted, and a third position supplied — the method of entry 130 of the Former Collection.)

92On a snowy night under the moon the mind clears of itself; in a spring wind and mild air the whole field of intention softens of itself. What makes the world and what is in a man’s heart run together with no seam between them. (The one place in the book that states the correspondence of heaven and man outright — and the evidence offered is only two kinds of weather and two moods.)

93Writing advances by clumsiness and the Way is got by clumsiness; there is no end of meaning in that one word. A dog barking at Peach Blossom Spring, a cock crowing among the mulberries — what solid plain stuff. Whereas the moon on a cold pool and the crows in an old tree, for all their workmanship, have something withered about them. (A sharp piece of criticism: the last two are exactly the most worked-at images in Tang and Song verse, and it is their workmanship that is objected to.)

94For the man who turns things with himself, getting is no delight and losing no grief, and the whole earth is a place to wander free in. For the man whom things put to work, what goes against him breeds hatred and what goes with him breeds love, and a single hair is enough to tie him up. (That last clause is the book’s hardest sentence on being owned by things: it does not take a large object — one hair will do.)

95When principle is quiet, affairs are quiet: to send the affairs away and hold on to the principle is to get rid of the shadow and keep the body. When the mind is empty, the surroundings are empty: to get rid of the surroundings and keep the mind is to pile up rank meat and then chase the flies. (Two exact figures: shadow and body, meat and flies. Reverse the order of cause and the job can never be finished.)

96The clean pleasures of a retired man come down to suiting himself. So wine is best when nobody presses it, chess is won by not competing, a flute suits best with no tune in it and a lute stands highest with no strings; a gathering is genuine when it was not arranged, and a guest is easiest when he is neither met at the gate nor seen off. Get caught on the form of the thing or stuck on the outward mark of it, and you have dropped back into the world’s sea of trouble. (Six constructions, each cancelling the usual standard. The stringless lute is from entry 8 of this collection.)

97Try thinking what shape you had before you were born, and then what scene there will be after you are dead. Then the ten thousand thoughts go cold, the one nature falls quiet, and you may get outside things altogether and wander where there are not yet any forms. (Empty both ends and the stretch in the middle grows light of itself.)

98To think of health as a treasure once one is ill, and of peace as a blessing once the fighting has started, is not early wisdom. To come by good fortune and know at once that it is the root of misfortune; to cling to life and know at once that this is the cause of death — that would be seeing clearly. (Foresight is given a precise definition: not prophecy, but seeing the bad end from inside the good one.)

99The actor lays on his powder and his vermilion and makes beauty and ugliness at the tip of a brush; the song ends, the stage empties, and where are beauty and ugliness then? The chess players contend for the lead and measure cock against hen over the stones; the game is done, the stones are swept up, and where is cock and where is hen? (Two games with a time limit, and nothing left when they break up. With entry 13 of this collection.)

100Only a man who is still is master of the free grace of wind and flowers and the clear emptiness of snow and moon; only a man who is at leisure holds the right to the flourishing and withering of trees and water, the waxing and waning of bamboo and stone. (What nature has to offer is not collectable by everyone: stillness and leisure are the capital required.)

101–120

101Talk to an old farmer of yellow chicken and white wine and he brightens with pleasure; ask him about dining off a row of bronze tripods and he does not know what you mean. Talk to him of a wadded coat and a short jacket of coarse cloth and he is quietly glad; ask him about embroidered court robes and he does not recognise the word. His nature is whole, and therefore his wanting is thin. This is the first country of a human life. (Eight characters carry the argument — whole nature, thin wanting. The plainness is not cultivated; it is simply undamaged.)

102The mind has no mind of its own: what is there to contemplate? The Buddhists say that a man who contemplates the mind only thickens his own obstruction. Things were one thing to begin with: what is there to equalise? Master Zhuang says that a man who equalises things is himself cutting apart the sameness. (Contemplation of the mind and the equalising of things are the two schools’ own central practices, and both are refused — by each school’s own argument. The most daring entry in the book.)

103To rise and go while the music is still at its loudest — one admires the man who can let go at the edge of the cliff. To be still hurrying about after the water-clock has run down — one laughs at the ordinary man sunk in his sea of trouble. (Letting go at the edge of the cliff is a Chan phrase. One admires and one laughs, and the two kinds of man are put at the same hour of the same night.)

104While your grip is still uncertain, keep clear of the dust and the noise, so that the mind, not seeing what it might want, is not disturbed, and the still substance of it settles clear. Once the hold is firm, go back among the dust, so that the mind, seeing what it might want, is still not disturbed, and the free play of it is trained. (“Not seeing what one might want” is the Laozi’s. The only entry that divides the work into stages: first the quarantine, then the exposure.)

105Men who like quiet and cannot bear noise commonly get away from people in order to find stillness; they do not see that meaning to be where nobody is has already set up a notion of self, and that a mind fixed on stillness is already the root of motion. How are they ever to arrive where self and others are seen as one and stillness and motion are both forgotten? (The book’s largest audit of itself: this whole half is about stillness, and here liking stillness is itself named as the disease.)

