Holding on to it is like heartache, and looking at the flowers and grasses

Pu Yao Xue Palace

The original meaning of "flowers and plants do not matter good or evil" is to point out that talking about grass is useless and flowers are considerable apart from "conscience", and talking about benevolence and unkindness apart from the knowledge of right and wrong in the human heart is an illusion of putting the cart before the horse, and it is not helpful to seek good and evil, because they themselves "do not care about good and evil".

In the passage "Kan Between Flowers and Grasses" in the Transmission book, Wang Yangming and his disciple Xue Kan, when hoeing the grass between the flowers, caused a discussion on what is the standard of good and evil and good and evil because of the removal of grass and the retention of flowers.

Faced with the disciple's question of "what good is difficult to cultivate between heaven and earth, and evil is difficult to go to", Wang Yangming bluntly said that "untrained and not earless", and said that "the business of heaven and earth, flowers and plants, He once had good and evil."

On the surface, Wang Yangming seems to have abolished the objective moral content and completely incorporated the moral evaluation into himself. Considering the differences of individuals and the contingency of behavioral evaluations that deviate from objective moral standards, Wang Yangming's philosophy seems to inevitably be suspected of "moral relativism".

Answering the above questions requires us to return to the text itself of "Kan Between the Flowers". From the perspective of context, Xue Kan's problem rationale lies in the fact that he regards the principles (reasons) such as good and evil, right and wrong, etc. as objective norms that are divorced from the subject, and understands the "heart" of the subject as the cognitive mind, and then asks the question of the compatibility of the two.

In essence, the logic of the questioner is to regard good and evil, right and wrong, and other contents as objects to be "dealt with". However, in Wang Yangming's view, "there is no good or evil in things", if you set aside the artificial observation perspective, and from the perspective of heaven, things are separate, and there is no distinction between noble and inferior. The distinction between useful and useless only starts from people.

Based on this, When Wang Yangming answered the question "good and evil are all not in things", he said "only in the heart", thus circumventing the above idea of separating moral content from moral subjects. The pertinence here is not the difference in the perspective of observation, but rather the difference in the understanding of the mechanism of the emergence of good and evil.

In Xue Kan's view, the content of morality comes from the acquired nature, while Wang Yangming's "Only in the Heart of Ru" points out that the essence of morality is nothing more than the ability of the human heart to distinguish between good and evil, that is, the so-called "conscience" of "knowing is knowing right and wrong"; and the original meaning of "flowers and plants do not matter good and evil" is to point out that leaving aside "conscience" and talking about grass is useless and flowers are considerable, leaving aside the knowledge of right and wrong in the human heart and talking about benevolence and unkindness, which is an illusion of putting the cart before the horse, and is not conducive to seeking good and evil, because they themselves "do not care about good and evil" and are "not good or evil".

When Wang Yangming said, "There was good and evil in the world," he did not mean that there was no good or evil in the world, and that everything was relative and accidental; on the contrary, he clearly pointed out that "if you do not do good and evil, you will not have all good and evil." The implication is that when the so-called moral standards are discussed only on the basis of external objects ("devotion to things"), this approach itself becomes problematic when one departs from the real mechanism of the occurrence of good and evil.

From the perspective of the process of occurrence, since the specific contents such as non-good and evil are nothing more than a kind of "feedback" of people to the things they encounter, then the mechanism of this interaction inherently contains both ends of "mind" and "things", and looking at either end in isolation is not the end. In this way, giving up one's mind for one thing will be nothing; in the same way, giving up one's things in order to seek one's heart, or thinking that the "heart" can detach oneself from things and see oneself, is also a manifestation of not seeing the Tao.

Since truths such as right and wrong, good and evil, are the natural manifestations of the connection between mind and matter, why is it wrong that "the grass has hindrances, and it is advisable to go there"? Further, when you want to appreciate flowers, you feel that flowers are good and grass is evil; when you need to use grass, why do you think grass is good? In Wang Yangming's view, the right and wrong here are only related to people's temporary likes and dislikes ("all born of Ru xin likes and dislikes"), which can change at any time.

In other words, flowers and grasses have only a tool value relative to a specific scene. In this regard, Wang Yangming called it "private intention". Through the introduction of several groups of categories of "sincerity" and "selfish will", "(follow) reason" and "(moving) qi", "(rational) stillness" and "(qi) movement", Wang Yangming tried to distinguish two distinct mechanisms in the process of connecting the mind and things: one is the above feedback path of individual likes and dislikes; the other is the path of "not doing likes and dislikes" and "good and evil follow reason".

