The top view of the ruins of Lotus Academy provides a clear view of the five-story platform structure
Expounding on the White Sands The heart learns from a vast number of people
Shoulder to shoulder with Yang Ming, the culture and religion have been magnificent ever since
Text/Figure Golden Sheep Network reporter Deng Qiong
The ruins of the College have been recently excavated
In the hinterland of Nanxiangshan, the highest peak in the west of Zengcheng, along an undeveloped winding mountain road, halfway to the southeastern foothills, the newly excavated ruins of an ancient academy by the Guangzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology suddenly appeared.
The quiet forest springs and birdsong in this place are really a good environment for reading. Looking back, people today feel rugged, and it is really hard to imagine how Zhan Ruoshui, a rare Lingnan sage who was more than five hundred years old, led his disciples to build this Lotus Academy here.
The archaeologists cheered for it, which is the best-preserved Ming Dynasty academy site in the entire Lingnan region, with a strict and elaborate layout. After a little cleaning, you can see that the five-story platform is built on the mountain, and the steps on the central axis connect the gate tower, the hall of life, the lecture hall, the main hall and the side hall. In particular, on the fourth floor where the lecture hall is located, a number of red sandstone pillars are also scattered, which sense the sincerity of the ancient people's Chongwen school and particularly affect the line of sight.
Scholars in the history of education are even more surprised, because among the nearly thirty academies founded by Zhan Ruoshui, this is the only one that has been excavated through archaeology, which is completely consistent with his writings, poems, local chronicles, etc., and the cultural relics are mutually corroborated, which is an important relic of the prosperity of Lingnan culture and education in the Ming Dynasty.
Divide the world's pulpit equally with Wang Yangming
Scholars have researched that there are nearly 30 academies directly founded by Zhan Ruoshui, and if you add disciples who built for him and he has taught, there are more than 35 in total, and there are 22 in Guangdong. During the Ming Dynasty Zhengde and Jiajing years of ZhanRuoshui's ming dynasty, which was known as the heyday of Guangdong Academy, 86 new schools were built, and he alone supported a quarter of the academies. In the Ming Dynasty, the number of Guangdong academies came first, second only to Jiangxi and Zhejiang, and jumped to the third place in the country, opening up the booming situation of Lingnan education for the first time. As a master of mental studies and an educator, Zhan Ruoshui has a superior status.
Among the relics excavated from lotus academy that has been cleaned up so far, there is a red sandstone remnant inscribed with the inscription "Otomi Chunquan Weng Shu (Book)" which is extremely precious. Zhan Ruoshui is called Ganquan, and the "Quan Weng" on the inscription refers to him. Combined with his life, it can be determined that the year of "Yi Wei" is the twenty-fourth year of Ming Jiajing (1545), when Zhan Ruoshui was already eighty years old, and this academy, which took more than three years of construction before opening in 1540, was the largest academy he established in his hometown in his later years.
Zhan Ruoshui's intoxicated education has almost reached the point of "teaching apprentices everywhere, teaching every day, and disappearing from tourists all over the world", in addition to spreading the study of the heart in the Lingnan region, he also set up a pulpit to Nanjing, Yangzhou, Huizhou, Hengyang and other places in the north and south, and more than 3,900 students from all over the country followed the study. In such an era of inconvenient transportation and poor communication, a famous teacher from distant Lingnan has such an amazing influence and dissemination power.
The Ming Dynasty was the period when the study of the mind ascended to the Confucian pulpit and shook the orthodoxy of Cheng Zhu Lixue, Zhan Ruoshui and another representative figure of the study of mind, Wang Yangming (that is, Wang Shouren), were at first sight and in the same way, and the two were both like-minded and did not quit, forming "Guangzong" and "Zhejiang Zong" for a while, dividing the world's pulpit equally, and the "History of Ming" recorded the grand situation of "the scholars of the world's speech, if they do not return to Wang Shouren, they return to Zhanruoshui".
