Introduction
Wang Shouren was demoted to Longchangyi in Guizhou (now in Xiuwen, Guizhou) and settled in Luyangming Cave, so he named himself Yangmingzi and Mr. Yangming in the world. Now He is generally called Wang Yangming, and his teachings are known as "Xin Xue (or Wang Xue)". It has an important and far-reaching influence in China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asian countries.
[Edit this paragraph] Life story
Wang Shouren was born in Yuyao, Zhejiang during the Chenghua reign of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty. His father, Wang Hua, won the first prize in Xinchou (1481), the 17th year of Chenghua in the Ming Dynasty. Wang Shouren moved to Peking (Beijing) with his father. "History of the Ming Dynasty" records that Wang Shouren was named Wang Yun when he was born, but he could not speak at the age of five. He told others and changed his name to Wang Shouren, and he spoke. Wang Hua was very strict with his son's tutoring. Wang Shouren studied literature and martial arts very hard when he was young, but he liked playing chess very much and often delayed his homework for this. Although his father repeatedly scolded him, he never changed his mind. In a fit of anger, he threw the chess piece into the river. Wang Shouren's heart was shocked, and he suddenly felt enlightened, and immediately wrote a poem to express his ambition: Chess is a joy all day long, but the pain of being strictly loved is once lost. Soldiers who fell into the river were unable to be saved, and generals drowned and died together. A horse travels thousands of miles and goes with the waves, just like a horse wanders into three rivers and follows the waves. The sound of a cannon sounded and the sky shook, suddenly awakening Wolong Chou. He used Zhuge Liang as a metaphor for himself, determined to make a career. After that, he studied hard and made great progress in his studies. He became more and more proficient in riding, archery, and the art of war. In the twelfth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1499), he passed the Jinshi examination and was awarded the title of head of the Ministry of War. At that time, everyone in the court knew that he was a learned man, but Zhang Zhong, the eunuch in charge of military affairs, believed that Wang Shouren was appointed as the head of the military department as a scribe, so he despised Shouren. Once he actually forced Shouren to shoot an arrow in public, hoping to make a fool of himself. Unexpectedly, Shouren raised his bow and shot three arrows, hitting three hits. The whole army cheered, making Zhang Zhong very embarrassed. Wang Shouren served as the chief of the Ministry of War for three years. Because he opposed the eunuch Liu Jin, he was sentenced to forty by the imperial staff in the first year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty (1506) and was demoted to Yi Cheng in Longchang (the seat of Xiuwen County) in Guizhou. After Liu Jin was executed, he was appointed as the governor of Luling County and became the Shaoqing of Nantaipu Temple. At that time, Wang Qiong was appointed Minister of the Ministry of War. He believed that Shouren had extraordinary talents and recommended him to the imperial court. In the eleventh year of Zhengde (1516), he was promoted to the censor of Youqiandu and succeeded him as governor of southern Jiangxi. He mounts his horse to govern the army and dismounts his horse to govern the people. He is a civilian official who controls military talismans. He combines civil and military strategies. He is smart in his work and uses troops quickly. For suppressing the peasant uprising and quelling the "Chenhao Rebellion", he was worshiped as the Minister of the Ministry of War in Nanjing and was granted the title of "Xinjian Bo". Later, he was banned because of his outstanding achievements, so he resigned and returned to his hometown to give lectures. He founded academies in Shaoxing and Yuyao to preach "King's Learning". In the sixth year of Jiajing's reign (1527), he was again assigned as governor of the military affairs of Guangdong and Guangxi. Later, due to worsening lung disease, he begged to return home and died of illness in a boat in Nan'an, Jiangxi. Posthumous title Wencheng.