In Wang Yangming's view, the former path is the interference and damage of the latter path, and the former can only be presented by removing the former. "If you are angry and happy, you can't be right", so you change your temperament, remove your own selfishness, and adjust your body and mind to a state of high balance, so that you can return to the state of natural benign feedback when facing specific things, which is the so-called "essence of the mind"; and the presentation of its regulation program is the so-called "heavenly reason".

Wang Yangming's critique of individual likes and dislikes suggests that his philosophy is not relativism. Although, this defence has not been completed until now. If the dissolution of the contingent, relativistic qualities, is embodied in the critique of the instability of evaluation caused by the different intentions of "viewing flowers" and "using grass", then the establishment of this theory is related to the following point: after the elimination of the above-mentioned accidental likes and dislikes, there is a certain stable universal order.

However, judging from the original account of "Kan Away the Flowers and Grasses", the defense of the universal order does not appear. Rather, it exists as a tacit premise for both sides of the question and answer, and the disagreement of the dialogue unfolds only in the second sense, i.e., what is the specific way to attain that ideal state, whether it is "my mind is physics" or "reasoning outside"; whether "good and evil are in flowers and grasses" or "only in the heart".

Therefore, in Wang Yangming's view, "no good and no evil" and "supreme good" are not incompatible. On the contrary, today, when the premise of the above dialogue is lost, the center of gravity of interpretation is shifted and confused.

Leaving aside the "mind" of the subject, but only in terms of flowers and plants, things are not precious; and the ability of the human heart to distinguish between likes and dislikes is to use it to see, and to give it up is to hide. In Wang Yangming's philosophy, conscience can be real, not hypothesized.

In other words, in addition to the individuated likes and dislikes, everyone does have a universal and natural feedback mechanism, just like "lustful and stenchy", and there is indeed a natural right and wrong likes and dislikes, which is the so-called "sincerity", "heavenly reason", the so-called "essence of the heart". For example, in the context of "the widow entering the well", the "compassion" is the inadmissible tendency of man, just like the flow of water to a lower place, so it is also called "nature", and its process is completely intrinsic to the subject, not from the external force or the will of the acquired individual. Compassion is morally "good" and vice versa is not good; in Wang Yangming's view, this is essentially different from the evaluation of flowers and grasses when appreciating flowers and using grass.

One is "Ru xin is likes and dislikes", one is "heaven and reason are so, and the original intention is to do good and evil"; one is accidental and relative to the individual, and the other is inevitable and universal among the subjects. The former kind of likes and dislikes arise and disappear with the circumstances, and after removing this kind of selfish likes and dislikes, it is not the void of "no good and no evil", but another kind of likes and dislikes, that is, Wang Yangming's so-called "not doing likes and dislikes, not having no likes and dislikes at all, but being an ignorant person."

In this way, "not moving in the breath, that is, there is no good and no evil, is the supreme good." "No good and no evil" refers to the likes and dislikes that arise from one's own selfishness, while "nothing" is a negation of this mechanism; correspondingly, "supreme good" refers to "the unity of heaven and reason", which is the obedience or reversal of the natural mechanism itself.

In Wang Yangming's view, individual likes and dislikes out of "selfish intentions" vary from time to time, while right and wrong, good and evil out of "sincerity" are inevitable. The possibility of the latter kind of likes and dislikes occurring is universal to all people, a natural reaction to man's natural state, and also his ideal state or perfect state. "Saints" are an example of this.

In addition, as the "University" said, "if there is anger and happiness, it is not correct", and the elimination of selfish intentions is generally shared by both Confucian and Buddhist families, which is the origin of Xue Kan's question of "Buddha's family is not good or evil, why is it different". Wang Yangming replied: "The saint has no good and no evil, but has nothing to do, nothing to do evil, and nothing to be moved by qi." However, if you follow the way of the king, you will have the ultimate, and you will follow the heavenly principles and have a cut into a complement. ”

After removing the likes and dislikes of selfish intentions, what the Buddha saw still did not come out of his own consciousness, "everything does not matter"; in Wang Yangming's view, what Confucians saw was that people and all things felt the same way, and likes and dislikes naturally appeared. "My mind is physics", the principle revealed in various situations is that the mind is the "heart", and in terms of its "dominant" meaning, it can be said to be "the great foundation of the world".

Not only that, but people also participate in the process of the operation of heaven and earth, "the grass has obstacles, it is reasonable to go, just go", which is the so-called "cutting into a complement". Unlike Foshi, in Wang Yangming's view, these participating activities (hoeing grass) are not harmful to people ("tired hearts"), but the embodiment of people as human beings.

It can be seen that Wang Yangming's philosophy with "heart" as the key word is not moral relativism; on the contrary, thinking about the universal moral order is its core concern. Further, this concern is intrinsically linked to larger order-buildings such as "Counsellor Heaven and Earth" and "Rule the World."