Chapter 510 — Teacher of Sages (Auspicious Year of the Dog!)
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 5
What the Jingping Imperial Teacher reformed were customs and servility; he changed the strife of schools and sects, so that the empowered of the world need no longer waste their strength in sectarian feuds. He also changed the petty self of the schools and sects, so that magic powers are used by the people and serve the people. This is the great principle, the great framework. " He came to the back garden of Wenyuan Hall, handed Shen Mu a pair of pruning shears, took up another pair himself, and trimmed the branches with care: "The most important thing in reform is to change the foul habits within men's hearts and topple the idols within their hearts. Shattering the god in the heart is not a task for the empowered alone—it is a task for every man in the world.
If every man can shatter the gods and Buddhas in his heart, then this will be an age of abundance, an age of great flourishing. " Shen Mu clipped the branches, trimming one plant until it looked like a crested fire-pheasant dragon plucked bare of feathers; at those words he stopped, pondered at length, and nodded with a smile: "Men kneel to gods and Buddhas praying for favorable winds and rains, for abundant harvests, for harmony in the home and sons and grandsons in plenty. If the empowered can grant their wishes, it would indeed help them shatter the gods in their hearts. " The Young Grandmaster stared at the flowers he had sheared into a frightful mess, and only after a while looked away: "I told the Jingping Imperial Teacher: to break the god in the heart, first reform the economy.
The word 'economy' means ordering the age and succoring the people, ordering the state and enriching the country. When the economy opens, the people's wisdom opens. In plain words: the empowered use their powers to help the laborers harvest rice; the laborers pay the empowered; the empowered take the money and use it to buy food and materials for cultivation; and that money returns again to the people's hands. All must pay taxes to the state; with taxes filling the treasury, the state grows rich. A rich state can build waterworks and repair roads, to the convenience and benefit of the people. Thus a rich state makes the people rich; rich people make resources abundant; the empowered can buy every kind of resource and cultivate far beyond what came before; and so the people grow strong, and the state grows strong. " Shen Mu listened, spellbound, when footsteps suddenly came. He turned his head and saw Cult Master Zuyang, Cult Master Yulian, Si Yuanwei, and the others storming into Wenyuan Hall with murderous intent. Yet the successive Cult Masters of the Dark Demon Sect did not strike; instead they came to a halt and pricked up their ears.
"The people have been enslaved by the sects and great houses for too long, and have grown servile; once they kneel, it is hard to rise again. What the Jingping Imperial Teacher is doing now is making the people rise.
It takes time, yet since the reform began it has gradually borne fruit.
The people of today no longer kneel to the empowered. " Lost in his thoughts of reform, the Young Grandmaster did not notice them arrive, and recalled the past: "I have seen what it was like before the reform. Then schools and sects stood in forests; peasants tilling the fields had to kneel and kowtow, address the masters as 'milord,' and offer up meat.
It took the Jingping Imperial Teacher and me a hundred or two hundred years to change that servility. Once the people have stood up, it is very hard to make them kneel again. " Shen Mu thought back to the crowds kneeling before the stone statues that had surged up out of the earth, and said, "They still kneel to the idols. " A strange expression crossed the Young Grandmaster's face: "The Jingping Imperial Teacher says the idols in the temples are easy to break, but the idols in the heart are hard.
To my mind, even the idols in the temples are not easy to break.