Benevolence, Righteousness, and Ritual Sincerity
Before formally beginning the lecture, the speaker digresses on the phrase “know the white, yet keep to the black.” He compares Chinese and Japanese symbolic customs: in Chinese usage, white is often associated with mourning, while in Japan white can mark auspicious occasions such as weddings and birthdays.
His point is that symbols shift with culture, so one must not cling too rigidly to surface associations. He uses this as a lead-in to the saying about knowing “white” yet guarding “black,” suggesting that real understanding lies beyond simple preference or taboo.
He now turns to Chapter 38 and says that in the previous session they had already cited the *Laozi Yishu*; tonight they will look at Patriarch Lü Chunyang’s explanation.
Lü interprets “highest benevolence” (*shang ren*) in a way comparable to the Buddhist idea of great compassion. The highest benevolent person practices benevolence, yet does so without emotional attachment or self-conscious display.
So when the text says, “Highest benevolence acts, yet has no ulterior acting,” Lü explains this as action emptied of self-reference. The speaker immediately links this to the Buddhist teaching of the “three wheels being empty.”
He pauses to explain Lü’s wording through several dictionary-style notes. “Great compassion,” he says, refers to the vast, boundless compassion attributed to Buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Drawing on Buddhist sources such as the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, he explains that great compassion means not just giving pleasant things to people but actually relieving suffering. To grant happiness is one thing; to remove suffering is deeper.
He emphasizes that people casually boast about having compassion, but real compassion is not mere talk. If someone is sick, poor, or in pain, can you truly relieve that suffering? If not, one should speak humbly rather than make grand claims.
He expands the idea of benevolence into concrete acts of giving: material giving, teaching the Dharma, and giving fearlessness. But he insists that everyday service also counts. Pouring tea, sweeping the floor, opening a lecture hall, and receiving others politely are all forms of merit.
The speaker repeatedly warns against spiritual self-importance. A lecturer should not posture as great or special. If one teaches, one should do so with humility and with a willingness to give, not with a desire for status.
This part of the source is highly oral and repetitive, but the recoverable point is clear: true benevolence is found in ordinary sincerity, service, and self-effacement, not in showy religious identity.
The speaker next explains “forgetting emotion” (*wangqing*). This does not mean becoming heartless or numb. Human beings naturally have the seven emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and desire.
The problem is not that emotions arise, but that people cling to them. Anger that passes is one thing; resentment carried for days is another. Even a bodhisattva may show anger, he says, but without hatred or grudge.
From there he returns to Lü’s point: “highest benevolence acts without ulteriority” because it is free from emotional attachment. This opens into the Buddhist formula of *three-wheel emptiness*: giver, receiver, and gift are all originally empty.
He now explains the first aspect of the “three wheels”: the emptiness of the giver. When giving, one should realize that one’s own body and possessions are not ultimately one’s own. Money cannot be taken beyond death.
If someone gives while secretly holding back, or while expecting gratitude and repayment, then the giving is spiritually compromised. He says very bluntly that if one gives with hopes of return, there is not even ordinary merit in it.
So “emptiness of the giver” means giving without ego, without self-display, and without bargaining for future reward.
He then moves to the second aspect: the emptiness of the receiver. One should not look down on the person receiving charity or treat them as a prop for one’s own virtue.
He tells stories of going along on charitable visits where elderly people were made to kneel and praise donors as “living bodhisattvas.” He says he found this shameful. Helping others should not become a performance of superiority.
His counter-principle is sympathy in the deepest sense: regard all parents as one’s own parents and all children as one’s own children. If one truly felt that way, one would never use the suffering of others as a stage for self-congratulation.
The third aspect is the emptiness of the thing given. Rice, blankets, money, gold—whatever is given is also empty. Material objects do not endure.
He illustrates this with burial customs and the stark reality of death: possessions are left behind, and even treasured things eventually return to nothing. Seen in that light, one should not cling either to what one gives or to the idea of having given it.
Only when giver, receiver, and gift are all released from attachment does the act become what Buddhism calls “three-wheel emptiness.”
He now gathers the point together. “Highest benevolence” is compassion exercised without emotional self-indulgence. One does not give because one enjoys the feeling of being benevolent.
To “act” here simply means to carry out the deed. To act “without ulterior acting” means that the action is emptied of self-attachment. This, he says again, is exactly what Buddhism means by the emptiness of the three wheels.
He then returns to the wording of Chapter 38 and begins reciting the contrast between higher and lower forms of virtue.
The lecture now shifts from *ren* (benevolence) to *yi* (rightness, righteousness). Citing the *Laozi Yishu*, he says there are higher and lower forms even here, and that most people misunderstand *yi*.
Higher *yi* is not blind action. It requires careful discrimination between right and wrong, straight and crooked. Since *yi* means acting in a fitting and proper way, one cannot simply follow others without judgment.
He warns that many people invoke “righteousness” while actually straying from the Way. To act from *yi* one must ask whether the deed is genuinely appropriate, lawful, and morally sound.
He revisits the saying often rendered “great righteousness destroys family attachment” or “puts justice above kinship.” His main concern is that people misuse this phrase.
According to his explanation, such language applies downward—toward juniors or those under one’s charge—not upward against parents and elders. To invoke “righteousness” against one’s superiors without proper order would become rebellion and impiety.
This part of the source is textually noisy, but the line of argument is consistent: rightness must be understood within moral hierarchy and proper relationships, not abstracted into a slogan.
He then cites the story of the “upright man” from Chu whose father stole a sheep. The son, charged with enforcing the law, let his father go and offered to bear the punishment himself.
The story is used to show the tension between public honesty and filial duty. The speaker stresses that if “uprightness” is interpreted in a way that destroys filiality, something has gone wrong.
His takeaway is not that law should be ignored, but that moral categories must be properly ordered. A righteousness that severs the basic bond between parent and child is, in his view, not true righteousness.
He summarizes Patriarch Lü’s definition in a single phrase: *yi zhe yi ye*—“rightness means appropriateness.” What is right is what is fitting; what is unfitting should not be done.
From that, he distinguishes courage from righteousness. A person may be bold and forceful, yet if the act itself is unfitting, that is courage without *yi*. The noble person, by contrast, “seeing what should be done, courageously does it.”
This is why Chapter 38 says, “Highest righteousness acts, and has something by which it acts.” Unlike highest benevolence, rightness still involves deliberate intention: one intentionally does what ought to be done.
He ends by introducing the next step in Chapter 38: ritual propriety, or *li*. Here too there is a distinction between higher and lower forms.
Higher *li*, he says, is not mere outward politeness. It must arise from sincerity within and only then take form outwardly. Inner truth is the root; external ceremony is the branch. Only when inside and outside accord does ritual become genuine.
If courtesy is performed only for advantage—like a shopkeeper flattering customers in order to make money—then it is empty form, not higher ritual. Drawing on Confucian language such as “restrain the self and return to ritual,” he explains that true *li* comes from overcoming private desire and allowing conduct to accord with principle. With that, he stops for the night, saying the fuller explanation of “higher ritual” will continue next time.
This literal version consolidates the lecture’s English material into continuous notes, keeping close to the spoken sequence while preserving explanatory detail.