XX. Qian and Kun Are Not an Abstract Duality, but the Beginning and Completion of Every Single Thing

Reading this far, one can look back at the first half of the whole chapter. Heaven and Earth, low and high, movement and stillness, the firm and the yielding, gathering by kind, dividing by group, image and shape -- all of these finally converge into beginning and completion. Every matter has a side where intention first sprouts and action is set in motion, and a side where conditions are received, process is realized, and result takes shape. Qian and Kun are thus at once as vast as to encompass Heaven and Earth, and as close as to be inseparable from a single word or a single deed.

Setting one's resolve is the beginning; accumulating learning is the completion. Issuing governance is the beginning; the people receiving its benefit is the completion. Marriage is the beginning; the household enduring long without falling is the completion. Forming an alliance is the beginning; standing together through hardship is the completion. Conceiving an implement is the beginning; choosing the material and fashioning it is the completion. If one substitutes mere speech for actual completion, one becomes infatuated with the brilliance of the beginning; if one attends only to trivial execution without asking after the purpose, one likewise loses the direction of the beginning. The Yi sets the two side by side, demanding that the opening correspond to its effect.

Master Guiguzi, skilled in discussing the planning of beginnings, the discerning of the incipient moment, and acting according to configuration, reminds a person that initiating a matter cannot but be done with caution. While a matter is still small, it is still easy to redirect; once many forces have been invested and a reputation or configuration has already formed, the cost of changing course rises sharply. Hence the beginning requires knowledge. The discourse on statecraft transmitted by Master Guan (Guanzi), by contrast, places especially great weight on institutions, resources, agriculture and warfare, and granary storage, bringing intention down into matters that can actually be carried out -- embodying the achievement of completion. To speak only of benevolent intention without knowing the actual workings of governance may leave benevolence with no way to be put into practice; to know only techniques and calculations without any direction of benevolence and righteousness may turn achievement into harm.

The Master said, "The noble person wishes to be slow in speech but quick in action," precisely warning against words that begin a thing which action then fails to complete. Speech is extremely easy to set in motion; action is difficult to sustain through to the end. Once a promise is made, it must be fulfilled over time. He also said, "First carry out what you would say, and let your words follow after," placing completion before speech, so as to guard against much beginning and little completion. Qian knowing through ease does not encourage careless speech; Kun being capable through simplicity does not mean that things are easily accomplished either. Ease and simplicity mean that the great Way is not thrown into confusion by private cleverness; realizing it still requires vigorous motion and generous bearing.

Master Meng developed "benevolent governance" from "the heart that cannot bear to see others suffer" -- the heart is the beginning, governance is the completion. If compassion remains only a momentary feeling, unable to establish institutions that let widowers, widows, orphans, and the childless be cared for, and that keep the farming season from being seized upon, then benevolence has not been completed. Conversely, if institutions have no compassion as their root, they too may treat people as mere numbers to be counted. Inner heart and outward governance, virtue and achievement, are precisely like Qian and Kun: virtuous intention supplies the beginning, and undertaking brings things to completion.

The Most High valued non-action (wuwei), and also said, "Act upon it before it exists; govern it before it falls into disorder." The place before existence and before disorder is closest to the beginning, and it is here that one who discerns the incipient moment exerts effort. Yet non-action does not mean failing to accomplish anything, but "taking no action, and yet leaving nothing undone" -- letting a matter come to completion according to its own natural order, while reducing the disturbance caused by private intention. The beginning and completion of Qian and Kun can illuminate, and be illuminated by, the Daoist teaching that being and non-being generate each other: being sprouts from the incipient moment of the formless, and comes to completion in concrete vessels; and once a vessel is completed, it in turn becomes the condition for the next change.