106Living in the hills, with a clean open mind, a man meets a fine thought in everything he touches: a solitary cloud or a wild crane and he thinks of getting clear away; a rocky stream or a running spring and he thinks of being washed; an old juniper or a plum in the cold and his own backbone straightens; a gull on the sand or a deer and calculation drops out of him. Once he walks back into the dusty world, it is not merely that things have nothing to do with him — this body of his is so much spare trimming too. (The last word is the streamer on a flag: decorative and dispensable.)

107The mood comes as it will: kick off your shoes and walk in the sweet grass, and the wild birds, having forgotten to be wary, keep you company. The scene and the mind meet: sit still under the falling flowers with your coat loose, and the white clouds, saying nothing, are in no hurry to let you go. (Written entirely in actions, without a word of doctrine.)

108The country of good fortune and the district of misfortune in a human life are both made by what a man thinks. So the Buddhists say: appetite blazing is a pit of fire; craving drowning a man is a sea of pain; one clean thought and the flames are a pool; one alert thought and the boat is at the far shore. Let the thought differ a little and the whole country is different at once. Is this not to be watched? (The governing statement of this half: since the country is made by thought, the only way to change it is to change the thought. The base text writes “at last” for “alert”; corrected from the other witness.)

109A cord will saw through wood and dripping water will pierce a stone: the man who is still learning the Way must put out force and search. Water arriving makes its own channel and a ripe melon drops of itself: the man who has the Way leaves it all to how things work. (Four proverbs in two sets, human effort and natural completion, divided exactly between learning the Way and having it.)

110Once calculation subsides there is a moon coming up and a wind getting up, and no need to call the world a sea of trouble. Once the mind is far off there is no dust of carriages and no track of horses, and no need to make a chronic disease of hills and streams. (“A chronic disease of hills and streams” was the old phrase for an incurable taste for retirement; “the mind far off” is Tao Qian’s. With entries 51 and 105 of this collection: there is no need to move.)

111The plants have hardly shed and there is already a bud showing at the root; the season may be frozen hard and the warm breath will come back at last in the flying ash. In the middle of the killing, the will to live and go on living is generally the master of the house — and by that alone one may see the heart of heaven and earth. (The flying ash is from the old practice of watching for the solstice by setting reed-ash in pitch-pipes; “the heart of heaven and earth” is from the Book of Changes. One of the book’s few outright hopeful sentences.)

112Look at the colour of the hills after rain and the whole scene is newer and finer; hear a bell in the quiet of the night and the sound is clearer and higher. (Sixteen characters, two conditions and two results: the most economical entry in this half.)

113Climbing high makes a man’s heart wide; standing over running water carries his thought far. Reading on a night of rain or snow clears his spirit; letting out a long cry on the top of a hill makes his mood stride. (Four settings and four effects, set down like a prescription.)

114To a wide heart ten thousand measures of grain are an earthen pot; to a narrow one a single hair is a cartwheel. (Fourteen characters, and they gather up everything the book has said about width and narrowness.)

115Without wind and moon, flowers and willows, there would be no world; without feeling, appetite and taste, there would be no mind. Only let the self turn things instead of things putting the self to work, and appetite is nothing but the way things go, and the dust of feeling is itself the country of principle. (The most generous treatment appetite gets in the book: nothing is removed, only the relation of master and servant reversed.)

116Only the man who settles his own person within his own person can leave the ten thousand things to the ten thousand things; only the man who gives the world back to the world can get out of it while still inside it. (Both halves on one pattern: hand back what is not yours first, and only then talk about freedom. With entry 40 of this collection.)

117A life with too much leisure in it breeds other thoughts on the quiet; a life too busy never shows a man what his nature is. So a gentleman must carry some anxiety about body and mind, and must also give himself up to wind and moon. (With entries 29 and 82 of the Former Collection: at either end, keep some of the other.)

118The human mind mostly loses what is true of it where there is movement. Let not one thought arise and sit clear and still: cloud comes up and you go off with it unhurriedly, rain falls and you are cool and clean along with it, a bird sings and you meet something gladly, a flower drops and you are content and free. What place then is not a real country? What thing has not the real working in it? (Four adverbs in a row, and the most unhurried stretch of writing in the book.)

119A son is born and the mother is in danger; the money is piled up and the thieves are watching: which piece of good news is not a trouble? Poverty makes a man frugal and sickness makes him careful: which trouble is not good news? So a man who sees whole looks at the favourable and the adverse alike and forgets both gladness and grief. (Entry 59 of this collection pushed until it holds in both directions.)

120Let the ear be a gale-swept valley with a sound thrown into it: it passes and nothing is kept, and right and wrong both fall away. Let the mind be the colour of the moon soaking into a pool: empty, and taking no hold, and self and thing are both forgotten. (Both figures say the same: what comes in may arrive, and may not stay.)

