Cultural roots, dating ancient and modern Zhejiang scholar Wang Yangming, morality, speech, meritori

Mondo Culture Updated on 2024-01-29

Chao News client reporter Guo Wen.

Achievements of Zhejiang Cultural Research Project.

Wu Guang, "Knowing and Acting in Harmony with Conscience - Wang Yangming's "Conscience" Psychology".

Wu Guang, Zhang Hongmin, Jin Weidong, "Wang Yangming's Wisdom of Life".

Dong Ping, "The Legend of Wang Yangming".

Zhang Hongmin, "Yangming Studies Research Report".

Selected Literature of Yang Ming's Travels

In recent years, the "Yangming fever" has continued to heat up, and the heat has reached overseas, and Yangming has become a "prominent study".

At the beginning of this month, the "Wang Yangming Mentality and Chinese Psychology National Academic Seminar" was held in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, where more than 20 experts and scholars from more than 10 scientific research institutions gathered together to conduct extensive and in-depth discussions on Wang Yangming's mentality and important issues in Chinese psychology.

On November 23 last year, on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of Wang Yangming's birth, Zhejiang held the World Yangming Studies Conference in Yuyao and Shaoxing, with the themes of "Cultural Resonance of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind" and "Yangming Psychology and Common Prosperity", respectively, the historical significance, contemporary value and world influence of Yangming culture.

Wang Yangming was a master of Confucianism and a master of traditional psychology, and his ideas profoundly influenced the cultural psychology of the Chinese, and he was called one of the "two and a half saints" in Chinese history by Liang Qichao, the other being Confucius and half a saint being Zeng Guofan.

Zhang Hongmin, deputy director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences and deputy director of the Yangming Studies Professional Committee of the Chinese Zhuzi Society, who participated in the Zhejiang Cultural Research Project, said that Yangming Xinxue is an important part of traditional Chinese Confucian culture and another peak of Confucianism, which has been influencing the contemporary era. "People are looking for a good way to govern the country from Wang Yangming's mental thoughts, looking for a path to build the modern civilization of the Chinese nation, and looking for a free kingdom of the soul. ”

What is the first thing.

Read and learn from the sages.

Almost every researcher believes that Wang Yangming's unique life experience played a crucial role in the formation of his philosophical thoughts. Every time he grinds, Wang Yangming constantly thinks and summarizes his life, and further deepens his philosophical thinking, which in turn promotes Yangming's psychology from germination to maturity and even integration.

Just as many celebrities in Chinese history have their own legends, all successes can be traced, let alone philosophers like Wang Yangming. Like Zhu Xi, Lu Jiuyuan and other masters of science, he was intelligent since he was a child, and he was determined to learn to be a saint at a very young age.

Wang Yangming is a native of Yuyao, Zhejiang, his young name is "Yun", when he was five years old, his grandfather renamed him "Shouren", taking the "Analects" "know it, benevolence can not keep it, although it is gained, it will be lost". The name seemed to foreshadow everything to come—his philosophical achievements, his academic influence.

When he was 11 years old, Wang Shouren went to Beijing with his grandfather, and when he passed by Zhenjiang Jinshan Temple to entertain guests, his grandfather and the guests drank and wrote poems.

At that time, the general view was that "learning and excellence is a master", but in Wang Shouren's case, there was a different answer. As a young man, he has already begun to think philosophically, and often covers his books and ponders deeply. One day, he asked the teacher, "What is the first thing?"The teacher replied: Only read the book to the ear. But he said, "Ascending to the top is probably not the first thing, or reading and learning from the ears of the sages." ”

At the age of 17, after reading the works of Ercheng, Zhu Xi and other sages, Wang Shouren decided to try to "learn from things" and gain true knowledge from external things. So he looked at the bamboo in the yard and thought hard for 7 days and 7 nights, but he didn't come up with any truth, but he fell seriously ill and fell into the root of his lifelong disease - tuberculosis. But this attempt was not the starting point of his philosophical thinking?

Wang Shouren was 22 years old and failed to enter the Jinshi examination, and Li Dongyang, a university scholar at the time, said to him: "If you don't win this time, you will be the champion when you come to the department." So he hung his pen and wrote a "Coming to the Department of Champion Fu", and everyone was amazed as a genius. Talented people are jealous, Wang Shouren was secretly suppressed when he took the re-examination at the age of 25, and he still failed to make the list, but he comforted his friends: "The world is ashamed of falling off the list, but I am ashamed of being tempted by the list." ”

As he said when he was a teenager: The first major event in life is not to become an official, but to study and learn from sages. Don't be tempted, don't go to your heart, and certainly don't bother.

