#wang yangming

Rebirth of the Shopping Addict E22 | A simple question.

& A simple answer.

Here’s Dōgen on Zen practice and enlightenment:

Thinking that practice and enlightenment are not one is no more than a view that is outside the Way. In buddha-dharma [i.e. Buddhism], practice and enlightenment are one and the same. Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner's wholehearted practice of the Way is exactly the totality of original enlightenment. For this reason, in conveying the essential attitude for practice, it is taught not to wait for enlightenment outside practice.

This reminds me of two things: Wang Yangming’s unity of knowing and being, and the practice of mathematics. First, Wang Yangming:

There have never been people who know but do not act. Those who “know” but do not act simply do not yet know.... Seeing a beautiful color is a case of knowing, while loving a beautiful color is a case of acting. As soon as one sees that beautiful color, one naturally loves it. It is not as if you first see it and only then, intentionally, you decide to love it. . . . The same is true when one says that someone knows filial piety or brotherly respect. That person must already have acted with filial piety or brotherly respect before one can say she knows them. One cannot say she knows filial piety or brotherly respect simply because she knows how to say something filial or brotherly.

And now for mathematical understanding. In the Dōgen passage, replace “enlightenment” with “understanding” and “buddha-dharma” or “the Way” with “mathematics.” We then end up with the following passage on the importance of practicing mathematics (or active learning, rather than passive learning):

‘This mind’ is luminous and bright. What more is there to say?

These were Wang Yangming’s last words. Bryan van Norden notes: 

“This mind” is an expression taken from Mengzi 1A7. Neo–Confucians use the term to refer to our innate moral sense. Consequently, Wang's dying words were not bragging about the quality of his own individual mind, but rather were a call for everyone to recognize the capacity they have within them.

Other less accurate translations of Wang Yangming’s last words include, among others, “This heart-mind is luminous and bright. What more is there to say?” “My mind is bright and clear. What more is there to say?” “The mind is totally luminous and bright. What is the need to say anything more?”

My personal favourite of the mistranslations is: “My heart is full of brightness; what more can I say?”

More light!

These were Goethe’s last words. Gary Martin notes:

Summarizing his achievements, Shao explained that those occasions when “Master Wang resorted to the military instrument to suppress disturbances and restore law and order in the lands of the South are known as the pacification of Gan, the capture of [Prince Zhu Chen]hao, the campaigns in Si[en] and Tian[zhou], and the punitive expedition in Chopped Rattan [Gorge].” Indeed, this concisely sums up Wang Yangming’s career as an official during the last twelve years of his life. But for the purposes of this inscription, what mattered most to Shao was Wang’s first series of (three) campaigns and the counties he established in the aftermath: Pinghe in Zhang[zhou Prefecture], Chongyi in [Shao]zhou Prefecture, and Heping in Hui[zhou] Prefecture.” Among these three, Shao believed Heping was the most important for reason of its location: in addition to being situated amidst four counties and at the juncture of three provinces, it was the largest in scale. So significant was the administrative change to the region that “although Master Wang receives sacrifices in Confucian temple­-schools because of his contribution to the Learning of the Way, the people of Heping County sacrifice to Master Wang because of his meritorious deeds and the favor he showed.” Shao explained in brief the background behind this blessing:

For over twenty years, ever since Chi Zhongrong occupied Hedong and Sanli, usurping the title of king and illegally appointing officials, Jiang[xi], Guang[dong], and Min [Fujian] had not been at peace. Master Wang quickly drew up his master strategy, detained Zhongrong in his military headquarters, and oversaw the march of armies from all directions, fighting with the beast and pulling up the weeds. [He established] boundaries and fields, [built] walls and moats, gathered those in flight, settling notable families, building schools, exercising restraint over fiscal and labor demands on the population, discarding levies and relaxing bans, causing [an area] accustomed to running about like wolves and rushing about like boars [on violent rampages] to change altogether into a highly cultured village.

It was Wang’s good will for the region that, according to Shao, moved the people of this once bandit­ infested territory to erect a memorial hall and offer sacrifices to him in memory of his having “loved the people as if they were his own children.” 

Shao’s representation of Wang Yangming’s efforts to elevate the customs of the people he was charged to govern echoes Wang’s own understanding of what he was trying to do in South China. Today, his efforts might rather be viewed as a civilizing project, a result of his determination to impose order on a violent region of the country populated by Han Chinese and non­-Han locals and migrants alike, among which were a number of people engaging in banditry. For him, the critical issue was what was required for “a territory of savage bandits to be transformed into a land of respectful good etiquette and ceremony, [Han] caps and gowns.” So when he deployed militias to quell endemic violence, and followed up with measures to maintain long­-term security and improve local practices, his ultimate goal was to create a better life for the subjects he was appointed to govern, in accordance with his ideals. 

