I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 19: Conscience and Unity of Knowledge and Action
Lu Zhi was surprised by Yuan Shu's sharp criticism of his own family, but after thinking about it carefully, he felt that what Yuan Shu said made sense.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Confucian scholars were full of vitality. In order to explore the ideal goal of governing the country and pacifying the world, they constantly put forward various theories and put them into practice, which really gave people a sense of brilliance.

But what about now?
Prophecies and divinations are mysterious and profound things, and are closely intertwined with theories of gods and ghosts. This is clearly what Confucius was most wary of.

They are scheming and use knowledge as a stepping stone to become officials and gain power. They do not study for the sake of furthering their studies, but only for the sake of becoming officials and gaining power, thereby exploiting the people and seeking profit for themselves.

The court is filled with corruption and shady dealings are rampant at the local level. All I see are people with wicked hearts and bad consciences. How can they be regarded as disciples of the saints?

The poor cannot endure desolation, and the rich cannot enjoy their work.

The poor live in hardship, but they also want to be rich and cannot be content with poverty.

It is not enough for the rich to be rich and noble, they want to be even richer and nobler. Being even richer and nobler is not enough, they want to be even richer and nobler!

What is the point of being rich and powerful?
Even if you have a huge fortune and vast fertile land, what can it do in the end?

What is even more terrifying is that this situation directly accelerates the gap between the rich and the poor, making it impossible for the poor to survive. As a result, the only way left for them is to rebel.

The current situation of the Han Dynasty is exactly the same as what Yuan Shu said!
Lu Zhi took a deep breath, suppressed the shock in his heart, and stared at Yuan Shu.

"Mr. Yuan has such profound views at such a young age. I admire him! Now that Mr. Yuan has seen this, have you ever thought about how to deal with such a situation?"

"I thought about it."

"How?"

“Become a saint.”

Yuan Shu said slowly: "It's those four words, becoming a saint."

"To become a saint..."

Lu Zhi was confused and asked, "Let's not talk about how to become a sage, is it enough to become a sage?"

Yuan Shu nodded.

"Because in order to rebuild the spiritual foundation that has collapsed, a saint-like figure needs to stand up, win the respect and trust of the people, and rebuild the spiritual foundation for the people, and lead them to start again. All this requires a saint."

"This……"

Lu Zhi looked stunned, frowned and thought hard for a long time, but still couldn't find a solution.

"How to become a sage? Who is a sage? And as Yuan Jun said, the ideals of Confucian students have collapsed. Self-discipline and restoration of propriety are impossible to achieve. So how can we rebuild it?"

“If you want to rebuild your spiritual foundation, you must know how you lost the spiritual foundation you once lost.”

Yuan Shu laughed and said, “Confucius believed that the collapse of rituals and music and the chaos in the world were due to the loss of the order of Zhou rituals. As long as we return to the system of Zhou rituals, everything will be fine. So he sought the way to restrain oneself and restore rituals. By the time of Wang Mang, all Confucian scholars in the world knew that restraining oneself and restoring rituals was impossible.

Confucius' ideal has been shattered and cannot be realized. The world cannot return to peace and prosperity by restraining itself and returning to propriety. Therefore, we must seek a completely new path to restore peace and prosperity to the world and thereby rebuild our spiritual foundation.

To make the world stable, to provide for the elderly and the young, to eliminate starvation, to prevent bullying and evildoing, these beautiful ideals are what we all pursue, but how to pursue and realize them is the most direct question. Now we know that self-denial and restoration of propriety will not work. "

"Then how can we do that?"

Lu Zhi was completely moved and asked hurriedly: "Restraining oneself and returning to propriety is not okay, not seeing each other until death is not okay, and ruling the country by law is not okay, so, loving all and not attacking? Is loving all and not attacking okay?"

“I don’t know because no one in power has ever put it into practice.”

Yuan Shu smiled and said, "Mr. Lu, I am only ten years old and have not experienced many things. If you expect to get a method that you can use from me now, then who am I? A natural saint?"