At the age of 28, he took the exam for the third time, and Wang Shouren entered the rank and entered the official career. At the age of 31, due to lung disease**, Wang Shouren returned to his hometown to recuperate, and found a suitable place for cultivation in Huiji Mountain, Shaoxing-Yangming Dongtian. So he settled there, and gave himself the nickname "Yangmingzi".

From then on, Wang Shouren was Wang Yangming.

In the midst of "a thousand setbacks and difficulties", he was able to "reach his conscience".

A truly strong heart is enough to take you to any thorn in the world.

Before the age of 35, Wang Yangming's life has been erratic, like his doctrine, still in the stage of searching, groping, and forming. However, the ambitions made when I was a teenager are like the lights of a long night, dispelling the gloom of life from time to time and illuminating the way forward.

In 1506, Yang Ming was 35 years old. Liu Jin, the eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, sent his ministers Bo Yanhui and Dai Mo to prison. Wang Yangming resisted and rescued, but he was also imprisoned, and was demoted to Guizhou Longchang Yicheng by the court staff of forty.

Because he was a degraded official, Wang Yangming was once harassed by the magistrates, and Guizhou Longchang was still an uncivilized area at that time, and he reclaimed wasteland without food;If there is no one to live in, he will build a hut;The language was not understood, so he taught the local people to speak the official language. In this process of "twists and turns", he gained a new understanding of the central idea of the ancient book "University", and often pondered the question of "what is the way of the sage in this place". After thinking about it day after day, Wang Yangming fully understood the true meaning of "learning from things" in "University", and couldn't help but cheer, and understood that when he was thinking about bamboo as a teenager, "those who seek reason from things are mistaken".

This is the famous "Longchang Enlightenment" in the history of Chinese philosophy, which is a major turning point in Wang Yangming's academic career, and the key to it lies in the realization of the truth of "the way of the sage, self-sufficiency", and its logical conclusion is that we must seek reason in the heart, not in the outside. This marked the awakening of Wang Yangming's subjective consciousness of psychology, and also laid the foundation for his spiritual consciousness when he later emphasized "unreasonableness outside the heart" and then put forward the doctrine of "unity of knowledge and action", "to conscience" and "benevolence of the unity of all things".

Wang Yangming's friend Zhan Ganquan said in "Mr. Yangming's Epitaph": "(Wang Yangming) first drowned in the Xi of Ren Xia, then drowned in the Xi of riding and shooting, three drowned in the Xi of diction, four drowned in the Xi of immortals, and five drowned in the Xi of Buddha. Zhengde Bingyin, from the beginning of the sage's learning. ”

At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Huang Zongxi, who was also a thinker of Yuyao, also summarized Wang Yangming's learning and thinking process with "his learning from three changes and the beginning of his door".

It can be seen that Wang Yangming's academic knowledge is not easy to come by, and he is the crystallization of his ideas obtained after experiencing political hardships and great changes in his life.

A man must grind in things before he can stand." In the career of being an official in various places, Wang Yangming successively encountered the rebellion of the people of Southern Jiangxi and the rebellion of King Ning, and in the process of countering the rebellion, his military talent began to show, which is breathtaking, which is also the concrete embodiment of his "unity of knowledge and action". This process is also a great breakthrough in Wang Yangming's path to learning sainthood, and his thinking has been sublimated to a new stage, that is, he put forward the philosophical proposition of "to conscience", thus completing the theoretical construction of Yangmingxue.

The fundamental spirit of Yangmingxue has given rise to contemporary significance.

Wang Yangming's doctrine is a family of its own, and its influence transcends the Ming Dynasty and reaches later generations, and it is popular and spread at home and abroad. His teachings have strong reference and Xi significance to this day.

Wu Guang, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences and a librarian at the Zhejiang Provincial Research Institute of Culture and History, believes that we can understand its contemporary significance from the fundamental spirit of Yangmingxue

Yangmingxue's establishment of the spirit of moral subjectivity with moral conscience as the core is undoubtedly a good medicine for the treatment of the inhumane evils of today's society.

Yangmingxue's ideological proposition of advocating "being close to the people" and attaching importance to people's livelihood is particularly important at present.

Yangmingxue's compromise with the spirit of harmony and diversity of Zhu Lu and Huitong Buddha embodies a pluralistic and harmonious cultural value orientation, and provides a historical reference for multicultural exchanges and communication in the era of globalization.

Yang Ming learns knowledge and action.

First, the spirit of practicing practice has provided us with a scientific and pragmatic method of thinking and a spiritual driving force for us to adhere to the ideological line of seeking truth from facts and the established national policy of reform and opening up, and to constantly open up a new situation in modernization.

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