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Your letter says: 'Innate knowledge is the mind's substance — nature-good, the equilibrium before arousal, the still unmoving substance, vast impartiality. Why can no ordinary person do it, that learning is required? If equilibrium, stillness and impartiality belong to the mind's substance, they are innate knowledge. Testing on my mind: the knowing is never not good; yet equilibrium, stillness and vast impartiality are truly not there. Does innate knowledge then stand outside substance and function?'

Nature being never not good, the knowing is never not good. Innate knowledge is the equilibrium before arousal, the vast impartial still unmoving substance, commonly possessed by all. Only, it cannot escape dimming by thing-desire, hence learning to strip the dimming; yet of innate knowledge's own substance not a hair can be added or taken. Knowing never not good, while equilibrium, stillness and impartiality are incomplete — the dimming not all removed, the preserving not yet pure. The substance being innate knowledge's substance, the function is innate knowledge's function — what room for anything outside substance and function?

Your letter says: 'Zhou said abide in stillness; Cheng said settled in movement, settled in stillness; you say settledness is the mind's substance. This still-settledness is surely not not-seeing, not-hearing, no-thought, no-doing; it must be ever-knowing, ever-preserving, ever-abiding in principle. Ever-knowing and abiding is plainly movement, already-aroused — why call it still? Why the original substance? Does something beyond stillness thread through the mind's movement and rest?'

Principle does not move. Ever-knowing, ever-preserving, ever-abiding in principle is precisely not-seeing, not-hearing, no-thought, no-doing. That is not withered wood and cold ashes: seeing, hearing, thinking, doing at one with principle, yet never really seeing, hearing, thinking, doing — moving, yet never moved. That is settled in movement, settled in stillness, substance and function one source.

Your letter says: 'This mind's not-yet-aroused substance — before the already-aroused? Or amid the aroused as their master? Or without before-or-after, inner-or-outer, one seamless whole? And when we say movement and stillness, is it of having-affairs or none? Of stillness-versus-penetrating-response? Of following principle or following desire? If following principle is stillness and desire movement, then movement holding stillness, stillness holding movement, movement at extremity passing into stillness and stillness into movement will not parse. If responding amid affairs is movement and quiet without affairs stillness, then moving yet not moving, still yet not still will not parse. If the not-yet-aroused precedes the aroused, stillness begetting movement, then utmost sincerity has cessation and the sage a recovering — wrong again. If the not-yet-aroused lies within the aroused, do both abide in stillness? Or is the not-yet-aroused still and the aroused moving? Or neither moving nor still, or both? Pray instruct.'

The equilibrium before arousal is innate knowledge: no before-or-after, inner-or-outer, one seamless whole. With-affairs and without can be called moving and still; innate knowledge divides not between them. Stillness and penetrating-response can be called moving and still; innate knowledge divides not between them. Movement and stillness are the times one meets; the mind's substance divides not between them. Principle does not move; to move is desire. Following principle, one engages ten thousand changes yet never moves; following desire, one sits in dead quiet with a single thought yet never is still. Movement holding stillness, stillness holding movement — where is the doubt? Response amid affairs may be called movement, yet the still is never thereby augmented; quiet without affairs may be called stillness, yet the responding is never thereby diminished. Moving yet not moving, still yet not still — where is the doubt? No before-or-after, one seamless whole: the doubt over utmost sincerity's ceasing dissolves unbidden. The not-yet-aroused is within the aroused, yet the aroused never harbor a separate not-yet-aroused; the aroused are within the not-yet-aroused, yet the not-yet-aroused never store a separate aroused. There is never lack of movement and stillness — but they cannot be cut apart by movement and stillness.

In reading the ancients, meet the intent and take the great purport; cleave to the letter and no man left would mean Zhou truly had no survivors. Zhou's stillness-at-extremity-begetting-movement, badly read, is also faulty. It comes from the Great Ultimate moving begets yang, still begets yin. The Ultimate's life-begetting principle, wondrous-working without rest, its constant substance unchanging. The Ultimate's life-begetting is yin-and-yang's life-begetting. Within that life-begetting, pointing to the wondrous unresting, call it movement, yang's birth — not that movement then births yang; pointing to the constant unchanging, call it stillness, yin's birth — not that stillness then births yin. Were yin truly born after stillness and yang after movement, yin-yang, movement-stillness would be two things cut apart. Yin and yang are one breath, one breath folding and stretching into yin and yang; movement and stillness are one principle, one principle hiding and showing as movement and stillness. Spring and summer may be yang and movement, yet never lack yin and stillness; autumn and winter yin and stillness, yet never lack yang and movement. The unresting of spring-summer and of autumn-winter may all be called yang, called movement; the constant substance of both may all be called yin, called stillness. From aeon, epoch, cycle and age down through year, month, day and hour to the mark, the moment, the flicker, the mote — all is so. Movement and stillness without beginning, yin and yang without start: who knows the Way holds it silently — words cannot exhaust it. Tug at phrases and copy likenesses, and it is the mind turned by the Lotus Sutra, not turning the Lotus.