Lu Zhi was in a trance for a while, and suddenly realized that the person sitting upright in front of him was a little boy, not an old man with white hair and a long beard.

It was just that the boy's eyes were too sharp, and his mind too quick and detached, that he inadvertently regarded him as a mentor.

So he couldn't help but laugh at himself.

"That's right. Yuan Jun is still a virgin, but I asked you so many questions. This... hehe... Yuan Jun, please don't be offended."

"of course not."

Yuan Shu shook his head and said, "It is easy to find the problem, and it is not too difficult to find the root of the problem. It is relatively difficult to find a solution to the problem, and the most difficult thing is to put it into practice. I have only reached the third step and have not yet passed it, so I cannot tell Mr. Lu what the solution is."

Lu Zhi smiled bitterly when he heard this.

"Yuan Jun is still very young, but he has already reached the third step. I am sixteen years older than Yuan Jun, but I haven't even completed the second step..."

"Mr. Lu, don't be upset. There are many people in this world who haven't even taken the first step. Mr. Lu has already taken the first step and started to take the second step. This is already very good. Compared with those who seem to be seeking knowledge but are actually seeking land and houses, Mr. Lu is the future pillar of the country."

Hearing Yuan Shu say this, Lu Zhi felt extremely ashamed.

"How can someone like me be considered a pillar of the country? If I know the results but not the reasons, what good will it do even if I hold a high position? Mr. Yuan, what do you think?"

Yuan Shu thought about it and smiled.

"Of course I understand what Mr. Lu is worried about, but you have to eat one bite at a time and walk one step at a time. Mr. Lu, I heard that if you want to save others, you must first save yourself. If you haven't been saved yourself, how can you save others and the country?"

"If you want to save others, you must first save yourself..."

Lu Zhi murmured, "How can I save myself? Yuan Jun, have you ever thought about it?"

"I think it should be... to one's conscience."

Yuan Shu took a deep breath and said loudly: "Draw the right conclusion and do the right thing to achieve the unity of knowledge and action, reshape the human spirit, and thus save yourself."

"To follow conscience? To unite knowledge and action?"

Lu Zhi frowned and muttered, "Mencius said that what people can do without learning is their innate ability, and what they know without thinking is their conscience. Mr. Yuan, is this what you mean by conscience?"

Yuan Shu nodded. "That's it. What you know without learning is the instinct that people need to survive. What you know without thinking is the most authentic conscience of human beings."

"So, to reach conscience... If I remember correctly, it should be in the "Xiao Dai Li" that the reaching of knowledge is to investigate things, right?"

"Yes."

"So...what is the meaning of the unity of knowledge and action?"

“When what you know and what you do become one, it is the unity of knowledge and action.”

Yuan Shu said slowly: "When a person is hungry, he wants to eat. This is knowledge. Going to eat is action. Just like when you feel cold, you need to put on clothes. When you feel hot, you need to take off clothes. When you feel sleepy, you need to sleep. When you feel unwell, you need to see a doctor. This is the most basic unity of knowledge and action.

These are all things that everyone can do to achieve unity of knowledge and action. If you can't even do these, then your life will be in danger. So it's not worth mentioning. What's worth thinking about is, when you see the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled being bullied, what is conscience? What is the thing that you know you need to do without thinking? "

"Of course I'll help...I see."

Lu Zhi seemed to have figured something out, and said slowly: "Mr. Yuan, what you mean is that everyone can have a simple conscience, but not everyone can have a deeper conscience. For example, some people are afraid to help the elderly, the weak, and the disabled."

"Exactly that."

Yuan Shu nodded and said, "This is even more true in the officialdom. If you have to bribe your superiors to get a chance to be promoted, will you do it or not? If your superiors instruct you to do something illegal and will target you if you don't do it, will you do it or not?"

"This is a really big problem..."

Lu Zhi sighed, "Of course, I can't do these things, but I'm in the officialdom and I have no choice. If I refuse, my future will be ruined and my family will be threatened. I'm afraid that there are more people who do these things than those who don't."

