I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 27 Where is your unity of knowledge and action?

One month later, from November to December of the eighth year of Yan Xi, when the cold wind was howling, Yuan Shu did not further expand the content of the entire doctrine system, but preached on the content that everyone was generally anxious about, while promoting his own doctrine of awakening the conscience.

He reviewed the past history for everyone, explained the reasons why the world is now in decline and people's hearts are no longer as they used to be, elaborated on the importance of spiritual foundation and ideals, and told everyone that all the current confusion comes from the collapse of ideals and the destruction of spiritual pillars.

The only way to solve all these problems is to rebuild the spiritual pillars and ideal goals, to re-establish the personal character and group dignity of the scholars, so that this group can rise again and become the most advanced, avant-garde and enterprising.

If we want to achieve all this and reverse the current moral decline of the world, we must appeal to our conscience.

Yuan Shu further stated that pursuing conscience is not the knowledge of one person, but the common knowledge of all people in an entire group. To pursue conscience, everyone should pursue conscience together, encourage each other, supervise each other, and advance and retreat together.

In this way, if you are able to enter the official career in the future, and encounter pressure from superiors, bribes from subordinates, or things that go against your conscience, you will not fight alone, but face them together as a group.

Don’t the imperial relatives and eunuchs like to band together and use their numbers to bully the few?

Those of us with conscience should stick together!

We magnify our individual consciences infinitely and magnify them into the conscience of an entire group, and with the strength of one thousand, two thousand, or three thousand people, we jointly deal with the dark and evil desires of treacherous people.

In this way, conscience will be like the rising sun, shining brightly, and any dark and damp evil thoughts of the wicked will be wiped out under the light!

Yuan Shu preached like this.

Not only do we need to complete actions that appeal to our conscience at the individual level, achieve the state of unity of knowledge and action, and complete the spiritual reconstruction of ourselves, but we also need to complete redemption at the group level, reshape the collapsed collective will, regroup the power of conscience, and make it impossible for evil thoughts to take effect.

More and more people gathered around Yuan Shu to listen to him preach about the conscience.

At the beginning, many people may have come to the lecture with the idea of getting close to Yuan Shu and paving the way for themselves, but as they listened, most of them were attracted by the content of the study of conscience itself and the future described by Yuan Shu.

Facing faces that were familiar or unfamiliar, Yuan Shu spoke loudly and expressed his will to the fullest.

"Everyone always says that the court is weak and treacherous, and the power of one person is too small to shake the treacherous people, but what if there are a thousand people? Two thousand people? Three thousand people? Four thousand people?"

"We, the Ma family, have more than 4,000 disciples. If we all unite together, reshape our spirits, complete the study and practice of conscience, and unify our wills, then this huge willpower will be unshakable!"

"The treacherous people can persecute one person, ten people, a hundred people, a thousand people, but what about two thousand? Three thousand? Four thousand?"

"The highest ideal of the ancient sages was the great harmony of the world. To this end, they used many methods, such as tranquility and inaction, universal love and non-aggression, self-discipline and restoration of propriety, and strict laws, but none of them succeeded. They tried their best but eventually fell on the road."

“Now, we should not just sigh and feel sad when looking at the remains of our ancestors. Instead, someone should stand up, take over the flag from the hands of our ancestors, stand up from where they fell, and continue to move forward, at all costs!”

“Although the tree is young, it also has the heart to follow the saints. Although its knowledge is shallow, it is unwilling to watch the saints’ great aspirations become obscured and forgotten, and never be realized again!”

"I wish to follow the path of the sages with the knowledge of conscience, and practice the ideals of the sages with the unity of knowledge and action. I will understand my heart and stick to my conscience. If I succeed, I will be very lucky! If I fail, I will have no regrets in my life!"

It's half lecture, half speech, expressing emotions, pouring out one's ambitions, dreams, and aspirations in one breath, letting everyone know one's purpose, know what one wants to do, and know that one is not just a talker, but a doer.

In one month, he gave fifty-seven lectures, which of course was equivalent to delivering fifty-seven speeches.

The speech completely covered the group of Ma's disciples, and almost everyone of them listened to it at least three times.

Not only Ma's disciples, but also the counties around Maoling were affected to a certain extent. Some curious scholars and students also came to listen to the lectures and speeches of "child prodigy Yuan Shu".

Watching his small body standing on the podium, delivering a speech with a slightly exaggerated and passionate attitude, everyone will be attracted involuntarily, and even unconsciously moved by his emotions.

After the speech, some people came to their senses and detached themselves from the emotions above, thinking that this was just the fantasy of a so-called child prodigy and dismissed it.

Many people were attracted by Yuan Shu's speech and stopped to listen to his speech over and over again, learning the science of conscience over and over again, and looking forward to a better future.