Childhood life
Wang Yangming was born on September 30, 1472, the eighth year of Chenghua reign of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty, into a scholarly family and a family of officials. His distant ancestor was a great scholar of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Calligrapher Wang Xizhi. His father, Wang Hua, won the first prize in the 17th year of Chenghua (1481) and later became the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel in Nanjing. According to the Chronicle, on the eve of his birth, his grandmother dreamed that someone was sending her son from the clouds. When he woke up from the dream, Wang Yangming happened to be born, so his grandfather named him Wang Yun. The villagers also called the place of his birth Ruiyun Tower. However, he was still unable to speak when he was five years old. One day, a senior monk passed by, touched his head and said, "What a good boy, it's a pity to tell the truth." This means that his name "Yun" revealed the secret of his birth. His grandfather suddenly came to his senses and changed his name to Shouren, after which he began to speak. This story is a bit mythical, but it can be seen from this story that he did not show intelligence and talent in his childhood. When he was ten years old, his father was the top scholar in high school. Wang Yangming went to Beijing with his father. When he passed by Jinshan Temple, his father had a gathering with friends. At the banquet, someone proposed to write a poem to praise Jinshan Temple. Everyone was still thinking hard, but Wang Yangming had already completed it: "A little Jinshan is bigger." Like a fist, breaking the sky under the Weiyang water. Drunkenly leaning on the wonderful high platform, the jade whistle blows through the cave and the dragon sleeps." The four people were amazed and asked him to write a poem about the moon-covered mountain house. Wang Yangming casually recited: "The mountain is close and the moon is far away. If the moon is small, it means that the mountain is larger than the moon. If a person has eyes as big as the sky, he will see that the mountain is even wider if it is small." This shows extraordinary imagination and profound cultural literacy. When he was studying in the capital at the age of eleven or twelve, he asked his private school teacher, "What is the first-class thing?" The teacher said, "The only way to get a rank in the imperial examination is to study." Learn to be a sage." Despite this, he has never followed the rules since his youth, and all records describe him as "bold and unruly" from an early age.
For example, after his mother died at the age of 13, his stepmother treated him badly. He bribed a witch to play tricks on his stepmother, so that she would treat him well from then on. He did not study very hard and often led his companions to play military games. When he was young, he traveled to the border areas, practiced horseback riding and archery, and read various secrets of military art. When he met guests, he often used the formation of fruit cores as a game.
The evolution of his thoughts
When he was seventeen years old, he went to Nanchang to marry Zhu Yanghe's daughter, Zhu, but on the wedding day, no one could find him. It turned out that that day when he was wandering, he entered the Taoist Iron Pillar Palace and met a Taoist priest meditating there. He asked the Taoist priest for advice. The Taoist priest taught him some health-preserving techniques, so he sat in meditation opposite the Taoist priest and forgot to return until the next day when his father-in-law Only then did he get him back. Since then, he often discussed health issues with Taoist priests in various places. When he was twenty-two years old, he failed in the Jinshi examination. Li Dongyang, the chief assistant of the cabinet who was equivalent to the prime minister at the time, smiled and said: "If you fail this time, you will be the number one scholar in the exam. Try to write the number one scholar in the exam." Wang Yangming hung up his pen and said to the court All the elders were shocked that he was a genius. Jealous people commented that if this young man won the first place, he would be arrogant. When he took the exam again at the age of twenty-five, he was suppressed by the taboos and failed again. At the age of twenty-eight, when he took the examination of the Ministry of Rites, he excelled in the examination and ranked among the best. He became a Jinshi and was awarded the title of head of the Ministry of War. In his early days, Wang Yangming respected Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism. In order to practice Zhu Xi's "investigation of things to achieve knowledge", he once determined to study the principles of bamboos and studied bamboos for seven days and seven nights. He found nothing, but people fell ill because of it. This is the famous "Shou Wu". Renge Bamboo". From then on, Wang Yangming had great doubts about the "Gewu" theory. In the first year of Zhengde of Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty (1506), because he opposed the eunuch Liu Jin, he was banished to Longchang, Guizhou (70 miles northwest of Guiyang, where Xiuwen County is governed) as a postmaster. He came to the mountainous area of ??southwestern China, where Longchang Mountains were thin and thick, and Miao and Liao people lived together. This gave him a new understanding of the central idea of ??"The Great Learning". Wang Shouren believed that the heart is the root of all things, and everything in the world is the heart. product. Realizing that "the way of the sage is self-sufficient in nature, it is wrong to seek truth from it." This is known as Longchang Enlightenment in history. During this period he wrote "All the Lives in the Dragon Training Field". Many of his disciples were puzzled by his theory of "no reason outside the mind, nothing outside the mind" and asked him for advice: The flowers and trees in Nanshan bloom and fall by themselves, what does it have to do with my mind? He replied: "When you didn't look at the flower, the flower and your heart were silent together. When you looked at the flower, the color of the flower suddenly became clear. Then you knew that the flower was not outside your heart."
