Yangming’s Mind Study And Mysticism

The mysticism refers to various doctrines and witchcraft rituals that enable the practitioner to attain higher levels of spiritual power by generally understood.While we define the mysticism as the transcendence of Mind beyond rationality and reality.Mind could realized the noumenon is a kind of absolute principle which negated total empirical representation and beyond rationality by means of intuitive reflection.Wang Yangming’s Mind Study showed such a dimension of mysticism.This theory was another peak of the development of Confucianism after Ch’eng-Chu’s theory of Li.Yangming’s comprehension of innate knowledge with absolute transcendence,achieved a kind of unification between absolute reflection and immanent transcendence of mind,which marked the development of Confucian Mind Study had entered a new stage.Mind Study’s mysticism regarded the innate knowledge as a kind of mysterious spirit which beyond rationality and reality,and negated the restraint and shackle of external reality by the practice of intuitive reflection.The ancient witchcraft tradition had hand down a lot of mystical ideas such as unity of heaven and man,intuition and self-examination,myriad things share one body and so on.These ideas had a profound influence on the development of Confucian mysticism.The unity of heaven and man means that people participate in the creation and transformation of the universe life through inner moral intuition actively.The intuition and self-examination indicates people treats the mind as the object,with the method of enlightenment the unity of ego and Transcender,and reach the surreal realm.The myriad things share one body refers to the mysterious coexisting relationship which build by people and all things through interaction.Since Oin and Han dynasties,the theory of many thinkers,including Confucius,Mencius and Dong Zhongshu both contained the idea of mysticism.These ideas were the thought resources of the later mysticism of Mind Study.During the period from Song to Ming dynasty,the mysticism of Zen Buddhism had a great influence on Confucian culture.The ontology and monasticism of Zen Buddhism were gradually absorbed and transformed by Confucianism,and formed the mysticism of Neo-Confucianism finally.In the Confucian tradition,the most mysterious doctrine is Yangming’s Mind Study.The mysticism of Yangming’s Mind Study not only inherits some ideas of the mysticism of traditional Confucianism,but also made the mysticism of Confucianism reached an unprecedented height under the influence of Zen Buddhism.With the rise of Yangming’s Mind Study,on the one hand,it formed the spiritual ontology which characterized by transcendence and reflection,on the other hand,the pursuit and recognition on the transcendental noumenon had became the feature of Mind Study on the practical level.Therefore the mysticism of Yangming’s Mind Study contained two faces which were ontology and practice theory.Firstly,Yangming’s Mind Study contained a kind of ontological mysticism.The Mind Study treat the innate knowledge as a transcendental entity which negated natural,realistic existence and even all concepts and rationality.This kind of entity is a constant,formless,undifferentiated and pure consciousness,it is beyond thought andrationality,therefore it is the mysterious spirit.In the Confucian tradition,the concept of “Mind” is always in a process of spiritualization and noumenon constantly.Yangming’s Mind Study not only inherited the traditional Confucian concept of“Mind”,but also had a new understanding of mind under the influence of Mahayana Buddhism.Yangming’s Ming Study was deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism,regarded the mind as a transcendent spiritual entity,and it’s the existence of freedom.Yangming treat the innate knowledge as the mysterious noumenon of neither good nor evil,it’s not only the essential content of all ethical laws,but also the transcendental reality which beyond empirical ethics.Relative to the existence of reality-level,the innate knowledge appears as nothingness that negates all realistic experience and rationality,both of them constitute the internal dialectical relationship of the spirit.Because of the innate knowledge is a mysterious spiritual entity,it is difficult to be describe in daily language,so it’s often illustrated by means of parables.Yangming described the innate knowledge by three kinds of metaphors,which is sunshine,mirror and the great void,and used to indicate the traits of light,interaction and nihility of innate knowledge separately.Secondly,Yangming’s Mind Study also contained a kind of mysticism of practice theory.It is mainly manifested in three aspects.Firstly,the object of practice is the mysterious noumenon.The practice of Yangming’s Mind Study involved a kind of intuitive refection movement of beyond rationality and introverted continuously,which the concrete manifestation was the mysterious intuition that faced the spirit noumenon.In this process,the innate knowledge negated the external,empirical ego constantly,and treated the mysterious existence of the super-intellect as the ultimate truth.Secondly,the method of practice is the mystical intuitive reflection.The characteristics of the innate knowledge which beyond rationality and reality determined that the understanding of it could only resort to mysterious intuition.After the “Dragon Field enlightenment”,Wang Yangming proposed the unity of knowledge and practice,and determined the inward approach of practice.Yangming also advocated the sitting meditation,which lead to realize the innate knowledge.Afterwards,Yangming discovered that the sitting meditation was easy to cause the fault of prefer the quiet rather than activities,so put forward the extension of innate knowledge particularly,pay attention to the unity of motion and stillness.Yangming also proposed to transform the body and mind structure through keeping air,experience the feeling of one integrated mass.Through these cultivation efforts,the spirit negated external representation constantly,and understood the Mind was the will which beyond concepts and reason.Thirdly,the teaching of Mind Study are mysticism.Mind Study was deeply influence Zen Buddhism,so Yangming always used the conundrum in the teaching.However,a super-rational mind contradicts the ethical law as the rational stipulation in essence.For it,all ethical principles and dogmas are external and against its freedom,so there have an internal tension between the Mind and realistic ethics.If we put the mysterious Mind on all exist in reality,it is bound to lead scholars to focus on the inner experience too much and neglect the moral practice,so lead to the phenomenon of “crazy Zen”.During the middle and late Ming dynasty,the interaction and integration ofConfucianism,Buddhism and Taoism have been strengthened unprecedentedly,this was the main reason for the formation of the mysticism of Mind Study.Meanwhile,Yangming and his disciples took the innate knowledge as the object of their faith,and the religious approach of Mind Study was also developed accordingly.Among Wang Yangming’s disciples,the mysticism of Yangming’s Mind Study has been inherited and developed.Wang Longxi,Wang Xinzhai and other “ready-made” scholars treated the innate knowledge as a kind of inner and free spirit,and all the acquired work is the outer edge of the innate knowledge itself.While Nie Shuangjiang,Luo Nian’an and other “send to silence” scholars believed that the innate knowledge is the mysterious principle of empty silence,so they advocated the practice of keeping peace and silence to realize the noumenon.The two groups have something in common which is they regarded the innate knowledge as an existence that beyond reason and reality,and they also emphasized the intuition which excluded all the rational thinking and empirical verification.