Text | Vivid Ma Xunwen
Publish | Lifelike (ID: xuranshuo)
Wang Shouren, nicknamed Yang Ming, was a famous thinker, military man, and writer who was outstanding in his lifetime and was known as the first person in the Ming Dynasty.
Over the past five hundred years, his experiences and teachings have inspired countless people in China, Asia and the world.
And, of course, me.
However, unlike in the past, the stories I want to tell today can be said to be very "uninspiring".
But these stories have given me very important inspiration.
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It was late at night.
After a busy day, Wang Hua, who was a little tired, finally relaxed and went to the bed to lie down.
At this moment, he seemed to have suddenly thought of something, so he turned and walked outside, opened the door, and walked out.
Wang Hua walked to the door of the other room and looked inside. Confirming that there was no light in the room, Wang Huacai turned around and went back to his room with confidence.
"This boy finally fell asleep."
Wang Hua lay down with a sigh of relief, closed his eyes, and fell into a deep sleep.
Soon, a faint candlelight lit up in another room.
In the candlelight, a thin young man spread out his books and began to read hungrily.
Such a night reading is not known to Wang Shouren how many times.
In these late nights, he did not know how many volumes of ancient books he had read.
The effect is also very noticeable.
In the sixth year of Hongzhi (1493), the talented Wang Shouren took part in the examination in the capital.
Then, it fell off the list...
At that time, Wang Shouren was already a very high-profile young genius. Therefore, his failure to make the list surprised many people.
Wang Shouren, a classmate who is only eight buckets high, how did he also hang up?
But I reckon he shouldn't be too surprised by this result himself.
After all, the books he read late at night were not in the exam syllabus...
Late that night, when the students were seriously reading the Four Books and Five Classics, Wang Shouren was mesmerized and immersed in the vast world of hundreds of sons and hundreds of families and literary history.
The books he looked at were all-encompassing and varied, and the only thing they had in common was that they didn't take the exam.
Although Wang also reads the Four Books and Five Classics during the day, this is definitely far from enough at the moment of the big exam.
I stay up late every day, concentrating on doing "Five Years college entrance examination and three years simulation"; you hide in the bed every night, six gods and no master to read Jin Yong... Don't hang who you hang.
After one night after another of hard work, Wang Shouren finally succeeded and messed up his studies.
Wang Shouren's father, Wang Hua, was a little worried that his son would be mentally shocked.
After all, born in my royal family, there will still be a lot of pressure when the exam fails.
Wang Hua, the seventeenth year of Chenghua (1481), the first person to enter the Xin ugly section, that is, the Champion.
The Ming Dynasty's titles are much rarer than the current college entrance examination titles, 3 years, the whole country, only one.
The genius son of the champion actually fell off the list. Many of Wang Hua's officials and friends also came to his home to comfort them.
One of the friends was Li Dongyang, the chief examiner at the time.
Looking at the young Wang Shouren, Li Dongyang jokingly said such a sentence: You have not passed the exam in this subject, but you will definitely be able to pass the high school. In this way, you might as well write a "Laike Yuanfu". (The so-called "this section" and "coming to the subject" are roughly equivalent to freshmen and re-reading)
Let a fallen student write "Laike Yuanfu", it is really the first time I have heard of it, and I am not afraid of people collapsing in place to show you. I don't know if Examiner Li Dongyang is really relieved or genuinely funny...
But I have to say that Wang Shouren's classmates are really big-hearted. People asked him to write, and he really wrote it.
According to records, at that time, Wang Shouren splashed ink and lifted his pen immediately. His father's friends watched and exclaimed: Genius! talented!
But obviously, some people saw Wang Shouren so high-profile, and they couldn't help but feel jealous.
Crazy, you continue to be crazy.
Three years later, when it came time for the test, the genius Wang Shouren finally waited for his second chance.
However, what awaits this "coming to the branch" is the ruthless news that has once again fallen off the list.
It is said that the reason why he fell off the list was that he was suppressed by the jealous.
And this time, Wang Shouren made a surprising statement.
He comforted the candidates who also failed the list, saying: The world is ashamed of not being the first, and I am ashamed of not being the first.
People are ashamed to fall off the list, and I am ashamed to have affected my mentality because of falling off the list.
I reckon that candidates who are relieved by him should be very speechless:
Flicker, you just go on flickering.
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But it turns out that Wang Shouren is really not a big fool (except when fighting).
On the contrary, he was a very real person.
This truth is vividly reflected in another very famous story.
In his early years, Wang Shouren also had a lot of interest in Cheng Zhu Lixue.
After all, he wanted to become a sage since he was a child, and Cheng Zhu Lixue was the official way to teach people to be sages at that time.
