Chapter 5 Four Heavens

It is a fairly common belief that the way of heaven is good, and its manifestations take many forms.It is the most superficial form to believe in gods and ghosts, to preside over karma in secret, to reward good and punish evil. "The great virtue of heaven and earth is life", "the emperor has no relatives, but virtue is a supplement", "the way of heaven has no relatives, and is always with good people" are another form.Although such a way of heaven is close to a will, it does not necessarily have an anthropomorphic image. It can also be more abstract, expressed as a view of cosmology, that is, no matter how large and complex the world we live in, its journey always tends to a predetermined purpose. Such a journey is not as natural as flowing water. Going down, but selectively moving towards a valuable, supreme and good state, so neither the universe as a whole nor the various activities of life are meaningless.

There are ghosts and gods who preside over justice, but few people believe it now, so I won’t talk about it here.The emperor is happy, isn't it so?It is naturally not easy to prove that this is not the case, but a large number of facts make us doubt this idea.As far as the phenomenon of life is concerned, what we often see is that the strong eat the weak, and the big fish eat the small fish; natural disasters, infinite life can be extinct at the same time; .As for "virtue is the only supplement", "always be with good people" and so on, the facts are obviously not the case.Therefore, many people raised questions in the past. For example, a passage in Yang Jie's "Luoyang Jialan Ji" is clear and painful: "In the past, Guangwu was ordered, the ice bridge was frozen in the creek, and in the middle of Zhao Lie, Lu jumped in the mud. The ditch is all in harmony with the sky, blessed by the gods, so it can benefit the universe and shelter the people. If (Erzhu) the omen, the bee eyes the jackal sound, the poor owl and the owl, hinder the soldiers and endure, and the thieves harm the king and relatives , The emperor's spirit knew, learned from his fierce virtues, and instead made Meng Jin kneel and praised his rebellious heart. "Yi" said that the way of heaven is evil, and ghosts and gods are blessed and humble. This is a test, and the belief is false."

In the world, doing good can lead to misfortune, but it is not impossible to obtain blessings. No matter what, it is still a little dust in the universe, which can be left alone.As for the question of the direction of the whole "existence", it is huge and far-reaching, and it is not easy to say exactly what is or is not.Teleologists believe that the process of the universe as a whole has value and meaning, and if that is the case, that's fine too.But after repeated thinking, people always feel that the source of this kind of wishful thinking is hope and belief, and it is difficult to make it impeccable.

It's hard to make sense, the main reason is that the way of heaven is difficult to understand, and we have to force ourselves to know what we don't know.The whole nature of Being, of what it is, how it came, how it went, why, and so on, has until now been largely unknown to us.Some people, mostly philosophers or religious men, do not want to be content with ignorance, still less with the futility of life, so they ponder and search hard, and finally come up with some explanations that seem to be justified; , but the problem is that this is a subjective guess, which cannot be verified by facts.And no reason why it must be so and not something else can be given.Because I can't give a reason why it can only be so, so often a hundred people have a hundred kinds of ideas. Of course, they can't all be right, and the biggest possibility is that none of them is right, because sitting in a well and meditating on the vastness of the world, as Zou Yan's disciples said. Because, fortunately, there may be none.

The way of heaven is hard to understand, and if you don't know what you think you know, the result is of course that no matter how hype you say, it's just scratching your head.However, here we might as well take a step back and think, assuming that the wishful thinking that the way of heaven is good is desirable, can we accept it with peace of mind?It seems that there are still difficulties, because we still have some doubts.First, regardless of whether the so-called Dao of Heaven has will or no will, since the purpose is to tend to the highest and best state, then, in the order of time (assuming that things develop and change in the order of time, as we perceive Na Xiang), if we arbitrarily intercept two paragraphs and compare them, we can always clearly see that the latter paragraph is higher and better than the first paragraph, but this is difficult to measure and distinguish.Second, if human morality is connected with the Dao of Heaven, and the Dao of Heaven should be impossible, then, wouldn’t it be better for it to permeate goodness everywhere and rule everything?But the fact is that there is a great deal of evil. Why?Third, the way of heaven is good, and the highest and best state must be gradually realized in an infinitely long time. It is difficult to understand the truth that it takes so much trouble.

In addition, there is another big question, that is, can the so-called goodness of human beings really be extended beyond human beings, and be used as a standard for evaluating everything, and even the entire "existence" must be believed and practiced?I think.If someone actually thinks this way, he must be suffering from a megalomaniac, not to mention the whole "existence", let's limit it to the ground, for example, man invented insecticides and fungicides, which saved many lives, of course. It can be regarded as good, but if it is not in the position of a person, but in the position of insects and bacteria, whether it is good or evil becomes a problem.Pushing it beyond the ground, the distinction between good and evil becomes even more elusive. For example, the Milky Way rotates but does not stand still, and a large number of stars in it are also born and passed away, so that the entire universe is "existing" instead of "nothing". This is good. , or evil?Obviously can't tell.

We are born as human beings, and it is inevitable to gossip from the standpoint of human beings, but if we want to talk about the general truth, including other things, we should keep our eyes open and calm.In this way, we can easily understand that the so-called good and evil are a set of concepts that human beings use to evaluate things (strictly speaking, they should be evaluating human behavior) based on themselves, and it is unfeasible to push them outside of human life.When it comes to the origin of good and evil, it is actually very simple. It is just that people are born with "desires".Human beings enjoy life, so they regard everything that can benefit life as good.Human beings are afraid of death, so they regard everything that can avoid death as good; the evaluation of other things such as food, clothing, housing and transportation is no more than this.Some people may think of a more fundamental problem here, namely the value of "desire".Of course it’s hard to say, what you want is a matter of course, whether you welcome it or not, it’s just a fait accompli, what can you do except accept it yourself!As mentioned earlier, some people are not satisfied with the futility of life. This is because they want to find a theoretical backing for "desire" and all its derivatives, so as to prove that all kinds of trivial matters in human affairs are reasonable and reasonable.This kind of intention is understandable, and if there is something to gain, it may not be useless. For example, the "Tian Xingjian, a gentleman strives for self-improvement" in the "Yi" is such a category.But this kind of comprehension is nothing more than a metaphysical belief in the final analysis. It may be very useful to use it for self-pity or self-deception. If you think that this is the truth and cannot be changed, it is no different from believing in ghosts and gods.Therefore, thinking about the question of how the way of heaven is square, we thought it would be better to say that the way of heaven is far away, the way of humanity is near, life is limited, and manpower is limited, so we'd better not give up the near and seek the far.