Finally, it even became a trend, and scholars and students throughout the Sanfu area had heard of it.

There was an endless stream of people coming to listen to Yuan Shu's lectures out of curiosity, so much so that even his cheap father Yuan Fengyuan heard about it in Chang'an City and was very surprised. In mid-to-late December, heavy snow could not stop the enthusiasm of scholars and students to come and observe Yuan Shu's lectures, and then they were filled with shock and horror.

On the one hand, they were shocked by the foundational background of Yuan Shuzhi's theory of conscience.

The current group of Confucian scholars has suffered a total failure against the historical backdrop of the successive collapse of the Western Han Dynasty and the Xinmang Dynasty, and has completely lost their spiritual support and ideals, degenerating into walking corpses controlled by the study of prophecies and divinations, with only an empty body and endless material desires left.

As a result, morality has been corrupted, social morals have gone downhill, and people’s hearts are no longer as pure as they used to be.

If we want to reverse this situation, we must make changes, we must follow our conscience, we must integrate knowledge and action, and rebuild our spiritual pillars and ideals.

This……

Is it a topic worth talking about?

Are you really going to publicly preach such overly sensitive historical, political and academic issues concerning the past without leaving any room for doubt?
Are we really going to reduce all the Confucian schools today to the status of zombies controlled by prophecies?

Aren’t you afraid of being slapped in the face?
Even if you are from the Yuan family of Runan and are a direct descendant of a powerful and popular family today, you cannot say this publicly!

In other words, the court is in chaos right now, and its authority is weak. If Emperor Ming or Emperor Zhang were still in power, or Emperor He or Emperor An were still in power, they would definitely arrest you, pull out your tongue, and burn you alive!

This is a topic that cannot be touched at all!

On the other hand, they were also shocked by the content of the study of conscience.

Many of them originally thought that the study of conscience was just childish nonsense. They just picked up a few sentences from the pre-Qin classics and interpreted them randomly. It looked like something, but in fact it was a mess, nonsense, and full of loopholes.

But when they really listened to Yuan Shu's preaching, they found that the study of conscience that Yuan Shu built on the basis of his own inference of the previous period of history was really something.

Yuan Shu has his own logical system, his own theories and realistic sources, his own pursuits and goals, and his own world view and methodology.

This system has begun to take shape and has become a subject that can be understood and comprehended a little.

Although skeptics did not dare to launch personal attacks on Yuan Shu's entire statement, some people who were good at thinking and liked to doubt still publicly raised their doubts in Maoling County.

Yuan Shu himself said that Confucian scholars completely lost their ideals because of Wang Mang's Rebellion, and became walking corpses controlled by prophecies. They had no spiritual pursuits, and were left with only endless material desires. So he proposed a plan to appeal to conscience and integrate knowledge and action to help everyone free themselves from material desires.

So what are the specific methods?

"Yuan Shentong's "Awakening to Conscience" is indeed ingenious and sounds quite insightful. It has answered some of our confusions and finally clarified some questions that we have never figured out. He is worthy of the name of a child prodigy. However, how do we achieve conscience?

He himself said that the unity of knowledge and action is the true conscience. Knowing but not doing is the same as not knowing, and it is meaningless. However, now Yuan Shentong is just talking but not doing. How can he implement the four words of unity of knowledge and action? "

Confucian scholars and students from Meixian, Pingling, Gaoling and other areas expressed many views on the study of conscience. Among them, the views of Fa Zhen, a famous scholar from Youfufeng, were the most incisive.

Although Fazhen, who was in his sixties, was not as famous as Ma Rong, he was only second to Ma Rong. He had a very high reputation in Guanxi, and his words and deeds could influence many people.

He said that he could accept some of Yuan Shu's views on the development of Confucianism since the restoration of the Han Dynasty, but he would like to see how Yuan Shu did it and how he implemented the teachings of conscience.

If he can really do it, then it is not too late for the world to take a closer look at the study of conscience.

After Fa Zhen got old, he rarely made public comments. The main reason was that the turmoil caused by Yuan Shu this time was too big, so he was very interested in learning about the series of theories and ideas proposed by this child prodigy Yuan Shu.

In the end, although he did not immediately agree that Yuan Shu's theory was meaningful, he acknowledged that Yuan Shu was indeed a child prodigy.

This alone was enough to solidify Yuan Shu's reputation as a child prodigy in Guanxi, and no one would doubt his talent anymore.

The two famous scholars Ma Rong and Fa Zhen praised Yuan Shu together, which shows that Yuan Shu’s talent is well-deserved. But as Fa Zhen said, you talk beautifully, but what about doing it?

What about your unity of knowledge and action?
(End of this chapter)