Of All People, The Dirtiest One May Be Myself

Being born a human, I am sorry.

—Line from the film Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no Issho)

I have suffering because I have a body. Without this stinking skin-bag, I suppose I would not have to endure so many sins, nor commit so many evils. This is probably the shared heartfelt feeling of many people.

There is a Chinese idiom, qing zhu nan shu—"exhausting all the bamboo slips is still not enough to write it out." Qing means to exhaust; zhu are the bamboo slips on which the ancients wrote, something like today's writing paper. Qing zhu nan shu means a person's crimes are so grave that even using up all the bamboo slips cannot record them all.

In the Old Book of Tang, "Biography of Li Mi," there is a line: "Exhaust the bamboo of the Southern Mountain to write out his crimes and they are not ended; breach the waves of the Eastern Sea to wash away his wickedness and it is not washed clean." All this uses hyperbole to describe how innumerable a person's evils are.

If I search my own heart, I feel this phrase fits me quite well.

In my life I have done many bad things. If the standards of right and wrong of all people under heaven were pooled together, perhaps every single thing I have done would turn out to be quite bad. Why? Because each person's sense of right and wrong differs; many things a person does that seem reasonable to one person appear to another as a crime.

Ouyang Xiu wrote a famous couplet: "Of books, there are those I have not read; of deeds, there is none I could not speak of to others." Years ago I changed two characters in this couplet to describe myself: "Of books, there are many I have not read; of deeds, there are those I could not speak of to others." I dare not brag like that braggart Ouyang Xiu, claiming I have never done anything to be ashamed of.

I have done quite a few shameful things in my life, so I must admit that I am one of whom "there are deeds I could not speak of to others." Many of the wrongs I have done can only be kept as my private secret; if I laid them all bare to the public, I would be torn to bloody shreds, and that would not look good.

Now and then, when I see the lofty image of a sanctimonious public figure suddenly come crashing down in a scandal, I ask myself, on edge: "Could it be that one day I too will be disgraced and ruined like them? And what should I do if I am?"

Asking this again and again, I have figured it out: it is possible that I will be disgraced and ruined, so the best thing is never to be sanctimonious. If one day public opinion erupts and attacks me, painting me as utterly contemptible, believe me, gentlemen, it will surely be true. Although I also think I have done many good, helping things, because I cannot control myself, the wrongs I have committed are even more numerous.

In an essay I wrote a few days ago I mentioned that a teacher of mine in college once told me: "When a young person makes a mistake, even God will forgive." I am deeply ashamed, and have brought disgrace upon my school: not only did I err when young, but now that I am older I still err, and I imagine that when I am very old I shall probably still err. As a popular saying puts it so well: "It is not that the old have grown wicked, but that the wicked have grown old." When I err in my old age, I am a typical case of the wicked growing old.

So what should I do if one day I am disgraced and ruined? With a thick face I tell you all: I will go on living my own life as before—reading books, playing the qin, planting flowers and grasses, gathering medicinal herbs, treating illness, writing essays. Let you all point and judge; my heart will simply stand unmoved.

It is not that I am shameless: if guilty, I answer for the law; if innocent, I am released. If there are faults that do not quite amount to a crime, I face the wall and reflect on them, make amends and repent to those I have harmed, seeking their forgiveness—and that is enough. I do not think excessive punishment and self-punishment are necessary.

As the line I quoted at the very beginning says: "Being born a human, I am sorry." There are impulses and desires rooted deep in human nature that I wish to overcome but cannot; because of them I have done things that violate law and morality and harmed other people, and I willingly accept punishment.

But no one is a sage, and who can be without fault? Besides, to be honest, I have always doubted whether, from ancient times to today, there has truly ever been a faultless sage in this world.

As for you all, I think if you search your own hearts, you will probably feel the same. Who is completely, utterly clean?

The Japanese writer Osamu Dazai wrote words that deeply touch the heart, yet readers labeled him a leading writer of the Buraiha (Decadent) school, calling him decadent—but this man was, deep inside, utterly real and pure.

He and another Japanese writer, the physician-turned-author Junichi Watanabe, were both thinkers who had delved deep into human nature. Their writing is unpretentious, and I love to read it. Unfortunately, Dazai was simply too fragile; he fell into depression and took his own life.

