Chapter 11 good and evil

good and evil There is only one movement between heaven and earth, and this movement has no end and no beginning, and it is endless.How can it be so?Moreover, since this movement has no end, no beginning, and is endless, in such a long period of time, it has been going forward, making new and new ones every day, what will he achieve, and how will people know him?In traditional Chinese thinking, it seems that this movement is not a straight forward, but a cycle.But it is a cycle, so it is endless, and it has to be accomplished.And it can be known and understood by people. Let me give you an example, if life is bound to die, it is a cycle, a reciprocation.If there is no return, there is only life, not death.You try to imagine that in such an endless long period of time, life goes forward, always tends to be new, and never looks back. Isn't life boundless and knowledge boundless? Turning into life is boundless and knowledge is boundless ?How will this enable us to know what this life is all about?Not only will it be unknowable, it will also be unachievable.And we can't imagine how he can be so endless.Now life is following a path of reciprocation. After a certain period of time, there will be death, and after death, there will be new rebirth. This is the same thing again and again, and then to infinity.Infinite reciprocation, endless cycle, in this endless and unimaginable long time, because of the cycle, it can be divided into relatively short periods of time and repeated performances.Tens of years of life can show the approximate life process of hundreds of trillions of years.Only in this way can people know, and only in this way can life be accomplished.And in this endless reciprocating cycle, there is no end to it.Because although it is an endless long period without beginning and end, it is actually a reciprocating cycle going around in a short distance.

In terms of celestial phenomena, the cycle of celestial luck seems to be deified but in order.Like the coming of cold and the coming of summer, like the full moon, the length of day and night, everything can be counted and recorded.Therefore, there are so-called constancy and stillness in change.For example, a pendulum swings east and west. Although it is always swinging, you can also see that it is always stationary, because it is always in this swing, moving all the time, and cannot get out of this swing, and it is all to one side. Swing endlessly.Another example is a circle or a spiral. Although it is moving forward forever, it is not always moving forward. It is turning around the circle and turning back once in a while. Therefore, moving along the circle can also be called static. On this circular line, it does not go beyond this circle.

Anything that belongs to the circumference or amplitude must have a so-called center.In this one, it is not on the sides or outside, but inside.An oscillation, or a circular progress, does not stop at the middle, but the middle is always there, and it is always the middle without stopping.It seems that the middle is controlling the movement.The endless movement, without end, without beginning, seems to be under the control of that forever, and is all dominated by it.So to move is to be still, to change is to be constant.Under this concept, there is the so-called sex and life. Gao Zi said that the birth of nature is called nature, and Zen Buddhism says that it can see nature through action.But Confucianism wants to point out the nature of its cycle in this endless movement without end and beginning, saying that the beginning is nature.Confucians in Song and Ming Dynasties like to talk about the state of being undeveloped, to know and stop, to be quiet, to dominate, and to persevere, all for this reason.Song Confucianism also said that nature is reason, but refused to say that nature is qi, because qi is only movement, and reason is in that movement.If the pure energy is unreasonable, he will be like a runaway horse, and he does not know where he will go.The heaven and the earth will not become the heaven and the earth, and the characters will not become the characters, and everything will change in thousands of ways without explanation.The reason why there is this world and this person now is just because of the reason in the air.There is reason in the air, because it has permanence, from the inside, it speaks of nature, and from the outside, it speaks of destiny.From the active speech, we can talk about nature, and from the passive speech, we can talk about fate.In fact, this movement is the subject and the subject, the inside and the outside, indistinguishable, so life is only one source.It's all just this movement, but the meaning is different.

Therefore, we call this constant in variation, and in this continuous change, this one is more graspable and easier to recognize, and we call it goodness.Goodness is just a constant tendency in this momentum.Since it is a constant tendency, it always appears and continues in the process of change. All changes cannot be far away from him. Movement dominates.It seems that without such a master, all phenomena and changes would be impossible, so how could he not be kind?Those who are far away from him are considered evil.Goodness is in this movement, and evil is just the excess and the insufficiency.

Good and evil are originally used exclusively in the name of the human affairs world, separated from the human affairs world, there is no good or evil at all.Although the world of personnel and affairs is also ever-changing and does not live in the past, there is also a constant state and a middle ground.It is impossible to break away from this constant state and go straight forward.To give an example, peace and struggle are two forms of human affairs that are more overlapping each other.Often the cycle goes back and forth, from peace to struggle, and from struggle back to peace.There is a middle potential and a constant state.Struggle must be able to find peace, and peace must be able to resist struggle (that is, not be afraid of struggle).Therefore, peace close to struggle and struggle close to peace are both sustainable and can be called good.If there is a struggle that is far from peace, and peace that is far from struggle, they will be far from the center, and neither will be able to become a constant state and obtain its continuity.If this is the case, it is too much to go too far, and all can be called evil, and evil is only impermanent.The same goes for health and disease.Ordinarily, a healthy person looks like a disease-free person, but in fact, if there is no disease, how can metabolism be achieved.Metabolism is a disease that is not far from health.The same goes for work breaks.Too much rest to prevent work is evil and not good, and too much work to prevent rest is also evil and not good.But human minds generally think that life is positive, death is negative, peace is positive, struggle is negative, health and work are positive, and sickness and rest are negative.It is unavoidable to recognize that the positive is good and the negative is evil.But according to the above theory, the evil is only close to the good, and it is not evil.If the good is too far away from the evil, it is not good.

Mencius proposed that everyone has the heart of resignation as the basis for the theory of good nature, while Xunzi proposed that everyone has the heart of contention as the basis for the theory of evil nature. In fact, resignation is good, and contention is not evil.It is evil to compete and pass, and it is not good to give in and pass. Both theories have their own side.But resignation is positive, and contention is negative, but there is no negative, but it does not become positive, so negative is not evil, and sometimes positive is not good.This theory is explained more thoroughly in the book. "Yi" said: "One yin and one yang are called Dao, what follows is good, and what succeeds is nature." One yin and one yang are one negative and one positive, and the cycle goes back and forth, and it is good if it continues.Since then, the reciprocating cycle continues to form sex.We look backwards from the back, but it seems that sex is predestined. This is just a wrong view that human beings are prone to make.