Dragon Field Enlightenment: Eight words that Wang Yangming exchanged for half his life
Guizhou Longchang
1508
A thirty-seven year old man
Lie in a stone coffin every night
This is not a metaphor
He actually carved himself a sarcophagus.
Reading the Book of Changes in the cave during the day
Lie in this coffin at night
Close your eyes.
Ask yourself the same question
If I die here tomorrow
What else have I not understood in my life?
One year ago.
He is still the head of the sixth-rank military department in Beijing
The future is bright
His father is the champion of the dynasty
He was a jinshi at the age of 28
Among the elites of the entire Ming Empire
He is the smartest
most read
One of the most ambitious few
Now.
He lives in a snake-infested cave
All the attendants around me fell ill
He got miasma himself
May die at any time
There are locals who live for dozens of miles around
No one knew who he was.
No one cares who he is
His name is Wang Shouren
Later people called him Wang Yangming
One night in the middle of the night
He suddenly sat up from the sarcophagus
Yelled
The original words of the history books are not aware of the leap
Followers are shocked
He screamed uncontrollably
The people sleeping next to them were awakened
He said something.
Way of the Saints
I am self-sufficient
It is wrong to seek reason from things
Translated into vernacular is
I've been looking for something all my life
It's always been in me.
I used to look for reason in things outside
Looking in the wrong direction
In the history of Chinese thought, this is called enlightenment in the dragon field
It is believed by many scholars that the last 500 years
One of the most significant events in Chinese philosophy
Every time I read this story
And what really struck me was not what he realized.
It is the place where enlightenment occurs
A coffin
Not the study
Not a temple
It's not any place where you think great ideas should come.
It's a man who has been stripped of everything by fate
The place closest to death
Found the answer that everyone alive was looking for
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
Today's story about spiritual practice
I want to dismantle Wang Yangming.
This is the first time in our series that we have moved from the Buddhist tradition to the Confucian tradition
Certainly.
Wang Yangming himself has made many criticisms of Buddhism
But the underlying mechanisms of cognitive awakening
These two paths lead to the depths
Almost hit the same place
Before we start
I want to do a rumor defuse first
Wang Yangming's most famous four words are the unity of knowledge and action
If you ask a hundred people, what does it mean to know and do as one?
About 95 people will give you the same answer
Know it and do it
Know is know
Action is action
The unity of knowledge and action is to put what we know into action
This understanding is too reasonable
Reasonable enough for you to think it's common sense?
What's there to bring up specifically?
But what if I told you
What Wang Yangming said about the unity of knowledge and action is not what he means at all
What he said
No, you have a message.
He said it would work.
It's not that you made a move.
Here's what he said.
If you really know something
You're already good at it.
These two things were never separate
You say you know you should get up early to exercise but you can't
Feel this sentence
When you say that
You think the problem is mobility.
But Wang Yangming will point to your feelings and say
Look carefully
The moment you say "can't do it"
Is there any peace of mind in your body?
That peace of mind is your true "knowledge"
What you really know is, "Sleep is more comfortable than exercise."
You think you know it's better to get up early
In fact, what you know is quilt warmth
This distinction is not a word game
It points to an extremely deep cognitive mechanism.
A mechanism that we can precisely disassemble using the framework we established in previous issues
But
Before disassembling this mechanism
I have to start the story of Wang Yangming from the beginning
Because the unity of knowledge and action is not something he came up with sitting in his study
He bought it with half his life's blood and tears
When Wang Yangming was eleven or twelve years old
Did something that made all adults laugh
He asked his teacher
What is the most important thing in life?
The teacher said
Of course, study hard
Acquire fame
He shook his head.
Say
I don't think so.
First things in life
Should be a sage
The teacher thinks the child is too naive
his father
Dignified champion Wang Hua
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry after hearing it.
But Wang Yangming is serious
He began to study the official philosophy of the time
Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism
Zhu Xi said
Everything in the world contains reason
You have to go through the grid.
That is, serious study of external things
Come to know these principles
The more things there are.
The closer you get to the saint
At the age of 21
Wang Yangming decided to seriously practice Zhu Xi's method
He dragged a friend into the yard
Start gridding against a few bamboos
Just staring at the bamboo
Think hard
I want to separate the principles of heaven and earth from bamboo
His friend had sex for three days
Dizzy
fell ill
Wang Yangming felt that his friend must not have enough energy
So come by yourself
As a result, he withstood it for seven days and nights
It doesn't make any sense
Instead, he developed a serious illness
This story came to be known as Tingqian Gezhu
It was passed down as a joke for over 500 years
But I want to do a not-so-funny teardown using the framework of predictive coding
When Wang Yangming put bamboo
What is his brain doing?