Your letter says: 'Testing on my mind: joy, anger, worry, fear may flare to the utmost, yet one awakening of innate knowledge and they melt away — checked at the first, mastered midway, repented after. So innate knowledge seems to preside from some place of idle leisure, uninvolved in joy, anger, worry and fear. Why is that?'

Know this, and you know the equilibrium before arousal, the still unmoving substance, with the harmony of due-measure and the marvel of stirred-and-penetrating. But to say innate knowledge dwells apart in leisure is still faulty language. Though innate knowledge is not lodged in joy, anger, worry and fear, joy, anger, worry and fear are not outside innate knowledge.

Your letter says: 'Yesterday you made innate knowledge the mirroring mind. I should have thought innate knowledge the mind's substance, the mirroring mind the work man applies — the vigilant, fearful mind, as it were a thinking; why then make vigilance and fear innate knowledge?'

That which can be vigilant and fearful is innate knowledge.

Your letter says: 'You say the mirroring mind does not move — is it called still because it follows principle? And the deluded mind also mirrors — is it because innate knowledge is never absent or unlit within it, so that seeing, hearing, speech and action within the norm are all heavenly principle? But if it is called deluded, then in the deluded mind it may be called mirroring, and in the mirroring mind, deluded. How does delusion differ from cessation? Borrowing the deluded mind's mirroring to continue utmost sincerity's unceasing — I do not understand; instruct me again.'

The mirroring mind does not move: it issues from the natural bright awareness of the substance, never moved; once moved, it is delusion. The deluded mind also mirrors: the substance's natural bright awareness is never absent within it, only there is movement; without movement it is mirroring. No-delusion, no-mirroring does not mean taking delusion as mirroring or mirroring as delusion. Mirroring as mirroring and delusion as delusion still leaves delusion and mirroring present; present, there is doubleness; doubled, it ceases. No-delusion, no-mirroring is undoubled; undoubled, unceasing.

Your letter says: 'Nourishing life takes a clear mind and scant desire as the essential. With clear mind and scant desire, the work of sage-making is complete. Yet desire scant, the mind clears of itself. Clearing the mind does not mean quitting human affairs to dwell alone seeking quiet; it means making this mind pure in heavenly principle without a hair of private desire. Now to do this work, mastering desire as it springs, leaves the root of sickness ever there — quenched in the east, sprouting in the west. To sweep the desires before they sprout leaves nowhere to apply strength and only muddies the mind. And to ferret out desires not yet sprouted in order to remove them is leading the dog into the hall and then chasing it out — worse still.'

To will this mind pure in heavenly principle without a hair of private desire is precisely the work of sage-making. And that cannot be done except by guarding before the sprouting and mastering at the moment of sprouting. Guarding before and mastering at the moment is exactly the Mean's vigilance and fear and the Learning's extension and investigation — beyond this there is no other work.

As for springing in the west when quenched in the east, leading the dog in and chasing it out — those are the encumbrances of self-serving, of forestalling and presuming, not faults of mastering and sweeping. To say nourishing life takes a clear mind and scant desire: the two words nourishing life are themselves the root of self-serving, forestalling and presuming. With that root lurking within, no wonder the quench-in-the-east, dog-in-the-hall troubles appear.

Your letter says: 'The Buddhists say: not thinking good, not thinking evil, know the original face — differing from our Confucian work of following things and correcting. If at the time of not-thinking-good-and-evil I apply the work of extension, I am already involved in thinking good. For good and evil unthought and innate knowledge clear and at ease, there is only the moment of waking from sleep — Mencius's night breath. But the scene does not last; in a flash thought is born. Do veterans of the work abide in that first waking, thought not yet risen? Now I seek stillness and grow less still; seek thoughts unborn and they teem the more. How make the former thoughts die easily, the later not arise, innate knowledge alone shining, roaming companion to the Creator?'

Not-thinking-good-and-evil to know the original face is the Buddhists' expedient for those who do not know their original face. The original face is what our school calls innate knowledge: once innate knowledge is clearly known, such talk is spent.