"This is where the difficulty lies. That is why we need to appeal to our conscience."

Yuan Shu said: "Only by solving this problem and allowing people to act according to their conscience can we truly improve the current situation."

"So what should we do?"

Lu Zhi hurriedly said, "To acquire knowledge, one must study things... Does that mean that one must study things to acquire conscience? Then, how should one do it? How can one be considered to study things? Mr. Yuan, do you know?"

Xiao Dai Li was also a member of the Modern Literature School. Lu Zhi had only read it when he was reading a lot of books, but he had never understood it in depth. Naturally, he thought that Yuan Shu knew more.

But he didn't expect Yuan Shu to just shake his head.

"Mr. Lu, on this point, I disagree with the ancient sages. I believe that conscience cannot be solved by external things, but only by ourselves, because conscience exists in our hearts. It is internal, not external. External things cannot play a key role."

Lu Zhi was surprised by this.

"The ancient sages said so, and there must be a reason for it. Mr. Yuan, you said it's impossible, but have you tried it?"

"Of course I tried."

Yuan Shu pointed to a tree outside and said, "Since studying things can lead to knowledge, then, Mr. Lu, why don't you try studying that tree to see if you can gain any insights."

"G...that tree?"

Lu Zhi followed the direction of Yuan Shu's finger and looked at the big tree outside Yuan Shu's dormitory.

"Can it be done?"

"I don't think so anyway."

Yuan Shu spread his hands and said with a smile: "The ancients said that everything has its own reason, so we should study things to gain knowledge, but how? How to gain knowledge? I don't know. What I think is that conscience is in my heart. To follow conscience is to do things according to my heart without the interference of external things."

Lu Zhi pursed his lips, thought about it, and nodded.

"Then let me give it a try. I'll try to dig up that tree first and see if I can get anything out of it."

Lu Zhi was a straightforward person who was not very flexible. Since the ancient sages said this and Yuan Shu said that, he thought it would be better to try the ancient sages' statement first to see if the study of things could lead to knowledge.

Seeing that Lu Zhi had made up his mind, Yuan Shu did not stop him. He nodded and let him do it.

Yuan Shu believed that the study of things could indeed lead to knowledge.

However, there are some rules on how to format and what to format.

If he does a good job and can deduce the principles of natural science, if he can realize the law of gravity from the fall of a leaf, then Lu Zhi would be really awesome.

But if the analysis is not done well, or the object of analysis is not correct, and then an unconventional truth is discovered, that would not be what the rulers want to see.

For example, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, they compared themselves with Qin Shi Huang, one came up with “A real man should be like this”, and the other came up with “He can replace him”.

Then he integrated knowledge and action, and some unpleasantness occurred with the Qin Dynasty. The last one was the Emperor of Han, and the other was the King of Chu, who had a slight rift with Qin Shi Huang.

There is also the great and virtuous teacher Zhang Jue, who is even more awesome. He manipulated the heavens and came up with the sentence “The blue sky is dead, the yellow sky should be established”.

Then he integrated knowledge and action, had some minor disputes with the Han Dynasty, and finally kicked the Han Dynasty into the grave with the first shovel of soil. Such behavior was definitely not in line with that of Liu Bang and Liu Xiu.

The famous Emperor Li Shimin was also a very good candidate in the study of things and the pursuit of knowledge.

He had a high level of comprehension and attained enlightenment just by clearing the Xuanwu Gate of his own home. However, his brothers did not seem to agree with his understanding and had a little friction with him. In the end, Li Shimin integrated knowledge with action, used his physics achievements to convince his brothers and father, and became emperor.

As the inheritor of Li Shimin's version of the study of things, Zhao Kuangyin had a good understanding. He solved the Huangqiao problem and got a yellow robe. Finally, he returned to Kaifeng with his achievements. After a friendly exchange with Guo's mother and son, he convinced them and became the emperor.

These are all famous and successful candidates in the pursuit of knowledge through investigation of things.

So, what can Lu Zhi figure out?

Yuan Shu was a little bit expectant.

(End of this chapter)