Research On The Relation Between The Philosophy Of Wang Yangming And Taoism

Confucianism and Taoism are the most important parts of the traditional Chinese philosophy and culture, and formulate "complementation of Confucianism and Taoism". However, "complementation of Confucianism and Taoism" has different representations and characteristics in different historical periods, persons or studies. Influenced by long "complementation of Confucianism and Taoism" and the thinking and culture atmosphere of "convergence of the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism" since Tang and Song, scholars and officials generally had been used to "complementation of Confucianism and Taoism" and "convergence of the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism". Until the society of Ming, the complementation and convergence had consciously and unconsciously become the important context of their self-thinking and life, and become integral component of their everyday thinking and behavior. Among scholars, Wang Yangming is an outstanding typical ideologist. Wang Yangming is one of the most important thinkers in the Ming and the whole history of Chinese thinking, he called himself" in and out of Buddhism and Taoism for thirty years," There are lots of records about "in and out of Buddhism and Taoism" and "Five indulgences and Three Changes" from his students and history experts. Therefore, the emergence of Wang and his ideological development, and his tremendous achievements as the philosophy of Mind, are indebted considerably to influence on him of Taoism, Buddhism and Taoism thinking. It is clear that "the Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism gathers one " and "complementation of Confucianism and Taoism" is one of the major reasons, which is an outstanding personality trait of his thoughts. The trait of Wang Yangming's thinking characteristics has deep relations with cultural background of his family. Since the beginning of the Ming, the ancestors of Wang Yangming, and running for several generations, their ancestors are integration of Confucianism and Taoism, there are the influences of Taoism culture once in a while and his family becomes an important one with such cultural traditions. Affected by this and by Wang Yangming's thinking, personality, personal fortunes and misfortunes when he was young, there had been lucky inquiry chance of Tao with Wang Yangming. Along with the growth of age, Wang Yangming consciously gives a visit to "Tao" and explores it. For example, he visited Tao in Jiuhua mountain, and built room in Yang Ming cave and practiced healthy technology. In other words, the relation between young Wang Yangming and Taoism had been transformed into a positive initiative and a clear purpose of seeking activities. It is just Wang Yangming's "seeking in a variety of theories", "in and out of Buddhism and Taoism " and his experience of torture and scourge of inner world that not only formulate important contents and distinctive characteristics of Yangming's early thought development, but also have important influence on his thought pattern of mature morphology.In view of the evolution of Yangming study, it seems that his "in and out of Buddhism and Taoism" mainly appear in his early years of experience. After "Long Chang Enlightenment", he was regretful and felt he had been wrongly working for the three decades, and had a lot of criticism of Buddhism and Taoism. But in fact, when treating the relationship with Taoism, Wang Yangming had been working over thirty years, which was very useful to his later research. During "Long Chang Enlightenment", "the change of chen'ao" and his lectures in his later years, he learnt a lot from Taoism in various ways. All these revealed that the Taoism played an immeasurable role in his thoughts' formulation and development in the entire time. For example, Wang Yangming made use of the deductions from the theories in "Yi" to apperceive the nature's ethics and arcanum in Long Chang. He speculated on the nature's ethics to give instructions to human beings. Then he apperceived life, and arrived a "knowing permanent for change" and"escape but Tao has advanced" spiritual world。In the late seclusion , Yangming insisted "to advance and retreat by Tao", "escape for Tao's advance", "give lectures in seclusion", "seclusion for ideal" and other acts, it is the spirit of the performance of fusion of Confucianism and Taoism. Wang Yangming's life can be explained as there always is the wish to seclude, it has not only become an important life-long practice of life, but also been treated as one of the fundamental values in his own life, and be called "the seclusion complex "for a life. Therefore, through the research on relations between the Confucianism, Wang Yangming and Taoism, we find it significant to re-read and research into the thinking of Wang Yangming , and study the evolution, essential and significance of the relationship between Confucianism and Taosim in the history, and hereby inquires the evolution course and the intrinsic arteries of the relationship between Confucianism and Taosim , and so on..In addition to investigating Yangming study 's