8/10/2019 Chin. 50 on the Child Mind

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Anthology of Cbinese Literature

difficult than it actually is. The "beginning of mind" (or with the ambiguity of liter-

ary Chinese, "beginnings in the mind") is both the presumed innocence of thechild's response and immediate or impulsive thoughts and responses in anyone-something like the implicit "first thoughts" that must have been there in order to sarwe had "second thoughts" about something.

The "Way" (Dao) and "lnherent Pattern" (li)were key concepts in Neo-Confu-cianism, which had become state philosophical orthodoxy. Although the great Neo-

Confucian philosophers argued thatthesewere inherent both in the self and in the

external world, Li Zhi was intensely aware of the social and psychological truth that

these concepts and their application were learned and supported by social pressure'

Thus, from Li zhils perspective, these most revered principles in Neo-Confucianthought were learned things that came from the outside and governed response, cor-

rupting allthatwas spontaneous, natural, and innocent. Theword translated as "in-authentic" (jia), which Li Zhi repeats again and again, means both "false" and "bor-rowed,,, in the sense of coming from elsewhere, not being one's own. Li's argumenthinges on that range of meaning: what comes from the outside is "borrowed," not

essentially one's own, and to represent oneself through such a borrowed mediumis to be "false."

lf this attack on the fundamental principles of Neo-Confucianism and the glori-

fication of drama and fiction were not shocking enough to conservative sensibili-ties, Li Zhi went on in the final section to assault the integrity of the Confucian Clas-sics themselves.

LiZhi (1527-1.602), "On the Child-Mind"when I (using the pseudonym "Mountain Farmer of Dragon cave") wroteon the play Western Parlor,I commented at the end: "Those who judge suchmatteri may not think it is all right that I still have a child-mind."1 The child-mind is the genuine mind; and if having the child-mind is taken as not being

all right, then having a genuine mind is also taken as not being all right.Free

of all falseness and entirely genuine, the child-mind is the original mind ofone's very first thought. Loss of the child-mind means loss of the genuinemind, and a loss of the genuine mind means loss of the genuine person. onewho is a person and not genuine will never again have beginnings'

As the child is the beginning of the person) so the child-mind is begin-ning of mind. How could mind's beginnings ever be lost-but then how doesit happen that the child-mind is indeed lost so abruptly? Initially, things seenand hia.d come in through eyes and ears. And when we take these as a gov-

erning factor from without, the child-mind is lost. As we grow older, theWay and Inherent Pattern come in through what we see and hear. And whenwe iake these as the governing factor from within, the child-mind is lost.2

lThe Western Parlor, Xi-xiang ji, was a Yuan variety play by Wang Shi-fu, building on Yuan Zhen's"Ying-ying's Story.",Note thai Li Zhi very much includes what we hear from others and what we read among sense im-

pressions; the Chinese term is "seeing and hearing," reading associated with the former and oral

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