Everyone can be Yao Shun.
This is a sentence under Mencius's admonition, and it is also a sentence that is often said. How to understand? In fact, there are many places in Mencius's book where Yao Shun is mentioned together, about 40 places. Mencius's surname is good, and he will be called Yao Shun. It can be said that in the eyes of Mencius, Yao Shun is the most perfect moral model, becoming the highest representative of the inner holy path, and has formed a symbol, a symbol of an ideal personality, that is, Yao Shun, is the ideal personality.
Since Yao Shun represents the perfect ideal personality, why can everyone become Yao Shun? This conclusion of Mencius is based on multiplication.
First, everyone has a heart of compassion, a heart of enlightenment, a heart of compassion, and a heart of right and wrong, so everyone is good, and human nature is inherently good.
The second is that all those of the same kind have a field of vision, and why not be alone in others. The saint is the same as me, and I am the same as Yao Shun. Therefore, Yao Shun is the same as others, that is, the starting point of Yao Shun and I is the same. We are born with goodness, Yao Shun can become an ideal personality, and we can also become an ideal personality.
Mencius's statement that everyone can shorten the distance between ordinary people and saints for Yao Shun, and create a possibility for ordinary people to think about ideal personality through internal cultivation of virtue, which is also an important reason why Mencius's inner sage kung fu is very popular with later generations.
We can also become Yao Shun, Yao Shun can become a saint, why are we just ordinary people? Mencius believed that there are two reasons, that is, the difference between what is and what is not, not the difference between what can and what cannot be. He told King Liang Hui: Taishan jumped over the North Sea, which was not possible. Lifting a feather, not seeing a cart of wood, not wanting to bend a branch for the old man, it's not that you can't but you can't.
In the same way, King Liang Hui did not practice the royal way and did not show favor to the people, which was not for it rather than impossible. Therefore, people become a question of what Yao Shun can and can't do, not what he can or can't, but what he can't do. Yao Shun's way of filial piety and to do it, and the latter to do it, that is, to do the first for it. The event of morality is actually quite simple, and who wouldn't walk slowly? It's just a matter of whether you're willing to do it.
So the key is not whether you can or can't, but whether you do it or not. That is to say, you can become Yao Shun, you have this foundation, you have this nature, but if you want to do it like Yao Shun, you will become Yao Shun. If you don't do it, then you won't be able to become a saint like Yao Shun.