Wang Yangming

Wang Shouren, known as Yangming, was born in 1472 at Yuyao in Zhejiang. As a youth he resolved to become a sage, and following Zhu Xi's teaching on 'investigating things' he sat before bamboo for seven days and nights trying to grasp its principle, until he fell ill. At thirty-five, having offended the eunuch Liu Jin, he was flogged forty strokes at court and banished to Longchang in Guizhou as keeper of a post station. There, in the wilderness, he sat in meditation day and night, until one midnight he suddenly understood: 'The way of the sage is complete in my own nature; I was wrong to seek principle in things.' This was the famous 'enlightenment at Longchang'. He later won many military victories, crushed the rebellion of the Prince of Ning, rose to Minister of War at Nanjing and was made Earl of Xinjian. He brought the School of Mind to completion, and also profoundly influenced the Meiji Restoration in Japan.