He came with a very strong presupposition
There must be justice hidden in bamboo
Then take this preset and put a bamboo on it.
But bamboo is bamboo.
It owes you nothing.
What Wang Yangming did
It's basically a story you made up yourself.
To cover the real thing in front of you
He's not looking at the bamboo.
He's projecting the answers from his brain onto the bamboo.
Then wait for the bamboo to nod
Of course Bamboo won't nod
It just sits there quietly.
But what's even more interesting is what happened.
After the failure of the bamboo grid
What conclusion did Wang Yangming reach?
He did not doubt Zhu Xi's method
He concluded that
Saints are probably not what ordinary people can do
I don't think I have that talent.
Did you notice
You often do it yourself
Method is useless
You don't doubt the method
You doubt yourself.
Stock loss
You don't think there's something wrong with that strategy.
You will wonder if I am not suitable for investing in stocks
The relationship failed.
You don't wonder if we're not a good fit at all
You wonder if I'm not good enough
People have a strange loyalty to what they believe in
I would rather deny myself
Don't touch that belief
So Wang Yangming put the matter of being a sage on hold for the time being
He went to the exams
To become an official
To study the art of war
Go study Buddhism
Every road takes a step
Every road is blocked
He's like a fund manager constantly switching investment strategies
Try value investing
Try quantitative trading
Try macro hedging
But never stopped to ask a fundamental question
Is there something wrong with my stock selection framework itself?
This state continued until he was thirty-four years old
That year
His life was thrown into the abyss
1506
The eunuch Liu Jin controlled the court
Wang Yangming's colleague
Several speakers in Nanjing
Liu Jin was arrested and sent to prison for his outspoken advice
Wang Yangming wrote to speak for them
The result angered Liu Jin
And here's what happened.
You need to construct a picture in your mind
Wang Yangming was dragged to the noon gate
In front of all the civil and military officials
Pants ripped off
Forty strokes with a cane
In the era of Liu Jin
The cane is no longer a symbolic punishment
The mat has been removed
Executioners are specially trained
Can break the bones inside but not visible from the outside
During the same period, among the officials who were killed
Someone was killed on the spot
Wang Yangming is not dead
But he was beaten to death.
Thrown into the prison of Jinyiwei
After waking up
He was sentenced to a sentence
Demoted to Guizhou Longchang Station
Dangyicheng
What is Yicheng?
About the equivalent of a janitor at an abandoned post station
It's not even officially established
From Beijing to Longchang
The straight-line distance is more than 2,000 kilometers.
It was the most desolate southwest mountain road in China at that time
And here's what's even worse.
Liu Jin doesn't plan to let him live to the Dragon Field
Historical records
On his way to office
Liu Jin sent someone to hunt him down
Wang Yangming walked to the Qiantang River
Leave your hat and shoes on the shore
Fake a suicide scene by jumping into a river
Deceived the person who was chasing
Just saved a life
I have been an angel investor for over a decade
I have seen countless entrepreneurs go through their darkest moments
The company only has one month's money left in the account
Collective departure of the core team
Investors block your phone
I'm all too familiar with that feeling
But what Wang Yangming experienced was 10,000 times more extreme than any entrepreneurial failure
He didn't lose his career.
He almost lost his life.
And you pay attention to one detail
After all his identity tags were stripped
He is no longer the son of the champion
No longer an officer of the Ministry of War
No longer a member of Beijing's social circle
He found that what he couldn't let go of the most in his heart
What's that?
Not an official position
Not face
Is a problem
The saint is in my position
What would you do?
This question haunted him throughout the years of the Dragon Farm
He spent his days and nights in the sarcophagus thinking about it.
He has figured out the gains and losses, honors and humiliations
Only the test of life and death has not passed
He said it himself.
I'm just waiting for my fate
I can only wait for the verdict of fate
Then one night
Suddenly in the middle of the night, I realized the purpose of knowing
If there is a person who speaks in his sleep
Half asleep and half awake
It seemed as if a voice was speaking to him
He suddenly understood the true meaning of these four words
It's not the bamboo that goes to the extra noodles.