He and his good friend Qian Shi also agreed that in order to become a sage, they must first learn to "know the qualities" as Zhu Xi said.
Zhu Xi believes that in order to acquire knowledge, it is necessary to contact things and exhaustively investigate their reasoning (the principle of poor things).
Therefore, Wang Shouren and Qian Shi, two restless young people, did a strange thing: Ge Zhu.
In Wang Hua's official office, many bamboo were planted.
So, the two young people decided to start with the bamboo . They face the bamboo, day and night, meditating and meditating, hoping to "make" sense out of it.
The effect is also very obvious.
Three days later, Qian became ill from overwork and fell ill.
Wang Shouren did not pay attention to it, thinking that this was only because qian's classmates lacked energy.
Facts have proved that Wang Shouren's energy is indeed much stronger than Qian's.
Specifically: it is exuberant for four days.
Seven days later, Wang Shouren also fell ill unsurprisingly and could not hold on any longer.
This is the famous "Shou Ren Ge Bamboo" allusion.
After one day and one day and one night of hard work, Wang Shouren finally succeeded and destroyed his body.
At this time, Wang Shouren also came to an important conclusion: it takes too much energy to be a sage... It seems that we don't have the energy, this sage, don't do it...
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The experience of desperately investing like this, with serious consequences, has happened many times in Wang Shouren.
He listened to taoists talk about the study of health, heard and became fascinated, and "successfully" forgot about his wedding night, so that his father-in-law anxiously searched for a night.
After he entered the career path, he spoke out in righteousness, angered the eunuch Liu Jin, was forty years old, and "successfully" lost his official position, and was reduced to a small Guizhou Longchang station.
And one of the biggest effects of years of exhaustion on him was to make his body very poor.
Ge Zhu took seven days and made Wang Shouren seriously ill. The years of hard life in Longchang, Guizhou, also left him sick.
After leaving Longchang, Wang Shouren served as Luling Zhi County for seven months. At that time, in a message written to Luling's father and son, he said that because he was sick, he could not do the benefits and eliminate the disadvantages for everyone.
In the years that followed, he suffered from lung disease, and his condition became more and more severe.
In 1529, Wang Shouren, who was ordered to conquer the Liangguang area, found himself ill to the point of being unable to sit still. Therefore, he wrote to the imperial court, hoping to return to his hometown to recuperate. The imperial court did not approve it for a long time.
Probably feeling that his body was really not working, Wang Shouren decided not to wait. He set off for his hometown.
Unfortunately, this time, Wang Shouren could no longer fulfill his wish. In the middle of the journey, he passed away.
Before he died, he left eight words: This heart is bright, and it is also what it says.
This year, Wang Shouren was 57 years old.
His father, Wang Hua, was 77 years old when he died. Wang Shouren's grandmother lived for more than ninety years. Judging from the physical condition of wang shouren's family, there is no doubt that he died prematurely and died of overwork.
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Reading the sons at night, Ge Zhu for seven days, the newlyweds disappearing, offending Liu Jin, the last words... I've read these stories in many books.
Many times, these are taken as some anecdotes from his legendary life.
Many setbacks and misfortunes are seen as footnotes in his journey to his unborn achievements.
I used to see it that way. But then I discovered the problem that we were able to treat these experiences as anecdotes simply because we opened up God's perspective.
He fell off the list, seemingly in order to make his path to sanctification more tempered.
His failure to take the bamboo seems to have laid the groundwork for his later proposal of a completely different "grid object" theory from Zhu Xi.com.
His exile to Longchang, Guizhou, provided an opportunity for the glorious "Dragon Field Enlightenment" in the history of Chinese thought...
But if you go back to that time, from the perspective of the people around Wang Shouren, you will find out what a heavy blow all this is.
The failure of the examination means that he will have to "re-read" for at least three more years.
Ge Zhu's failure not only left him sick, but also had a huge blow to his spirit.
Being relegated to the barbaric land of Guizhou Longchang at that time can be said to be the experience of nine deaths.
Wang Shouren himself once witnessed three people who came to Longchang from Beijing die in the wilderness here.
Even their families would not have known of their deaths. It was Wang Shouren and his servants who buried them together.
From the perspective of the people at that time, you have no idea whether Wang Shouren can be on the list, whether he can succeed, or even survive in the future days.
When you hear that he has fallen off the list, you will be very anxious.
When you know that he is seriously ill, you will also be very worried.
When you learn that lung disease has caused him to die early, you will be very sorry.
These stories, at the time, really didn't seem inspirational at all. Even every story is very cruel.
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Are these unpleasant stories possible to avoid?
For example, if he could really take more care of his body and live for twenty more years, his doctrine would certainly have achieved even more.
I've assumed this in my head.