[Edit this paragraph]Military achievements
Pinging down Jiangxi
In the twelfth year of Zhengde (1517), civil uprisings broke out in southern Jiangxi and the mountainous areas at the junction of Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong. The mountain people rely on the mountains to build strongholds in caves and build their own armies, covering an area of ??nearly a thousand miles. The local officials had no choice but to report to the Ming court. The Ministry of War recommended Wang Shouren, then the censor of Youqiandu, to patrol Jiangxi and suppress the civil uprising. In the first month of the thirteenth year of Zhengde (1518), Wang Shouren pacified the tribe of Chi Zhongrong (Chi Dawan), and petitioned for the establishment of Heping County and the construction of county schools. In March, Shouren arrived in Jiangxi to take up his post. He quickly mobilized troops from the three provinces to suppress the uprising in Xinfeng and other places. In July, Wang Shouren thought that the war had caused huge damage, so he petitioned the imperial court for permission to recruit troops. The Ming court then entrusted local military and political power with the authority to act expediently. In October, Wang Shouren led his troops to defeat the strongest Lan Tianfeng and Xie Zhishan military strongholds in Zuoxi, Chongyi County, Jiangxi, and joined forces in Zuoxi. Wang Shouren personally went to persuade them to surrender. In November, Wang Shouren sent envoys to recruit troops and defeated Lan Tianfeng's tribe.
Capturing King Ning
Wang Shouren's greatest military achievement in his life was to quell the rebellion of King Ning Zhu Chenhao in Nanchang. When Wang Shouren was about to go to Fujian to suppress bandits (he did not have a large number of troops), his troops had just arrived in Fengcheng when the Ning King Zhu Chenhao suddenly raised his troops and rebelled. Therefore, Wang Shouren actively prepared for war, allocated military rations, repaired equipment, and then issued a proclamation to punish the thief, announcing King Ning's crimes and asking all places to raise troops to serve the king. At that time, what Wang Shouren was most worried about was that King Ning Zhu Chenhao was sending his troops eastward to occupy Nanjing, his old capital. If Nanjing falls, King Ning will have the capital to proclaim himself emperor, and he will also gain geographical advantage, so it will not be easy to eliminate him. Wang Shouren bluffed, used false information, and ordered people to sneak into Nanchang City with wax pills to disrupt King Ning's sight, forcing him to make a wrong judgment, thinking that all armies had formed an encirclement situation. At the same time, countermeasures were used to make King Ning suspicious of his subordinates' strategy of attacking Nanjing. King Ning was indeed fooled. He hesitated for half a month and was at a loss, and did not dare to send troops to attack Nanjing. Wang Shouren took advantage of this opportunity to prepare to defend Nanjing, making it impossible for King Ning to attack Nanjing. In July, King Ning led 60,000 men to capture Jiujiang and Nankang, and crossed the Yangtze River to attack Anqing.