It's something in your heart
Not to look outside for reason
It's discovering that the truth is already in your heart
Just too much knowledge
fear
Desire and the expectations of others are obscured
Way of the Saints
I am self-sufficient
Let me use the framework of our series to do an exact teardown
Wang Yangming before the Dragon Farm
What's his cognitive system like?
There's an incredibly complex set running through his brain.
Extremely sophisticated knowledge models
Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism gave him a perfect picture of the world
Everything in the world has its own reason
Through continuous learning
keep accumulating
You can approach the truth infinitely
And he believed in this model.
And not just because it's a personal belief.
Also because it was the official ideology of the entire Ming Empire
Every imperial examination
Every court debate
Are reinforcing the model over and over again
But what did Dragon Field do?
Dragon Farm violently removes all the supports of this model
Your official position
No.
Your social connections
Broken
Your material foundation
No.
Your personal safety
May die at any time
You are full of economy
In a place that doesn't even speak the language
Can't use a word
What Dragon Farm does
It's essentially the same mechanism as deep meditation.
Meditation is about letting go.
Loosen the grip on thought layer by layer
Quiet the brain's never-ending prediction machine
Dragon Farm is passive
It's not that you choose to let go
It's fate that takes everything you can hold on to
But the results point to the same place
When all the layers have been stripped away
The low-level signal that had been obscured was finally heard
This is completely consistent with the Tathagata-Tibetan framework we talked about in previous issues
Awakening is not about gaining something new
But remove the cover
Practice is not about adding something to a cup
It's to dump the excess in the cup.
Wang Yangming was a young bamboo
Is doing addition desperately
Pour more information into the cognitive system
More analysis
More concepts
The moment of enlightenment in Longchang
After all addition fails
Subtraction happens automatically
I am self-sufficient
It was the Tathagata who changed into a Confucian dress
You are complete
You don't need to find anything from the outside to complete yourself
OK
This is the moment of enlightenment
But what is more valuable is after enlightenment
After enlightenment, Wang Yangming did not stay in the Dragon Farm to live in seclusion
He returned to officialdom.
Back to the most sinister
In the most complex power vortices
1519
Ning Wang and Zhu Chenhao rebelled
100,000 rebels
Controls a large area of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River
Wang Yangming had almost no regular army in his hands at that time
The military reinforcements of the imperial court could not quench the thirst
Everyone thinks this battle is impossible to fight
But it took Wang Yangming forty-three days
The rebellion was quelled
He didn't hit it hard
He spread false information
Let King Ning think that the imperial army has approached
Stalled King Ning's attack rhythm
Then he was in the days when King Ning hesitated
Quickly organize the local militia to attack King Ning's lair in Nanchang
King Ning rescued
He set up an ambush and annihilated it on Poyang Lake
This military case has been studied repeatedly throughout Chinese history
It wasn't because of how slick his tactics were.
It's because it exhibits a very rare quality of decision-making.
Extremely incomplete information
Extremely scarce resources
When time is of the essence
Make the choice that happens to be the best
In the language of investment
This is in an extremely volatile market
When all models fail
Intuitively made the right judgment
But it wasn't luck.
That's the real meaning of doing what you know.
When Wang Yangming faced King Ning's rebels
He didn't have time to read the military book
There was no time for a military conference to discuss it for three days
No time to build a spreadsheet model
To deduce the winning rate of each solution
He had to make a decision on the order of the day and execute it immediately.
If knowing and doing are two separate things
Analyze first
post execution
Then he was too late
But he had time.
Because with him
Judgment and action are the same thing
His years of military thinking
Years of human insight
Years of awareness of fear and greed
It is no longer a knowledge item stored in the brain
It becomes the underlying parameters of his cognitive system
He doesn't need to invoke that knowledge to apply it.
They have internalized the way he sees the world
When you see it, you know what to do at the same time
Knowing and doing are the same thing
That's the combination of knowing and doing.
When I do angel investing, I meet a type of founder
And I was struck by their reaction to the crisis.
Not the kind that makes me calm down
And then someone who gives you a well-thought-out plan
It's the kind of thing you haven't finished talking about
He is already in action
And he's moving in the right direction.
You ask him why he made that decision
He can't quite tell
He just knew it was the right thing to do.
This knowledge
And you read an investment article online
And say I know the kind of knowing that should be held for a long time
They're two completely different things.
