Wang Yangming
WANG YANGMING (1472–1529), literary name, Wang Shouren; the most influenctial Confucian thinker in Ming-dynasty China and one of the most important scholar-officials in Chinese history. Wang's intellectual impact on East Asian culture and his transformation of the spiritual orientation of the Confucian tradition in China made him one of the greatest philosophers of the relation between knowledge and action in any age or culture.
Born to a prominent gentry family in the Yangtze River delta, Wang was subject as a youth to great social pressure to excel in Confucian learning. Hagiographical accounts relate that in his early teens Wang startled his teacher when, in response to the teacher's admonition that the most important thing in life was to study hard in order to pass the examinations with distinction, Wang said: "To learn to become a sage is of the utmost importance." Wang's competitiveness with his father, who had himself won highest honors in the triennial metropolitan (jinshi) examinations, and his rebelliousness against the conventions of the time led him to the pursuit of a spiritual path characterized by Daoist and Chan practices. His failure to pass the metropolitan examinations three times before he succeeded and his dissatisfaction with the vulgarity of other officials after he eventually obtained an official post further enhanced his determination to search for an alternative form of life.
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