At this time, Wang Shouren had mobilized 80,000 troops (mainly militiamen and farmers from various places), which was known to the outside world as 300,000. Wang Shouren summoned his subordinates to ask how to retreat from the enemy. Someone pointed out that Anqing should be rescued. Wang Shouren said: "Now Jiujiang and Nankang have been occupied by the enemy. If we cross the river to rescue Anqing from Nanchang, we will be attacked from both sides. Nanchang is empty now, and our army is full of energy and can defeat the enemy in one fell swoop. Hearing that Nanchang has been lost, we will definitely return to rescue him. If we attack him at Poyang Lake, we will definitely win." Due to the large amount of propaganda work previously carried out, falsely claiming that a large number of troops were attacking the city, Nanchang actually failed to attack and stopped. Two days later, Wang Shouren sent his generals in five groups to attack King Ning's army returning to support Nanchang. The troops were divided into four groups to welcome the advance, and an ambush was set up along the way. After the battle, King Ning's army was quickly attacked from both sides and was divided into several parts. Later, it was ambushed and suffered a heavy defeat. It fled and retreated to the Bazinao area. Seeing that the situation was not good, King Ning hurriedly mobilized the elite troops from Jiujiang and Nankang to attack. Wang Shouren sent several armies to fight and take Nankang. This battle was quite fierce and it was a crucial battle. The officers and soldiers retreated for a time, and Wang Shouren's general Wu Wending immediately killed those who retreated and ordered the troops to fight to the death. In the end, the enemy was finally defeated. The enemy retreated to the Qiaoshe area and followed Cao Cao's example in the Battle of Chibi by forming a square formation. King Ning took out gold, silver and jewels to reward the soldiers. He charged with a hundred gold coins and was wounded with a thousand gold coins. He asked them to fight to the death. Give it a try. However, Wang Shouren saw flaws in the phalanx of King Ning's army, and he decided to imitate the Battle of Chibi and set fire to the ship. The next day, King Ning and his ministers gathered together and were holding a "morning court" meeting on the boat. Wang Shouren's army arrived, loaded the boat with grass, set it on fire in the wind, and burned King Ning's auxiliary boat, the palace officials below Princess Lou, and civil and military officials. They dived one after another. King Ning's flagship ran aground and was unable to move. He hurriedly changed to a small boat to escape, but was chased and captured by Wang Yangming's subordinate Wang Mianbu. Other civil and military ministers of King Ning also became prisoners. Soon, Nankang and Jiujiang were also captured by the army, and King Ning's rebellion was completely suppressed in only thirty-five days. Wang Shouren was therefore known as the "Military God of the Ming Dynasty". Later, Ming Wuzong went to war under the pseudonym of "Mighty General Zhu Shou". Jiang Bin had evil intentions and instigated Wuzong to fight King Ning and captured him himself. Wang Yangming showed affection and reason to the eunuch Zhang Yong, explaining that more people would die if he did so. The final coordination result was: let Ming Wuzong arrive in Nanjing, and then release Prince Ning to let the emperor be captured, which would make him happy.
The full text of King Pingning's "Monument of Merit"
In Zhengde Jimao, Yihai in the sixth month, Chenhao rebelled against Nanchang and called his troops to Xiangque. Defeated Nankang and Jiujiang, attacked Anqing, and shocked people far and wide. In the seventh month of Xinhai, the minister Shouren returned to Nanchang with the troops from the following counties. Chen Hao captured him and the rest of the party was settled. At that time, the emperor was furious when he heard about the change, and personally unified the Sixth Division to attack him, so he captured Chen Hao and returned. In the power of Hehuang, Shenwu will not kill. Like the shock of thunder, it breaks when struck by force. The artifact has its home, who dares to steal it? The sky is in view of Chenhao, and the emperor's spirit is revealed to bring peace to our country. At the end of the first month of Zhengde Gengchen, the governor of the military affairs department and the censor of the capital, Wang Shouren wrote. The subordinates of the enlisted officials are listed on the left.