I believe a person should have self-knowledge, and at the same time a bit of scoundrel-spirit. Among contemporary Buddhist masters, I love reading the writings of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche most of all. He is a man of self-knowledge who also has a bit of scoundrel-spirit, and who is embarrassingly candid.

Of course, to describe him this way, I must first apologize to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche himself and to his followers, because I may have used words they dislike to characterize him.

Whether in his lectures or his writings, Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche never forgets to tell his audiences and readers that although he encourages everyone to be a good person, his own moral standing is nothing to write home about. As a reader, I love his books, because he is candid and wise, and occasionally talks nonsense.

But to call on me, as a devotee, to regard him as my guru, take refuge in him, and become his follower—no, thank you; I would not do it even for a billion dollars, because I do not want to be anyone's follower, and have no wish at all for religious belief. The world is so beautiful; to make me love only this one thing called Buddhism is truly asking too much of me.

Chinese culture, or rather the whole of Eastern civilization, has a striking trait: it is "very moralistic." "Very moralistic" is the polite way of putting it; the impolite way is "piously hypocritical." The Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, and Mohist schools and the hundred philosophers are almost all like this. A hallmark of moralism is the wish to replace real human nature in the world with idealized human nature; this is plainly unrealistic and can only end in fakery.

The Japanese Nobel laureate Shuji Nakamura once attacked Asian education as a whole, calling the Asian educational system a "waste of time." He attributed the failure of Asian education to its being a Prussian-style system that stifles students' intellectual development.

I agree with his attack on the Asian educational system, but personally feel that the root cause of Asian education's failure probably has more to do with the deeply entrenched pious moralism of Eastern civilization.

Asian culture is first of all a rustic culture rooted in an agrarian society. To put it crudely, its greatest trait is face-saving; to put it less politely, it is hypocrisy. It is a culture utterly different from the polis culture of Greece. So when a plain-spoken Anglo-Saxon comes to a place like China, his first impression is that the Chinese are obsessed with face.

The American Arthur H. Smith spent half a century in China and wrote a well-known book, Chinese Characteristics. Its very first chapter is about how "face matters" to the Chinese. This idea that "face matters" originates in our "pious moralism."

Upholding the orthodox moral tradition (daotong) has been the shared striving of China's intellectuals from ancient times to today. We have preached "governing by virtue" for over two thousand years; the habit has become second nature, and we are still preaching it even now.

Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism are the enduring mainstream within the Chinese cultural sphere. All three are in fact pursuing "the rule of sage-kings," upholding the daotong, and trying to use the daotong to maintain the order of the world and people's hearts.

The Confucian way of inner sagehood and outer kingship, the Buddhist vow to "beautify the land and bring benefit and joy to all sentient beings," and the Daoist political ideal of purity and non-action—all are built on the foundation of making ordinary people spontaneously restrain the evil in human nature.

This subjective wish is very fine, but too naive, too idealistic. These aspirations have some effect: moral constraint on people's hearts is one important means of social governance, but it absolutely cannot be made the main means. Without question, external forces must be relied on to limit human evil.

Human civilization has developed to the point where the advantages of constitutionalism, democracy, and the rule of law in social governance are already very clear. Yet we still keep hoping that the daotong will make our social order better and make ordinary people do less evil and fewer wrongs—an effect that is far too limited.

Those who uphold the daotong wishfully believe that as long as they widely promote the set of ideas they themselves endorse, no one in the world will do evil.

Leaving aside whether such a wish can be realized, a human life is long, and whether the daotong-keepers themselves can, throughout their own lives, consistently uphold the daotong, conduct themselves honorably, and do every deed with a clear conscience is itself doubtful.

I sincerely believe that Ouyang Xiu's claim that "there is no deed one could not speak of to others" is words against his own conscience. Did Ouyang Xiu never do a disgusting thing? Personally I think it was unavoidable.

Even if such a moralist never did evil, to make every person in the world into this kind of highly self-disciplined moralist who at every moment curbs himself to return to propriety is a fool's dream, and very inhuman. People—it is normal to make a few mistakes. The price of never erring at all is too high.

For an era to have ten spotless sages is already quite enough. The multitude of mortals inevitably err, so governing by virtue can only be an adjunct to governing by law, and moral self-restraint can only be an adjunct to self-restraint through law and public-opinion supervision.

If one day I am disgraced and ruined, caught in a storm of public opinion, I will keep silent. But this silence will by no means be because of the Buddhist saying that "in right and wrong, non-debate is liberation."

