Wang Yangming

Wang Shouren, known by his literary name Yangming, was born in 1472 near Shaoxing, in Zhejiang, during the Ming dynasty. As a young man he tried to follow Zhu Xi’s teaching of the investigation of things, and is said to have sat for days before bamboo in his father’s garden, trying to grasp its principle, until he fell ill.

After passing the highest examination, he served as an official, and in 1506 was flogged and banished to Longchang, a remote post in Guizhou, for opposing a powerful eunuch. There, in 1508, he experienced an awakening: he realized that principle is not to be sought in external things, because the mind itself is principle. He later served as a successful general and governor, suppressing rebellions, while teaching a growing circle of disciples.

His teaching, recorded in the Instructions for Practical Living and other writings, became the main rival to Zhu Xi’s orthodoxy in the late Ming, and was influential in Japan, where it was known as Yōmeigaku. He died in 1529, on his way home from a military campaign.

Wang’s school divided after his death into several branches, some stressing quiet cultivation and others spontaneous moral action, and some of his followers were accused of blurring the line between Confucian and Chan Buddhist teaching. His influence revived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when reformers in Japan and China admired his union of conviction and practice.