Chapter 20: I Was Wrong

A child scores ninety-eight on a test and brings it home; his father glances at it and says: what about the other two marks?

The father doesn’t hit him or scold him; just that one sentence. A sentence like that, said dozens of times a year, for over ten years. The child grows up, does very well at work, everyone praises him; yet every time he hands something in, he can’t sleep that night. When others say “it’s fine,” what he hears is still “what about the other two marks?”

Later he has a daughter of his own. In primary school, her first test, she brings home a paper marked ninety-five and holds it up to show him, delighted. He glances at it, opens his mouth, and what comes out is: what about the other five marks?

The moment the words are out, he himself is stunned. It is his father’s voice, thirty years on, coming out of his own mouth. The smile on his daughter’s face is withdrawn at once.

“I was wrong.” People say it many times in a lifetime, but few times truly from the heart.

Before right and wrong, people take many shapes.

Someone does something wrong and has it pointed out. His first words are not “I was wrong” but: it’s not all my fault. Then a string of reasons: I was too busy that day, nobody reminded me, the rules weren’t clear to begin with, anyone would have done the same. Talking on, it is as if the one in the wrong were not him but that day, other people, the way of the world.

Someone accidentally hurts another and feels terrible; he says sorry over and over, until the other is embarrassed. He still can’t stop; at home he can’t sleep, turning the thing over and over: how could I be like this? Am I a bad person?

Someone says: I had no choice, there was nothing I could do. That year’s events, that decision, he says he was forced, it was circumstances, it was fate. He won’t consider whether, among so many forcing things, there was the least bit that was his own hand at that moment.

And there is a harder kind. Someone knows very clearly what is right and what is wrong, so clearly there isn’t a crack. Looking at others, he can judge at a glance: this one is a good person, that one a bad one; this thing is clean, that thing dirty; these people are decent, those vile. When he speaks, it is often with “should” and “must”: you should do this, he shouldn’t do that, people simply must. In his heart there is a very large table, and all people and things have been filled into its squares.

And there is a kind this book itself may invite: everything is being, everything a change of being, so why distinguish right and wrong? No one is more being than another, so aren’t good people and bad people the same? Let go of the discriminating mind.

Of these shapes, some push away, some take on, some judge, some erase. They often guard the same fear: the fear of being judged.

Afraid of being judged a bad person, they push away; afraid they really are a bad person, they take it on, take it on until they can’t sleep; afraid that without a final verdict the world will fall into chaos, they sit up there themselves and judge for everyone; afraid that all this judging is too tiring, they simply say there is no right and wrong, and no one should judge anyone.

Those who push away, take on, judge, and erase all assume there is a seat: a final seat, sat on from above, that settles what things are. Some want to sit in it, some fear being judged by it, some want to tear it down so that no one can judge anyone.

First ask: does being judge?

It was said earlier: being waits for no one’s approval; happening never waits for approval; there is neither allowing nor not allowing. That left a question: then does everything that happens count as good, to be left as it is?

No. But this “no” must be said precisely, or it will set up a judgment seat again.

In being there is no ought or ought not. Rain falls on good people’s roofs and on bad people’s; the sun shines on the temple gate and on the prison wall. A grown-up hits a child: being. Another person rushes over and shields the child: being too. They are alike in being, neither more being than the other. Being speaks well of neither, nor ill of either; it does not stand above everything, scoring what happens.

But “ought” and “ought not” are not false either. They grow in this place. When the child is hit, it is in this place that it hurts; the tightening in the heart of the one who rushes over is in this place too; the words “this is wrong” coming from his mouth are still in this place. Right and wrong are not judged down from above being; they grow by themselves inside, in this place called a person, meeting pain, meeting consequences. They are as real as the pain, as real as that reaching hand.

So alike in being does not mean alike in good and bad. Someone who says, “since all is being, hitting a child and shielding a child are the same thing,” has quietly swapped “alike in being” for “alike in good and bad.” Existing does not make a thing right. That man asked “what about the other two marks?” for over ten years, lying awake at night: this is real, being. If someone then said to him, “everything is being, this too is a change of being, look on the bright side, accept it,” it would sound like reason, but it would turn being into a verdict: it is, so it is good, so it must be endured. Being never says this. “Everything is being” has never been something to stop the mouths of those in pain.