As one of the multitude, I know full well that I have violated social rules in many ways, and I willingly accept the supervision of public opinion and the punishment of the law. Even if there are intemperate, fact-inaccurate remarks in that public opinion, it is my own doing, and I have no one to blame but myself.

If I were the only person on earth, or if everyone lived in complete isolation with no dealings with others, then tools like law and morality would be utterly unnecessary. If from birth I had lived alone on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe, and others still leveled all sorts of accusations at me, I could boldly answer them with a fart. Unfortunately I do not have that luxury; I live in society.

Tools for maintaining social order such as law and morality are useful precisely because people simply cannot exist completely apart from society. Since we must live together collectively, it is highly necessary to make moral and legal rules to restrain people's conduct, avoid violent conflicts between them, and maintain peace in the world.

As a member of society, mixed into society to make a living, I have unfortunately been unable to overcome the impulses and desires deep in my own nature, and have violated these rules that maintain social stability. That society punishes me is a perfectly fair thing.

The human world is beautiful precisely because good means of social governance maintain social order, doing their best to make people do less evil, fewer selfish things that harm others, and make disgusting events occur less often, so that everyone can live together in comfort.

I do not trust my own virtue very much, because the evils I have done in the past have already proved that I am a person who cannot rely on his own virtue to restrain his conduct. I trust more in a well-developed system of social governance that can make me do less evil.

We Asians spend far too much energy on "curbing ourselves," squandering splendid time. From childhood to adulthood, the subtle education we absorb is that of ritual; the technology of social governance evolves very slowly, and as a result society is governed unsatisfactorily, and everyone becomes a victim.

Even those who have done evil on a massive scale are victims too. If there were a better social environment for the prevention of crime, how would they ever have come to do such evil?

Mr. Yan Fu said: "The decline of Chinese customs begins in pretense and ends in shamelessness." Human beings, whose nature yearns for freedom and unconstraint, claiming that they can curb themselves and return to propriety, is outright hypocrisy, thoroughly false; that is why most moralists spend their whole lives speaking against their hearts, and in the end become shameless people.

In The Scholars, Elder Yu is a typical pious hypocrite: on one hand, he calls himself a follower of Confucius and Mencius, everywhere putting on airs of lofty principle and flying into righteous indignation whenever he speaks of things in society that violate ritual; on the other, he himself takes money in government offices, pulls strings for appointments, and destroys social justice. Yet such a man ends up actually becoming a moral exemplar.

We must admit that everyone needs external force, needs institutions, in order to be domesticated into a kind person who loves peace and is not quick to harm others. Perfecting the system of social governance and building a social environment with strong constraints on human evil is far more effective than urging each individual to cultivate his mind and nurture his nature.

The other harm of moralism is that it has existed for so long that it has hindered the development of humanitarianism and humanism, making society less humane. In our society it is hard to produce thinkers like Rousseau and Sartre, who, by analyzing human nature, arrived at a deep understanding and sympathy for it, developing a high spirit of tolerance and a rationality grounded in real human nature.

We blindly suppress human nature in pursuit of an unrealistic loftiness. Take our own Han Chinese Buddhism: even now it still regards suppressing the sexual desire everyone is born with as a mark of moral nobility. The result is, of course, a failure. If monks cannot curb their sexual desire, letting them follow nature and marry and have children would probably make their hearts more peaceful, and many religious sex-abuse scandals would occur less often.

Our customs likewise encourage absolute, foolish filial piety. In short, the evolution of our morality seriously lags behind the development of the times.

We habitually think of morality as a traditional thing, but in fact morality develops along with society. Whether a morality that does not develop with society is itself moral is a big question.

So I have self-knowledge: I know I am a dirty fellow who has done many bad things, and I know I am a person who may well go on doing evil. For this reason, I am very understanding and forgiving of other people's mistakes.

Of course, this does not mean I advocate less condemnation and punishment for myself or for them; on the contrary, I hope that wrongdoers receive all the punishment they deserve.

But at the same time I also earnestly hope that our system of social governance can be more perfected, that good institutions can restrain me and restrain those who, like me, cannot control themselves, so that we make fewer mistakes.

Finally I would like to end this essay with a passage that may be rather disgusting: realizing that one is a pile of shit may be more meaningful than realizing that others are a pile of shit. If a person can realize that he himself is a pile of shit, he will not be so picky toward others.