Why is there such a change? Essentially, he didn't fully realize at first that he needed time to explore, experiment and teach students. At first he didn't understand clearly enough, and the method was not so essential. Even if he deviates slightly from the source, his students will stay away from the branches and leaves.
Unfortunately, the manual is not arranged by year, so when reading the manual, it is especially important to note that Wang Yangming is not so correct in every sentence, nor is every method so accurate. Mr. Yangming admired it at first, but later he regretted it terribly. What he never mentioned later was meditation.
I feel particularly sad after reading this meditation experiment and experience, so I share it specially, hoping that quiet friends can pay attention to it.
After realizing Taoism in Longchang, Wang Yangming was invited to give lectures at Guiyang Academy in the second year, and really started his career as a master.
What he preached at first was "the unity of knowing and doing", which is not what we usually understand today. Rather, the ontology of perception and behavior is inherently integrated. If there is any inconsistency, it is because the ontology of the heart has been hindered by selfish desires, so the focus is on restoring the ontology of the heart.
For this view, his students have expressed that they don't understand and don't know how to start. So Mr. Yangming decided to teach everyone to sit still and stop thinking in meditation, which is equivalent to stopping selfish desires, so that it is possible to directly feel the spiritual ontology of knowing and doing.
This method is very aimed at the disadvantages of the times. At that time, the situation of students was similar to that faced by modern people. People are impetuous and eager for knowledge. Reading so much truth is not conducive to their inner moral growth. Therefore, Mr. Yangming wants to lead everyone to seek truth from the heart, and the heart is rational, thinking that this is fundamental. First, this foundation has been established, and the virtue of nature has also grown. What should be known will be known, and when things happen, we can deal with them.
Besides, Yang Ming is good at meditation. His most famous dragon field enlightenment was not obtained by reading, chatting with people, or thinking hard, but by his meditation-"Meditation day and night, for peace, time passes, and mind is open". It was not until one night that I seemed to hear someone talking to him that I suddenly realized, "The way of a saint is also self-nature."
It is easy for people to subconsciously think that what they have done well can be used by others, and others can follow their own path.
But the problem is that the same method, if used on just and peaceful people, can also be used on just and peaceful people. If used on extreme people, even a small difference may lead to thousands of miles away. And most people in the world are unconsciously in a paranoid inertia. ...
After all, the world is cold, and people's hearts are bound by fame and fortune, just like earthly cows and horses and chickens in cages. They can calm down every day and suddenly feel that everything is quiet, ethereal and free, and may even feel the "spiritual ontology" that Yang Ming has already experienced. This is the meaning of Yang Ming, and it is also the "foundation of mind".
However, the method of sitting still is not enough after all. If it is too quiet, it will easily lead to deviation, and Yangming's criticism has two typical defects: "I like quietness but hate movement, I am depressed" and "I am mysterious and moving".
In the case of extreme relaxation and deep meditation, there may indeed be some mysterious feelings, such as some special feelings of the body. I have no boundaries and my whole body is extremely happy. People who have experienced mindfulness/meditation may have experienced it more or less. Mr. Qian Mu, a master of Chinese studies, also talked about his experience of sitting still, quoting as follows:
These phenomena can be called scenes and can be explained in a scientific or mysterious way. Interested people can go to see a ted talk. Dr jill taylor, a neurologist at Harvard University, experienced the magical realm of enlightenment and nirvana after telling about her left stroke.
These scenes are not the goal and key of mind cultivation at all. Actually, leave it alone. However, people are curious. As sentient beings, they suddenly had a magical experience. Can you not be curious? Can you stop longing for the next time? Can you find out what it is without asking questions? Can you not share the discussion or show off in an ostentatious manner with your friends?
So the chat between classmates can easily become "What special experience have you had recently?" "What do you see?" "Wow, such an extraordinary sight shows that you have done a good job recently!" Often talking about this kind of experience, comparing with each other, plus some "mysterious feelings, moving people's ears", is just to change the previous pursuit and comparison of knowledge and fame into the pursuit and comparison of experience and situation, the essence of which is external demand, so Wang Yangming called it "contributing to the disease of the outside world, not time" and was very ill.
The problem in front is easier to solve, so forget about those scenes.
But there is a deeper problem in meditation, which is actually hidden in the method itself. Sit-in or split movement. As long as the movement splits, it will still fall into binary opposition. As long as binary opposition, it is not practice, but it will still bring deviation.
In the above passage, Mr. Yang Ming has been reminding students not to develop "arrogance and laziness". Although people habitually seek the exterior, in terms of comfort, cleanliness and comfort are actually more comfortable. Therefore, once you have tasted the sweetness of meditation, it is easy to indulge in this enjoyment, and it is easy to feel that you are more pursuing and disdaining the world. Compared with the external pursuit of fame and fortune, this is just a shell of pursuing internal spiritual growth, which is essentially a manifestation of selfish desires.
This sentence is sharper and more insightful. If you just pursue peace blindly, you can't settle down when you encounter something, which means that quiet kung fu is not at home at all. It seems to be a selfish escape and self-indulgence of life responsibility. Confucianism is particularly critical of this point, because it pursues practical application and governing the country to level the world.
"Dementia Han" ... This is very heavy and sad. Obviously, the pursuit of becoming a saint and a saint has become a mentally dying dementia. How many people with lofty ideals have missed their lives because of this misunderstanding? How pathetic.
In fact, the altar sutra also said something similar:
The Sixth Ancestor also said that the real quietness is that the heart is not moving, the heart is not dirty, and it should be born without living. If you want to die, that means, if you don't want anything, are you still alive? That's death! It's time to be reborn. All wet!
Five years later, when Yang Ming was 43 years old, he said he was sorry about the meditation methods taught in recent years. From then on, he only talked about examining and treating others, and never taught meditation again.
But it is still caught in the dichotomy, and it is a negative argument, which is still not enough.
After another seven years, until Yangming was 50 years old, he experienced a narrow escape in Jiangxi and finally found the real method of mind learning-"to conscience".
In a word, conscience finally broke through the dichotomy and returned to the unity of roots, ontology and kung fu, and static and dynamic. It is easier to understand than "self-nature" and more infectious than "Ming Ming De". Three words, and then said the Confucian "style, knowledge, honesty, integrity", which combined the Buddhist "body like a bodhi tree, heart like a mirror platform, where to make dust", "Bodhi without a tree, mirror without a platform, where to make dust", and grasped the key points of mind cultivation, which was simple enough and easy to start.
So how to be a conscience? What about the subtlety of conscience? Interested in listening to the next decomposition, haha.