The former is true knowledge
It has become a part of you
The latter is just information
It's still floating on the surface of your consciousness
When markets move, they get swept away by fear.
Wang Yangming put forward a concept called conscience in his later years
What is conscience?
He said that conscience is the judgment that comes naturally to you without learning.
You saw the child fall into the well
Your heart is tight
I want to reach out and pull
That tightness is not something you think of
You didn't deduce it.
It's what you already have
Practice is not about learning a theory of kindness.
But to take something that obscures this natural judgment
fear
Greed
face
calculate
Remove layer by layer
He called it practice.
It's not sitting behind closed doors.
But in real events
In real difficulties
Be aware of your own reactions in real interpersonal conflicts
To identify which of those responses is conscience
What are habits?
This is the same underlying mechanism as meditation in Buddhism
Don't chase
Do not resist
Just see
It's just that what you see when you stop looking is your inner thoughts
Wang Yangming saw the battlefield
court
And people's hearts
The scene is different
But the one who saw the action was exactly the same
1529
Wang Yangming fell seriously ill on the boat returning home from Guangxi
The disciple asked him what his last words were
He said eight words
And I closed my eyes.
This heart is bright
And so on.
This heart is bright
What else is there to say?
Think about this arc.
At the age of eleven or twelve, I aspire to be a saint
Twenty-one-year-old bamboo grid to vomit blood
Do addition to the extreme
Failed
Thirty-four-year-old beaten half to death
Exile to the Wild
Thirty-seven years old, enlightened in a coffin
And the answer wasn't out there.
In your own heart
After enlightenment, it is not a retreat
But to return to the cruelest reality
Use things to hone and verify your own understanding
On his deathbed at fifty-seven
Eight words for a lifetime
What impresses me the most about this arc
It's not how brilliant the moment of enlightenment is
But how necessary the detours of the ten years before enlightenment were
If Wang Yangming didn't check the bamboo grid until he vomited blood
He won't know that outward reasoning is a dead end.
If he hadn't been in officialdom for more than ten years
He wouldn't have amassed enough human insight
To support subsequent military and political judgments
If he hadn't been beaten half to death by the staff
Not being hunted down
I almost starved to death at the Dragon Farm
There were deep-seated beliefs in his brain that wouldn't have been wiped out by violence.
These detours are not wasted
They are necessary prerequisites for enlightenment
This is the same structure that we repeatedly dismantled in previous issues
Practice is not a smooth upward curve
It will first dig your deep things out
Wang Yangming almost died in the Dragon Farm
It wasn't fate that was punishing him.
It's fate that's helping him subtract.
Help him put away the things he couldn't bear to put down no matter what
Violently demolish
OK
And then finally, I want to talk about a dimension that many people don't think about.
Wang Yangming said after enlightenment that my nature is self-sufficient
My nature lacks nothing
But he didn't stop there.
He spent the last 20 years of his life doing one thing
hone on things
In a real war
In real politics
In true teaching
Constantly test and deepen this understanding
What does that mean?
It means enlightenment is not the end
Realizing that natural self-sufficiency is just the beginning
You have to come back to life.
Use every real situation to polish this realization
Wang Yangming made mistakes after enlightenment in Longchang
There were setbacks.
And anger and unwillingness
But the difference between him and before enlightenment is
He can see that he is making a mistake.
I can see myself angry
And that very sight changes everything.
The last issue talked about Dharma and Emperor Wu of Liang
We say that the deepest pitfall resembles compassion the most.
Emperor Wu of Liang turned meditation into another form of self-aggrandizement
Wang Yangming's story provides us with an antidote to this problem
Don't practice in your head
You hone in on things.
What you think you understand
Go and verify it in life.
If it cannot be verified
Then you don't understand
For the content of this issue
What do you think?
Have you ever experienced some kind of dragon farm?
A situation where everything that used to work fails.
In that desperate situation
What do you see?
One more question.
How much of your life is actually just information storage?
Rather than true knowledge
Welcome to chat about your observations in the comment area.
One last question for you.
Wang Yangming said that knowledge and action are unified
Say you really know and you will do it naturally
But have you ever considered
Something.
Maybe you have to do it first
To really know
Maybe knowing and doing is not a matter of who comes first
It's that they begin as two sides of the same river.
You can't read the temperature of the water from the shore.
You have to jump in.
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.