Following things and correcting is the work of extension — the Buddhists' ever-alert, ever-preserving their original face. The frame of the work is much alike; but the Buddhists carry a self-serving heart, and there lies the difference. To will good-and-evil unthought while innate knowledge rests clear is itself the self-serving, forestalling, presuming heart — hence the trouble that applying extension already thinks good. Mencius's night breath only pointed, for those who had lost the good mind, to where it stirs, that they might nurture it from there. Now that innate knowledge is clearly known and the work of extension constantly applied, night breath need no longer be spoken. It is having caught the hare yet leaving it to guard the stump — the hare will bolt again. Seeking stillness, seeking thoughts unborn: that very seeking is the disease of self-serving and presumption, hence thoughts teem the more and stillness recedes. Innate knowledge is one innate knowledge, itself discerning good and evil — what good and evil remain to think? Its substance is still of itself, and you add a seeking of stillness; quick with life of itself, and you add a willing of no-life. Not only does the school's work of extension not do so — even the Buddhists do not thus forestall and presume. One thought of innate knowledge, head to tail, without beginning or end, is former thoughts undying and later thoughts unborn. To will former thoughts easily dead and later unborn is the Buddhists' extinct seed-nature, withered wood and cold ashes.

Your letter says: 'The Buddhists also speak of ever-lifting the thought — is that not Mencius's always-having-the-task, your extension of innate knowledge? The ever-alert, ever-mindful, ever-knowing, ever-preserving? While the thought is lifted and affairs arrive, there must be a way to meet them. Only, the thought is lifted little and dropped much, and the work breaks off. The dropping mostly begins with the stir of private desire and temperamental energy; waking with a start, one lifts it again; in the gap between dropped and lifted, the mind's murk goes unremarked. To grow daily finer and brighter, ever lifted and undropped — by what way? Is this ever-lifting the whole work? Or within it should examination and mastery be added? Ever-lifted without vigilance and mastery, private desire will not go; with vigilance and mastery added, it becomes thinking-good, a room away from the original face. What is to be done?'

Vigilance and mastery are the work of ever-lifting, are the always-having-the-task — where are two things in it! The first half of your question was already answered clearly; the latter half spins confusion of itself, spoken in fragments. And the doubt of being a room away from the original face — all of it is the disease of self-serving, forestalling and presuming. Remove that disease and the doubt goes with it.

Your letter says: 'Of fine endowment, when illumination is complete the dross melts wholly away. What is illumination complete? How does the dross wholly melt?'

Innate knowledge is bright of itself. The ill-endowed, dross-heavy and thickly veiled, are not easily opened. The finely endowed have little dross, thin veiling: touch them with the work of extension and innate knowledge flashes crystal-clear; the little dross is snow afloat on boiling soup — what screen can it make? This is not hard to see; your doubt here, I think, hangs on the single word bright, with a touch of the hunger for haste. We once discussed face to face the sense of understanding goodness: bright, then sincere — not the shallow understanding-goodness of later scholars.

Your letter says: 'Are intelligence and wisdom truly inborn endowment? Are humaneness, rightness, propriety, wisdom truly nature? Joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure — truly feeling? Are private desire and temperamental energy one thing or two? The great talents of old — Zhang Liang, Dong Zhongshu, Huang Xian, Zhuge Liang, Wang Tong, Han Qi, Fan Zhongyan — their virtue illustrious, all issuing from innate knowledge, yet not to be called hearers of the Way: where exactly do they fall short? If it is merely fineness of endowment, do the born-knowing surpass the learning-and-striving? I venture that to say their seeing of the Way was partial is fair; to say they wholly missed it is, I fear, the fault of later scholars' worship of recital and gloss. Is that so?'