thought development process by inspecting source, course and root by vertical time from the historical thought of "complementation of Confucianism and Taoism" and "convergence of the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism ", and by revealing fact and Characteristic of relations in Taoism school and Taoism, this article mainly emphasizes both philosophy level, comparison and analysis with elucidation, summarizes horizontally its philosophical connotation and implication, provides full reference thought resources for recognition of history of Chinese Philosophy, modern Chinese philosophy and culture innovation.The most contribution of Yangming's philosophy is putting forward the idea of the unique "innate knowing", and constructing it systematically. Therefore, the innate knowing and inquiry of the innate knowing has become a core idea of Wang Yangming's study, from which we can see that impact of Taoism constitutes the important dimension of Wang Yangming's study about the innate knowing and inquiry of the innate knowing. The Construction of Wang Yangming's innate knowing Ontology, apart from drawing resources from the traditional Confucian, is duo to metaphysics analysis of Taoism, which is on the basis of "convergence of the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism", the study of conscience get to the peak of the Metaphysics of Science of the Lixue in Song and Ming. Both in history and logic, it achieves a major ontological shift, in other words, the shift of ontological dimension of value, which makes the metaphysics focusd on whether the innate knowing of the heart is according to natural principle, and how to be identical; which is the shift of focus from pop-oriented nature of the external world to the significance world built by experience of the internal spiritual. This has profound theoretical significance and a wide range of ideological influence. In the elucidation of the innate knowing, Wang Yangming also absorbs the idea of existence and nonexistence by Taoism, which not only deepens the meaning of the innate knowing, but also demonstrates the diversity of ontological character of the innate knowing in relationship between existence and nonexistence. At the same time, it is inevitable that the theory contains the inherent tension and contradictions between the different theory orientations, which contribute to different developments and even split in the study of Wang Yangming's students. By exploration into existence and nonexistence, Wang Yangming not only deepens the understanding of its ontological dimension but also shapes the meaningful world of innate knowing. In fact, he reconstructs the value of the Confucian Metaphysics and eventually unifies the ontological cognitive dimension and value dimension. Yangming School of Mind not only provides a unique picture of the metaphysical world but it also shows the implication of the high-spirited self-identity and meaningful world, showing a complete difference from the Song Confucian-oriented ontology.Although Yangming School of Mind is based on "heart", he explained it by the innate knowing, so School of Mind is in fact the school of innate knowing. Wang Yangming addressed innate knowing as the main theme of study. In epistemology, Wang Yangming put "Tao" or "Mind" into an unspoken domain, which in fact is Wang Yangming's changes from the "study from speaking and listening" to "practice and mind study". This approach broke the dual structure treatment over people's understanding between speaking practice and speaking content in the past time. He believed that the mind and self-being can be unified, seeking to grasp the self-identity. Moreover, Wang Yangming's" practice and mind study" fought against the book knowledge and knowledge of overhearing to look into self-identity. His stresses self-experience and practice in real life._It also launched debates among inside and outside study, self-study and popular Confucianism, Confucianism Buddhism and Taoism. It can be said that from the understanding and meaning of the object, Yangming School of Mind's the internalization approach from the external world has been changed from the semantic, context and the objective understanding of things to self-recognition of principal and the inherent enlightenment, to make people's awareness of the existence of unity and the ontology integration. And through the internalization of this approach people can achieve the self-pursuit and constitute a meaningful and deep inherent domain on the way. In China, gaining such self-pursuit from internalization approach holds great value and significance in traditional Chinese philosophy. Of course, the traditional Chinese philosophy also has a tendency of over-internalization, and this tendency not only undermines the self-pursuit and self-surpass but also strangles the subjectivity of human existence to a pure self-reflection and improvement, which completely abandons the outside world and turns it into the opposite of its original intention. In terms of Taoist school of self-extremist by Yang Zhu and the study of Wang Yangming, the later scholars got the excessive pursuit of self-study within