It wasn't until later, when I tried to look at these experiences from Wang Shouren's perspective, that I finally understood one thing:
All of this, in the final analysis, is two words: cost.
The inevitable price.
Wang Shouren was determined to be a sage from an early age.
He famously said: If you don't stand up, nothing can be done in the world."
This sentence sounds very inspirational.
But few people may think of this sentence from the opposite side: to make a big ambition means to pay a huge price at the same time.
If Wang Shouren had not read widely at the expense of the imperial examination, he might have achieved better results in the imperial examination, just like his father Wang Hua.
If Wang Shouren hadn't been so angry with Liu Jin at the cost of the past, he might have been a good bureaucrat.
If he hadn't gone to the bamboo for seven days and seven nights at the expense of his body, and had gone to fight day and night, he might have been able to recuperate with peace of mind.
But since he has chosen his own path, he has also chosen all the costs of this path.
This road may fail completely, but these costs will not be less.
The jargon in the Peking Opera industry, "no madness, no life", may be the best footnote to Wang Shouren's so-called "determination".
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Mr. Yang Ming is known as a perfect person of a generation.
In my opinion, the so-called perfect person is not a person who is very perfect in all aspects of life. Because, it's impossible.
Recently, I saw a passage on the Internet like this:
A person's best state of life is to read books when they should read books, to play when they should play, to see excellent people to appreciate, and to see people who are downcast and not to despise;
Have your own small life and small interests, do not have to think about changing the world, and strive to live out yourself. Focus on yourself when no one loves, and have the ability to hug each other when someone loves.
To be honest, I think this sentence is indeed a very good description, and if anyone has such a state of freedom, I think it is also good.
The only problem is that many people, including me, can't do it.
In today's era of high-speed operation, we should actually know better in our hearts:
Many times, when you choose to delve into a complex profession, it is likely to sacrifice a lot of "time to play";
When you choose to focus on a goal, it is likely that you will not be able to take care of many small lives and small interests that you like;
Chances are, you simply don't have a way to strike a balance between work and family;
Even sometimes, you just have to stay up late, all night, at the expense of injury, to complete some of the challenges that must be completed.
All choices are costs.
In my opinion, the so-called perfect person is not a person who is very perfect in all aspects of life; but a person who can successfully complete those things that are most important to him through the right path.
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In the fourteenth year of Zhengde (1519), Zhu Chenhao, the king of Ning, who had been thinking about it for many years, raised an army in Nanchang, and the world was shocked.
At this time, Wang Shouren was heading to Fujian, intending to deal with the mutiny that had taken place there.
When he came to Fengcheng, Jiangxi, the local officials reported to him the news of the rise of the King of Ning.
Hearing of this, Wang Shouren immediately ordered that the bow of the ship be reversed and go to Ji'an to prepare for counterinsurgency.
Wang Shouren's disciple Zou Shouyi also rushed to Ji'an and reported to him a message he had heard:
Zhu Chenhao may lure Ye Fang's troops to attack Ji'an.
Wang Shouren replied confidently: Ye Fang will certainly not rebel.
At this time, Zou Shouyi replied to the teacher: Ye Fang followed Zhu Chenhao and was expected to become an official and become a knight, could he use common sense to speculate on his behavior?
After listening to the student's words, Wang Shouren couldn't help but be silent for a long time.
After a long time, Wang Shouren finally opened his mouth and said this sentence:
The world is against the grain, and my generation should do it.
Even if everyone in the world is the opposite! As long as counterinsurgency is moral, I should do it!
Now, we all know that in the days that followed, Wang Shouren exhausted his ingenuity to capture the king of Ning, and his merits were outstanding.
But when he said these words, King Ning was full of momentum, and the government and the opposition shook. Even among the officials from Beijing to the localities, almost no one dared to speak out that King Ning was plotting rebellion.
Because no one knows: in the future, the world will be whose world it is.
But what Wang Shouren knows is that as long as it is really worth doing, even if it is a big price, it must be done. The moment he uttered those words was an incomparably glorious moment in his life.
In fact, Wang Shouren's life is not a "standard" inspirational life at all.
Whether it is reading miscellaneous books at night, or offending Liu Jin, changing into a master of success learning and thick black learning, he will definitely tell you: Don't do it.
He paid a lot of price, many people simply can't imagine.
However, the path taken by Wang Shouren is also the most real growth path for each of us: extraordinary achievements do not necessarily exist, and the cost of extraordinary will never be less.
In 1519, Wang Shouren, the inspector of Nangan, raised an army to quell the rebellion, and the kings of Kenanchang, Zhan Poyang, and Baoning, for more than forty days, quelled the rebellion of Chenhao, and established the Immortal Meritorious Service.
With this article, I would like to commemorate the decision made exactly five hundred years ago.
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