Nature is one. Humaneness, rightness, propriety, wisdom are nature's nature; intelligence and wisdom, nature's endowment; joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure, nature's feelings; private desire and temperamental energy, nature's veil. Endowment is clear or turbid, hence feeling errs past or short and the veil lies thin or thick. Desire and temper are one sickness with two aches, not two things. Zhang Liang, Dong Zhongshu, Huang Xian, Zhuge Liang, Han Qi, Fan Zhongyan — all of finest natural endowment, much unconsciously according with the subtlety of the Way; one cannot wholly call them knowers of the learning or hearers of the Way, yet theirs was a learning of its own, not far from the Way; had they heard the learning and known the Way, they had been Yi Yin, Fu Yue, the Duke of Zhou, Duke Shao. As for Wang Tong, he can by no means be called ignorant of learning: his book, though largely from disciples' hands and often at fault, shows its broad outline plainly; only, the distance is now so great, with no certain proof, that his attainment cannot be judged from mid-air. Innate knowledge is the Way. In the human heart — not the sage's only, every person's without exception — were there no dragging veil of thing-desire, flowing simply along innate knowledge's working, nothing would not be the Way. But the many are dragged and veiled and cannot follow it. Men of such endowment, clear from birth, little veiled by desire — innate knowledge's working flows wide in them, and they stand not far from the Way. The learner learns to follow this innate knowledge; knowing the learning means knowing to work solely at following it. These men, not knowing to work solely at innate knowledge — some scattered among branching paths, some lost among shadows and echoes — were now apart, now conjoined, never pure. Had they known, they were sages. Later scholars say these men still acted from temperament, acting without penetration, practicing without awareness — no overstatement. But the later scholars' penetration and awareness, itself penned in narrow hearsay, veiled by inherited error, aping and miming among shadows and traces, is not the school's penetration and awareness. With one's own self dim, how demand brightness of others? As for born-knowing-acting-at-ease: the very words knowing and acting are said of applying effort; of the original substance of knowing and acting they are innate knowledge and innate ability — even in those who strive through hardship, all may be called born-knowing and acting-at-ease. The two words merit fine examination.

Your letter says: 'Zhou Maoshu used to set Bochun to seek where Confucius and Yan Hui found joy. Is that joy the same as the joy of the seven feelings? If the same, then any common man gratified would know it — why need sages? If a true joy apart, does it survive the sage's meetings with great grief, great anger, great alarm, great fear? And the noble heart ever vigilant — that is lifelong anxiety: where is joy in it? My life has been mostly gloom; I have never tasted true joy, and now I earnestly seek it.'

Joy is the mind's original substance. Unlike the joy of the seven feelings, it is yet not outside them; though sages have a true joy of their own, it is what all people commonly have — only, having it, they do not know it, and instead heap themselves woe and seek it afar, burying and forsaking it. Even amid woe and self-forsaking, this joy never fails to be there: one thought opening bright, turning back on oneself in sincerity — and it is at hand. Every discussion with you, Yuanjing, has been just this; and still you ask by what way it may be had — the veil of riding an ass while searching for an ass.

Your letter says: 'The Great Learning counts fondness, anger, anxiety and fear in the heart as loss of rectitude, and Chengzi too says the sage's feelings follow the myriad affairs yet are no feelings. Of the having, your Record's malaria figure is exact and fine. But Chengzi's words make the sage's feelings born not of the mind but of things — how so? When affairs stir and feeling answers, right and wrong can be set right in the affair; but before affairs stir, to say the feelings are there — nothing yet formed; to say not there — the root hovers between being and non-being: how then extend my knowledge? To strive for feeling-lessness lightens the burden but crosses out of Confucianism into Buddhism — is that permissible?'

The sage's work of extension is utmost sincerity unceasing. His innate knowledge's substance is bright as a mirror without a film: beauty and ugliness coming take shape as they are, and the mirror keeps no stain — feelings following the myriad affairs, yet none clung to. Arousing the mind while dwelling nowhere — the Buddhists said it, and not wrongly. The mirror mirroring things: the fair fair, the foul foul, one gleam all true — there is the arousing of the mind; the fair fair, the foul foul, passing and not staying — there is the dwelling nowhere. The malaria figure having served so well, this question too may rest. The malaria sufferer between fits still carries the root: can he, because the fit is quiet, forget the medicine and regimen? To wait for the fit before dosing is too late. The work of extension knows no with-affairs or without — where would it discuss the illness broken out or not? Your doubts, Yuanjing, various as they seem, all arise from the haunting of self-serving, forestalling and presumption: root that out and the doubts melt like ice and lift like fog, with no need of question and answer.

Qian Dehong's postscript: When the reply to Yuanjing appeared, readers all praised Yuanjing's questioning and the master's answering — hearing what they had never heard. The master said: 'Yuanjing's questions only turn on intellectual construction; I perforce untangled them section by section. Trust innate knowledge, work at it alone, and the thousand classics and ten thousand canons all accord — one probe and heterodoxy and twisted learning shatter. Why such section-by-section analysis! The Buddhists have the figure of the dog that bites men: strike the dog that bites and you have the thing itself; chase the stone it chases, and what have you gained of the stone?' All friends present started into wakefulness. This learning prizes turning back to seek within; intellection cannot enter it.