At a workplace, someone took a colleague’s credit for three years; it came out, and everyone was talking; someone on the side smiled: why bother, who’s right and who’s wrong is all the discriminating mind, just let it go. The one whose credit was taken was still sitting in the corner, three years of late nights and written work now under someone else’s name; hearing this, her face went white. That sentence used a very lofty principle to erase something plainly visible; erased, the weight did not disappear; it fell on the one with the least strength.

Then where do right and wrong come from?

Not dropped from the sky to hang above everything; nor a ruler being carries with it. Right and wrong grow within being: in collisions people tell heavy from light, in consequences they tell good from bad, and over time after time of experience they build up a set of “ought” and “ought not.”

Right and wrong fall where being meets being, in the consequences the meeting strikes out. Damaging another’s edge, making him hurt, is often wrong; letting another breathe easier, able to go on being, is often good. But pain and ease are only where right and wrong land, not right and wrong themselves: an operation hurts; stopping someone about to hurt others makes him suffer too; a pleasant lie may let someone breathe easier for now. To tell right from wrong one must also look at whether things are true, whether harm could be avoided, whether those concerned are willing, what falls now and in the long run. It does not hang above being; it is in the meeting, in the bearing of responsibility place by place, and so it can be told apart, and its weight told too.

To tell right from wrong clearly, people have made many things: rules, laws, the sense of measure handed down generation after generation. They all grow within being; they will have gaps, go out of date, be unjust at times, and must be revised time after time. Some say, therefore: since rules are made by people, there is no real right and wrong. This skips a step: rules are made by people, but the pain and the ease the rules try to make clear are not made by people; they really happen in the meeting. Rules can be written wrongly; pain does not stop hurting because a rule was written wrongly.

Being does not judge, and that is why the judging in this place called a person is written clause by clause, revised time after time, and never has a final version.

Then do “allowing everything to happen” and “judging right and wrong” conflict?

They don’t. The first says: there is no one standing at the doorway of being, ruling on who may exist and who may not. The second says: within being, in this place, a person sees something hurtful, says “this is wrong,” and reaches out to stop it. This “this is wrong,” this reaching out, is not a ruling issued from a doorway; it is something happening within, meeting that hurtful thing and striking out consequences. Judging is one time of being too.

And the one sitting up there with a big table, filling everyone into its squares?

Judging whether a deed is right and judging what a person is are two different things.

A person who has done a bad deed: the deed is wrong, and its consequences fall back on his place for him to bear. But he does not thereby become something that is not, an object to be disposed of as one likes. When people quarrel at their fiercest, they often first do one thing: say the other is not human, call him vermin, rubbish, a thing. Once the other is no longer a time of being, anything can be done to him.

Alike in being guards exactly this bottom line: wrong can be told apart perfectly clearly; from being, no one can expel anyone.

Clean and dirty, sacred and profane, high and low, are the same. A deed can be dirty, a practice vile, a thought base; but no time of being has been finally settled as “dirty being” and from then on not counted as being. That person who can sort people into good and bad at a glance: his table was drawn looking out from his place; however finely drawn, it is only one place’s drawing. There never was so high a place; there is no seat that settles what everyone is. To say, in each particular matter, whether this one is right, and then to act: that is the business of his place.

People also turn this table on themselves. That person who said sorry countless times, who can’t sleep, who asks himself “am I a bad person?”

The thing he did wrong was wrong; apologizing, making amends, remembering not to do it again—these fall on his place. But the question “am I a bad person?” turns one deed into a final verdict on himself. There is no such verdict. He is a time of being who did a wrong thing; this wrong thing has been and can’t be undone; but he as a person has not thereby been settled as anything; he is still becoming all the way, and next time can be different.

Pushing away and taking on look opposite, but underneath they are the same picking. The one who pushes away owns the good me: “I’m not that kind of person, that moment wasn’t me, it was being busy that day, it was other people’s doing.” He won’t own the moment of doing wrong, and so must push it out into the occasion, onto the weather, onto others. The one who takes on also owns the good me, only he can’t push it away, so he turns it round and takes the moment of doing wrong for a hole card: so I’ve been bad all along, the good me was a pretense. One won’t own that moment, the other owns it as the whole; both are looking for the “real me,” one saying it is good, one saying it is bad.

But the moment of doing wrong is you, wholly you, not a moment of confusion, possessed by something else; so it has an address and can’t be pushed away. It is also only you at that moment, not a hole card that, turned over, reveals what you have “really” been all along; the next moment comes, and the one apologizing is you, the one making amends is you, the one who next time swallows the words is you too. There is no you hidden behind, waiting for a final verdict, judged by this moment a good person or a bad one. Every moment is wholly you, so every moment can be answered for; every moment is only this moment, so no moment can condemn you for good.