self-confession and free, comfort philosophy, which provided a door to the wanton indulgence and abandonment of social and ethical responsibility.Classical Confucianism, especially School of Mind in Song and Ming contains a tradition of mysticism. It is worth noting that Wang Yangming has a strong mystical color in spirit and personalities. In his life he has several important turning point meeting the monks, Taoists, and strange people, he always has the special care and emotional feeling on Taoism, like practice of long-term "tranquil repose" and mystical experience in Yangming Cave and "Long Chang enlightenment". Therefore, Wang Yangming's "Chuanxi Lu" also recorded a lot of discussion with his disciples, such as sit-still's relationship with body and mind. For Wang Yangming, the "tranquil repose" is not only a self-cultivation work but also a mental self-identity domain. Through this practice, people can realize their self-identity and get the insight domain ontology beyond the superficial being and the limited. Therefore, Chen Lai believes that from the relationship between Yangming School of Mind and mysticism we can confirm the Song and Ming School of Mind contains a tradition of mysticism. Mystical experience is not only the intuition experience and the basic approach to become saint but also provides a psychological basis for their philosophy. The Song and Ming Confucianism mysticism tradition doesn't derive from Confucianism system but from the outside of Confucian system. Specifically speaking, this mysticism comes from Taoism and Buddhism, which have profound mysticism and cultural traditions in the history of China. As far as Taoism is concerned, its "tranquil repose" is indeed a very deep mysticism tradition. It constitutes an important aspect and ideological characteristics of Taoism and has a very significant impact in history.If it is said that Wang Yangming's early attitude about Taoism is a sense of a bit affirmation and admiration, then in the middle and later period ,he has established the attitude of criticism. But to some extent, the criticism is mainly about the denial of the theory about Taoism's immortality, longevity, personal relief and Taoism's inaction. In the later period, Wang Yangming insisted the view about the unity of body cultivation and moral cultivation because he thinks that cultivating virtue and cultivating body are only the incident in generally speaking. He insisted on the maintaining of "real oneself which, as the virtue of self, attains the goal of body cultivation, which is "my Confucian has the road of deity". He further put forward the unity of moral and life issues. This is his basic attitude about confusion moralism. In addition, Wang Yangming also has a strong sense of social responsibility, has highlighted the reality of care and the practice of character. The nature launches of innate knowing about Yangming's theory, the theory characteristic of "the unity of knowledge and action", "the identity and the use does not two things" ,"all attributable to one", form the logical construction of his theory about "the establishment of ontology to use". It demonstrated his value pursuit of combining his inner moral cultivation and his action about saving the world and help people. Moreover, it turned to be the most important judgmental basis for him to expand the argument between Confucianism and Taoism ,Confucianism and Buddhism. In a word, Yangming's theory combines Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. But its root about the moral value is Confucianism. In life interest he is rich in hidden leisureliness, acquainted with Taoism personality, which became a unique "one" in the history of philosophy .In a word, absorbing Taoism school and Taoism causes Wang Yangming to be continuously out of trouble to "seek a variety of theories" and to be "in and out of Buddhism and Taoism", as well as out of limitation of Zhuxi's neo-Confucianism, and finally to create his School of Mind and it is a deep thought resources and important power which continuously surmounts himself and supports him to be free from predicament such as "exile in Long Chang","change of Chenhao". since his middle age. This absorption is also an important ideological support for his adaptation to social progress in middle late Ming. It foreshows that the eminent studies support important thought with new reforming movement of culture thought. School of Wang Yangming absorbs spirit of Taoism, like open-mindedness, multiple-field, subjectivity, freedom and independence, which improve and influence Chinese national spirit. It not only becomes spiritual power and origin of thought with enlightenment thought since late Ming and early Qing, but also will surely open self-explanation and will help provide thinking for Chinese philosophy in order to break away from present "legitimacy crisis:" It will provide resources for innovation of modern ideas and culture. Furthermore, Wang Yangming reveals and criticizes some of Taoism 's inactiveness and limitations. This is more or less related to Yangming school's later period of indulgence, disembodiment and free rein, from which we should learn a lesson.