4. FOLLY

This deals with YOUTHFUL FOLLY
in the form of brash and impudent surety
rather than just pure stupidity
(You know... a kind of "primal purity").

Never knowing where it is going.
Yet it steadily fills deep places flowing
around obstacles. It's destiny completing.

A spring succeeds by gushing upward.
It skips nothing...  swelling forward.
Steadily filling gaps...  Flowing onward.
This is also about the mentor's ward.

Folly is not an evil. Indeed...
In spite of it one can succeed.
In a way it is a "learning seed".
Thus, for a teacher there is a need.

Without proper modesty,
sufficient curiosity,
and necessary receptivity...
The result is importunity.

So pay attention you foolish creature
for the characteristics of the right teacher.
A master can't just be a careless preacher
(giving clear answers is the right feature).

Teacher's answers must have clear definition.
So if you are seeking the right solution
and astutely accept the key to resolution,
but ask a cynical, or stupid, question...

"The fools look for me... Not I for them."
"At the first oracle... I inform them."
"If they keep asking... I ignore them."
"If they don't get it... It's not for them."

So if you seek a mentor to employ...
You need a teacher...  Not a toy.
With repeated questions do not annoy.
And the master's counsels you must enjoy.

SIX AT THE BOTTOM:
A youth's inexperienced inclination
is to regard everything in joculation.
Toying with life is the fool's sin.
Law is the beginning of education.
It's adventagious to use discipline
but overdoing it may bring humiliation
and cripple a person's disposition.

NINE IN THE SECOND PLACE:
It furthers one to bear fools kindly.
With inner strength and superiority
one tolerates shortcomings and folly.

SIX IN THE THIRD PLACE:
Like a girl tossing herself away
a weakling loses one's identity
in trying to imitate a superiority.

One owes it to one's own dignity
to demonstrate some propriety.
Teachers must discourage servility.
It may retard the student's identity.

SIX IN FOURTH PLACE:
Youthful folly is a hopeless thing
loosing itself in empty imagining.
The more one may stubbornly cling
all the more certain the humiliating.
The teacher... folly confronting...
leaves the fool languishing.

SIX IN THE FIFTH PLACE:
Childlike folly brings good fortune.
Inexperience that seeks instruction,
with a child-like unassumption,
is heading in the right direction.
The modest one, in subordination
to teacher, will find satisfaction.

NINE AT THE TOP MEANS:
Made to feel what one won't heed:
An incorrigible fool is punished indeed.
Penalties should not be angrily applied.
Guard against excesses unjustified.