121–134

121Men tangled up in honour and profit are for ever saying that the world is a sea of trouble. They do not notice that the cloud is white and the hill green, that the river runs and the rocks stand, that the flowers come out to meet you and the birds laugh, and the valley answers the woodcutter’s song. The world is not dusty and the sea is not bitter: they have made their own minds dusty and bitter, that is all. (Entry 108 of this collection turned into an accusation.)

122Look at the flower half open and drink till you are barely tipsy; there is a great deal of savour in that. Let it go to full blowsy bloom and helpless drunkenness and it has turned bad. A man at the full should think about this. (The same argument as entries 20 and 203 of the Former Collection, now with a specific graduation on the scale: one half.)

123The wild greens of the hills are never watered by anyone and the wild birds are never fed by anyone, and the taste of both is fragrant and clean. If we can keep from being stained by the world’s way of doing things, will not our own savour be quite as different? (The other side of the book’s title: the wild thing tastes good precisely because nobody cultivated it.)

124Planting flowers and setting out bamboo, keeping a crane and watching fish, must have something of one’s own in them. If it is only lingering over a view and fingering the surface of things, then it is our own school’s learning that goes in at the ear and out at the mouth, and the Buddhists’ dead emptiness, and no more. Where is the savour in that? (Once again the elegant pursuits this half recommends are audited.)

125The scholar in the hills is poor and bare, and his free savour is rich enough of itself; the farmer in the fields is rough and unpolished, and his naturalness is complete. But let a man once lose himself among the brokers of the market, and he had better have died in a ditch — his spirit and his bones would at least be clean. (The fiercest tone in the book, and the sequel to entry 101 of this collection.)

126A piece of luck out of proportion, a gain with no cause behind it: if it is not the bait on the hook of whatever made the world, it is a pit dug by somebody in it. Set your eyes low here and you will very likely go down inside another man’s contrivance. (With entry 71 of the Former Collection: there, good fortune cannot be solicited; here, the kind that arrives unasked is the more suspect.)

127A human life is a puppet from the start. Only let the butt of the strings be in your own hand, with not a thread tangled, so that the rolling up and the letting out are free and the going and the stopping are yours, and not a hair of you is jerked about by anyone else — and you are already out of the booth. (The book does not deny that a man is a puppet; it argues about one thing only, whose hand the strings are in. Its most modern figure.)

128Start one thing and one harm is born of it; so the world commonly counts having nothing to do as good fortune. One reads in an old poem: “I beg you not to talk of winning a marquisate: one general’s success is ten thousand bleached bones.” And in another: “Let the world always keep its ten thousand affairs at peace, and I shall not grudge the sword in its case a thousand years of death.” However hot and high a man’s ambition, it turns to sleet without his noticing. (Two Tang poems, by Cao Song and Liu Cha. The one place in the book that counts the cost of war and of a career made in it.)

129The woman who has run off with a lover puts on a face and becomes a nun; the man burning with ambition takes a check and enters the Way. That is how the gate of purity comes to be a resort for the impure. (What is seen through is the motive: those who come in at that gate have not necessarily come for what is behind it.)

130The waves are up to the sky and the men in the boat are not afraid, and the men outside it go cold for them; a man is swearing wildly at the table and those at the table see no danger, and those outside bite their tongues. So a gentleman, though his body is inside the affair, keeps his mind outside it. (The old saying that the player cannot see the game, put as a difference of viewpoint that can be checked.)

131Cut a part off a human life and you are a part freer. Fewer acquaintances and you are spared the disturbance; fewer words and you are spared the blame; fewer calculations and the spirit is not worn down; less cleverness and the undivided whole stays whole. Those who seek not a daily subtraction but a daily addition are truly putting this one life of theirs in the stocks. (The book’s method of subtraction, here itemised in four accounts: the nearest thing in this half to a conclusion.)

132The cold and heat of the seasons are easy to avoid; the warmth and chill of human dealings are hard to get rid of. The warmth and chill of human dealings are easy to get rid of; the ice and fire in my own heart are hard to be quit of. Be quit of that ice and that fire and the whole breast is mild, and there is a spring wind wherever you happen to be. (Three steps, each nearer than the last, and the last one lands on the man himself.)

133The tea need not be fine, and the pot is never dry; the wine need not be clear, and the cup is never empty. The plain lute has no strings and is always in tune; the short flute has no stops and suits me well enough. It may be hard to overtake the men of the age of Fu Xi, but one may at least keep company with Ji Kang and Ruan Ji. (Tao Qian called himself a man from before Fu Xi; Ji Kang and Ruan Ji were two of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The stringless lute appears three times in this collection, and this is the last.)

134The Buddhists say “as the occasion falls”; our own school says “from where one stands”. Those four words are the float that carries a man across the sea. The road of the world stretches away, and one wish to have everything complete sets ten thousand threads flying; settle wherever you are put and there is nowhere you will not be at ease. (“From where one stands” is the Doctrine of the Mean’s; the float is the Buddhist figure of the inflated skin that must not be punctured. Three hundred and fifty-six entries end on those four words: not withdrawal from the world and not engagement in it, but settling wherever one is set down.)