I have this little granddaughter, not yet two,
Hyang-ji. She
comes once a month to pay a visit to her old granddad,
and every time she
comes I am struck by how much she has grown, not only in
body but in heart.
This time when she came, as we were sitting
eating supper around
the table in the living room of my flat, my wife and her
mother feeding
her or she feeding herself as she moved around on their
laps, suddenly
up the little rascal stood, crossed to the sideboard,
pulled a sheet of
tissue-paper from the box lying there, toddled across to
her granddad,
and proceeded to wipe away the drops of sweat that had
gathered on my nose!
From what I have heard, they say that humanity
began to evolve
two thousand million years ago from single-celled
organisms, and we had
become fish by about one thousand four hundred million
years ago, by which
stage affection was already being exercised, then by
about four hundred
and fifty million years ago we had become animals, with
affection being
extended to the young of the species, then about one
million years ago
when humanity appeared, at last affection was extended
to other people
and even to other kinds of creatures.
'Humanity': that kind of affection extending both
to other people
and to other creatures! That is precisely the
'barometer' indicating the
difference between people and all the other animals, it
is love, mercy,
benevolence, so there is nothing special about the
teaching of the sages
who tell us that we should manifest such 'humanity'
concretely.
Having experienced our Hyang-ji's flawless
humanity, I have
been deeply moved and happy now for several days. And I
feel ashamed of
my own humanity, dulled through lack of use, like the
affection of the
beasts.