Principle has no fixed abode and no end. One must not stop at a little gain. Above Yao and Shun, goodness is endless; below Jie and Zhou, evil is endless.
"Principle has no fixed abode and no end."
Principle has no fixed abode and no end. I speak with you — you must not gain a little and then say it stops here. Speak of it again in ten years, twenty years, fifty years — there is no end. Another day he said: "Sages like Yao and Shun — yet above Yao and Shun, goodness is endless. Wicked like Jie and Zhou — yet below Jie and Zhou, evil is endless. If Jie and Zhou had not died, would their wickedness have stopped? If goodness had an end, why did King Wen 'gaze upon the Way yet seemed not to have seen it'?"
Principle has no fixed abode and no end. I speak with you — you must not gain a little and then say it stops here. Speak of it again in ten years, twenty years, fifty years — there is no end. Another day he said: "Sages like Yao and Shun — yet above Yao and Shun, goodness is endless. Wicked like Jie and Zhou — yet below Jie and Zhou, evil is endless. If Jie and Zhou had not died, would their wickedness have stopped? If goodness had an end, why did King Wen 'gaze upon the Way yet seemed not to have seen it'?"
Yangming teaches that learning is an infinite game — there is no final exam, no graduation day. This mindset shift from "achieving understanding" to "continuous growth" transforms how you approach everything: with curiosity rather than completion.
"Principle has no fixed abode and no end."
This is Yangming's warning against intellectual complacency. No matter how much you have learned, there is always more. The moment you think "I have understood enough" is the moment you stop growing. Principle is infinite — like the universe, it has no edge.
"Above Yao and Shun, goodness is endless."
Even the greatest sages did not reach the endpoint of moral perfection. If even Yao and Shun could still grow, how can any student presume to have "arrived"? This is both humbling and liberating: humbling because perfection is limitless, liberating because growth never ends.