.... As grand coordinator, Wang Yangming was one of the few having both intra and inter-­provincial authority. His orders, promptly circulated to subordinate officials in early 1517 when he arrived at his headquarters in Ganzhou, clearly stated the nature of his duties. The court recognized that outlaws had been roving at will in this region for years, and that one of the reasons was a lack of centralized authority. That is why he was specially delegated “as grand coordinator of Jiangxi’s Nan’an and Ganzhou Prefectures, Fujian’s Tingzhou and Zhangzhou Prefectures, Guangdong’s Nanxiong, Shaozhou, Huizhou, and Chaozhou Prefectures, and Huguang’s Binzhou Prefecture to pacify and soothe the soldiers and people, to construct walls and moats, and to put an end to treachery and corruption.” Wang was thus granted the authority to coordinate civilian and military provincial and local officials serving in nine prefectures spread over four bordering provinces where armed disturbances were common, state presence weak, and lines of authority confused. In this same communication,  he characterized conditions as he saw them, carefully noting for his subordinates that he understood the magnitude of the problems for which he would hold them accountable: “The mountains and streams are steep and perilous. The forests are vast and dense. The bandits hide in their midst and regularly come out to plunder and maraud. When they are pursued in the east they flee to the west. When they are captured in the south they flee to the north.” As a result, he noted, local security personnel and officials had largely ignored the problem or shirked responsibility. They had failed to unite, capture, and attack and therefore allowed the problem to fester.

Although he had tried to decline the assignment, a story recorded by his followers concerning his demeanor just prior to his departure from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, suggest he was not terribly disturbed by the prospect of leaving the peaceful West Lake to confront what were by then a number of infamous bandit bosses with criminal networks spread throughout poorly governed territory. During a conversation between two of Wang’s friends, Wang Siyu 王思輿 and Ji Ben 季本 (1485–1563), Siyu stated, “During this journey Yangming will serve meritoriously.” When Ji Ben asked him how he could be so certain, Siyu replied, “When I came across him he wasn’t the least bit phased (bu dong xin 不動心).” “Unperturbed” might be another translation for this term.

Indeed, Wang Siyu was invoking the Mencian concept of the unperturbed mind in an effort to capture Wang’s state of mind and connect it to his potential for success. Likely, the compilers of Wang’s Chronological Biography added this incident to illustrate how their revered master was coming to exemplify a paradigm for sagehood. According to this paradigm, individuals who embody virtue and understand human nature are the ones capable of moving a society towards its ideal, normative state. A corollary to this is the steady-handedness and measured response that comes with such understanding. In an effort to promote their master, throughout his campaigns and in the aftermath, Wang’s followers would praise not only his success in battle but also how his behavior lived up to the image of sagehood that Wang was then articulating in his teachings. His indifference to his own personal wellbeing, his decisiveness, and his effectiveness in quelling disorder illustrated a rare ability to harmonize inner sageliness (possessing virtue) with outer kingliness (being commanding and governing). Wang Yangming was well aware of the difficulty of achieving both. Once, just before marching his troops into bandit lairs, he explained to his student Yang Shide 楊仕德, “While defeating the bandits in the mountains is simple, defeating the bandits of the mind is difficult—what is so great about my eradicating petty thieves?”

Although the identity of these “thieves” is sometimes difficult to discern, the issue is not unimportant. The fact that Wang’s victory memorials provide lists of literally hundreds of successfully defeated and occupied communities (village settlements) in southern Jiangxi, northern Guangdong, and southwestern Fujian clearly suggests that these were not mere outlaws. In fact, persistent use of the term “bandit” (zei 賊) was a rhetorical strategy aimed at covering up more complex social problems. Descriptions from official reports sent to the grand coordinator paint a picture of marginal lands with shifting populations of locals and migrants, Han Chinese and non­-Han ethnic groups, all fighting over land and other resources. Huang Zhifan’s analysis of southern Jiangxi illustrates a problem common to the entire region; here, increasing migration from middle Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong to an area touted as being “spacious land with few people” only exacerbated conflict. In fact, for Huang, the accelerating violence was the result of population growth and economic integration. As more and more people moved into the highlands in search of resources to exploit and land to develop, they came into conflict with the existing, mostly registered populations of the developed lowlands A verse from a poem Wang inscribed on a cliff in Nan’an upon completing a campaign verifies this analysis for southern Jiangxi, while also showing his bias towards the settled populations: “Everywhere the fields in the mountains have been completely penetrated by She畬; half the pitiable common people find themselves without a home.” 

Wang Yangming was a Chinese philosopher, official, general and secretly a Master Assassin. He was famous as a Neo-Confucian thinker despite his secret life.