And the one who pushes away? The one who says “it’s not all my fault,” “I had no choice”?

In a crowded supermarket, a trolley hits a shelf at a corner, and a stack of tins comes crashing down onto an old man’s foot. Afterward the one pushing the trolley says many things: the corner is too narrow, the shelf was stacked too high, the floor had just been mopped and was slippery, the person in front suddenly stopped.

All of this is true. That moment really did happen in a great occasion; a thing is never made by one place alone. But the hands pushing that trolley are in his place.

Happening together does not mean being responsible together. Each thing in the occasion bears, in its own place, the weight of its place: the shelf stacked too high is the stacker’s place’s business; the slippery floor is the mopper’s place’s business; those hands pushing the trolley round the corner are his place’s business. If a person could be everywhere at once, no one could find him, and he would have nothing to answer for; because he can only be here, what he does has an address, and others can come to his door and say: this is you.

He will say: my place too was pushed that way by so many things. My temper, my family, my irritation that day, I chose none of them; so what did I choose?

This question goes deep. What can be answered is: choosing too is a shape that grows within being; it does not stand outside all entanglements and drop from a blank out of nowhere; it really is pushed by many things. But being pushed does not mean not choosing: at that moment, in his place, whether those hands went left or right, slower or faster, really was brought forth in his place. A choice need not be an absolute starting point inserted from outside; it is enough that it is this place’s own moment.

Why is it enough? What answering for something needs was never a starting point outside all entanglements. It needs only three things: which place this moment came from; which place its consequences fall back on; and whether, next time, this place can be different. A person is sought out because this push rose in his place; and only in this place, next time, can the push be slower, a little more to the right.

This reasoning applies the other way too. A mother whose child had a serious illness when small, which left a lasting problem, has blamed herself all her life: if only I’d got him to hospital earlier that day, if only I’d put an extra layer on him that winter. She has taken every part of that illness onto her own place. That illness too happened in a great occasion: that year’s flu, the long queue at the hospital that day, the child’s own body, her own small oversight. Her place may hold a little; only that little; the other places are not hers.

Where one is, there the weight is: not a bit more pushed away, nor a bit more taken on.

And there are bigger collisions. People cut down woods, foul rivers, and the woods and rivers do not stand outside, nor do people; people fight people to the death, and both sides eat grain from the same earth. Some say: these are all collisions within the same being; no one is outside. That is right. But it can’t be turned into “so it’s all the same,” “so let it go.” In collisions within one being, the wounds are real wounds; the wood cut down is really gone; the dead are really dead. No one stands outside, and exactly because of this, every place’s hand has its address; every place’s weight falls on that place.

On the grasslands there is always meeting too, with consequences, but no one judges.

A wolf brings down a deer. The deer dies, and the wolf and its cubs eat their fill. There is no judge on the grassland; no one says the wolf was wrong, nor that the deer deserved it. The next year there are fewer deer, and the wolves go hungry; fewer wolves, and the deer multiply again and crop the grass bare. This whole great grassland is always meeting like this, back and forth, coming and going; no one judges, and no one stops.

A dog as a puppy went to bother a hedgehog and got a nose full of blood. It never thought “I was wrong,” but from then on it went round hedgehogs. The consequence fell on it, and its place changed.

A river floods and sweeps away a village downstream. The river is neither wrong nor right; it is only that in that year, so much rain, such steep mountains, together struck out that flood. The villagers later built a dyke, changed the river’s course, and moved their houses to higher ground.

None of these beings sits above judging. They meet, strike out consequences, the consequences meet back, always moving. People, like them, are in this great meeting; where people differ from them is that people judge, say “this is wrong,” go themselves to stop, to change, to apologize, to build the dyke. This is a very important thing grown in this place called a person. It is not ruling on being from the doorway; it is, within, in this place called a person, responsibility being borne.

The father who said “what about the other five marks?” went that evening to his daughter’s room, sat on the edge of the bed, and said: ninety-five is very good. What I said today, Daddy said wrong. His daughter nodded, said nothing, turned over and went to sleep.

Half a year later, another test, and the sentence came to his lips again; he swallowed it. Later still, once, he didn’t manage to.

That sentence came down from thirty years ago, and it has its causes. The causes are real, and the wrong is real too. It is, and it is not right. Whether it can be stopped has no ready answer; stopping or not, it falls on his place.