seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

after a specific individual can, when pierced through its leg, cause pain to be felt in the leg of
the human model.)
Therefore, if the Son of Heaven wanted order in heaven and on earth, he merely had
to conduct all appropriate rituals with exacting order. If he erred in performing a ritual, then,
somehow or someway, he would precipitate disaster.
Enthralled by the schemes of magical power, the Zhou kings, with prodigious
precision, conducted their religious rituals conscious that every finger movement was
duplicated elsewhere in the motions of heaven; and that every syllable uttered was a note in
the music of the celestial spheres, a pitchpipe's cue that kept the earth and stars in tuneful
harmony. The kingdom prospered all because order had been virtuously determined and
ordained.
And to oversee all of this virtuous order, to manage all the public works and provide
for the regulation of commerce, industry and education, and, of course, to collect taxes, fees
and fines, a vast bureaucracy was established. There followed nepotism, graft, spite,
extortion, bribery, jealousy, and not a little hate.
More and more the barons cared less and less for the king's order. More and more
they saw themselves as sovereigns of their own states, charged by destiny to keep the cadence
of the times. Men of action who appreciated precision more in military drill than in
ceremonial chants, they grew restive in their capitals.
And so, while the Son of Heaven kept the sky from falling by keeping his head at the
correct tilt, the new monarchs looked to each other's lands, lowered their lances and squaredoff.
The Zhou kings who had succeeded so well in keeping order among the distant
planets were inexplicably unable to maintain the slightest semblance of order in the center of
the universe, their own Middle Kingdom. Civil war was the order of the day.
To combat the disorder of the warring states, two contesting groups of philosophers
offered their assistance: the Confucians, who believed that man was inherently good, and the
Legalists, who believed that man was inherently evil.
The Confucians saw civic order as a consequence of family order. Family
relationships were natural relationships which involved inherent responsibilities. Thus,
virtue consisted in dutiful conformation to these natural laws, i.e., dharma. Fathers naturally
instructed their sons who naturally obeyed. Heaven directed its offspring, the king, who
naturally complied. In like manner, the king's magistrates patronized and punished the
childishly submissive common man who did as he was told - or else! - and dead ancestors
rose to the challenge of guiding their living descendants who, of course, kowtowed in
perfectly natural ceremoniousness.
CHAPTER 2 CHINA
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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