On The Construction And Transmission Of Wang Yangming’s Belief Of Mind

Song-Ming Neo-confucianism is a kind of philosophy and sincere human belief of the idealists. Generally speaking, belief is referred to as man’s assurance and reverence for the existence or concept system which is vital to the propositions of their own survival and people regard it as guidelines for action. In recent years, lack of belief has become an important living condition of modern Chinese, which is widely reflected in politics, economy, science, education and other fields of social life, and which has drawn more and more attention from people.With Song-Ming Neo-confucianism, this paper rethinks the construction of current belief by taking the construction and transmission of Wang Yangming’s belief of Mind as an example. Regarding Yangming’s theory of Mind as a kind of belief, this paper aims to provide suggestions to solve the belief problem in present China, to construct a reasonable belief system and to better educate the public.Different from previous studies at home and abroad, which concentrated on the political, philosophical and cultural aspects, this paper considers Song-Ming Neoconfucianism to be a kind of belief and digs into its theoretical and practical significance by relating it to the modern belief theory and practical problems. Firstly, this paper differentiates between philosophy of Mind and belief of Mind, pointing out their differences. Focusing on the connotations and characteristics of belief of Mind, this paper demonstrates the special features of the theory of Mind. Secondly, by taking the construction of Wang Yangming’s belief of Mind as an example, this paper analyzes the background, process, manifestation, practical function and transmission of Wang Yangming’s belief of Mind. The forms of its transmission include college teaching, forum, community teaching, posting and making conventions. By enlightening the general public with belief of Mind, strategy and model of belief in the whole society can be established. Finally, this paper attempts to illustrate the possibility of integrating the positive research results of Yangming’s belief of Mind into present belief problems. Learning the experience of belief construction and absorbing the thought resources of effective transmission, this paper may shed a light on the construction of a reasonable belief system.After analysis of the above content, we conclude that Yangming’theory of Mind relies on a sufficient and inner conscience, which has the spirit of moral rationalism tendency. The statements "everyone has Zhongni in his heart" and "the street is full of saints" are kind of beliefs and concepts. Yangming and his disciples give prominence to the consciousness of conscience and mind, as well as its significance in moral practice. People should have subjective consciousness, which highlights the freedom of obtaining value of life and realizing self-worth in the relation between heaven and man and the relation between humans and which constructs good moral beliefs and moral state in the spiritual world, making the individual life immortal. Besides, Wang Yangming takes various forms and rich contents in social transmission. It turns from the political orientation to the social orientation and from the elites to the common people. Taking belief of Mind as weapon, enlightenment as means, belief of Mind gets close to the daily life of the common people, which shows significance in advancing the secularization and socialization of beliefs.