Gu Rare began to run schools and give lectures
Although Zhan Ruoshui followed the trajectory of the traditional scholar's reading, advancement, serving as an official, and teaching, his mental cultivation, high life expectancy, and extreme enthusiasm for academy education brought many legends.
At the age of 29, Zhan Ruoshui became a protégé of Chen Xianzhang, the founder of Lingnan Mind Studies, and since then he has been "religious nature" and "meditation", and three years later he realized that he "recognizes heavenly principles everywhere", won the praise of his teachers, and finally gave him the academic mantle - Jiangmen Diaoyutai, and was identified as the authentic successor of Baisha Xinxue. At the age of 39, he went north to continue the scientific expedition, won the jinshi, and as a result, he became an official all the way, successively serving as a Nanjing official, a ceremony, and a soldier, until the age of 75.
Even today, when it is time to recuperate, more than four hundred years ago, Zhan Ruoshui ushered in the purest and busiest period of his life, and there were fifteen or six new academies in Guangzhou, Huizhou, Hengshan, Nanjing and other places. Zhan Ruoshui has a poem "Four Residences Yin" "Luofu Spring Flower Hair, Xiqiao Xia Mu Fan." Tianguan autumn water is clear, Ganquan winter back cold", describing his late spring residence in Luofu Mountain Zhuming Academy, summer solstice Xiqiao Mountain Dake College, autumn to Guangzhou Tianguan Academy, winter residence Zengcheng Ganquan Academy lecture life. Others may think that it is comfortable and leisurely, think carefully, and the hard-working shidao hot sausage is also vividly remembered.
Such busyness may also have stimulated the extraordinary vitality of Zhan Ruoshui. At such an advanced age, he also went to Shaozhou and Hengshan several times, lecturing along the way, until the first half of his death at the age of 95, he was still studying at the Yushan Jingshe Lecture Hall in Guangzhou...
Old Guangzhou people will remember that until the early 1980s, at the intersection of Dongfeng East Road and Fazheng Road in Guangzhou, there was a Tianguanli, which later disappeared due to the expansion of the road. This is the location of Tianguan Academy, adjacent to the Cham Homestead, the mansion built after Zhan Ruoshui Zhishi. At that time, this academy attracted several elderly people who were more than seventy, eighty, and even 100 years old to worship under the Cham family. For a time, the teacher's and student disciples Prime Minister Hao gathered to study and passed it on as Ru Lin Mei Tan, and this famous "Tianguan Liuhao" good story was entered into the "Guangdong New Language" by Qu Dajun and passed on to future generations.
Remnants of the "Book of Otoshi Chunquan Weng (Book)"
Highlight the dominant position of people in education
Outside the lecture hall of the ruins of Zengcheng Lotus Academy, there are still several large stones with smooth surfaces, which are faintly engraved with the words "big sitting stone", "small sitting stone" and "drum stone", and the students' meditation reverie is all in it.
Standing on the platform of the College today, looking around, there is no sign of good land surrounding. At that time, it took a lot of money to build a college in such a place far from the city that Zhan Ruoshui had a record of "one or two decades of money being exhausted here". Later, he tried to persuade the county officials to allow more than ten acres of unclaimed wasteland around the academy to be reclaimed for the purpose of "supporting the fields" and "righteous fields." After several years of hard work, the income of the "Katori Valley" has increased, and in addition to supporting students, it has also built a house and improved the drainage system to cope with the increasing scale of the school. And this is by no means an isolated case among the so many academies run by Zhan Ruoshui.
Why is Cham's men so attractive? Cheng Zhu Lixue had become rigid after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and the mental study of "nature as the sect" and "understanding in the heart" brought great ideological emancipation. Like his teacher, Zhan Ruoshui chose the learning environment for the students of the academy to fly fish and swim in the landscape, but on the basis of Mr. Baisha's theory of "cultivating the beginning in silence", he gave birth to propositions such as "recognizing heavenly principles everywhere", "moving and static integration", and "learning the heart", which highlighted the main position of people in education and provided many "places to start" for scholars to practice mind science.
What is "anywhere"? Zhan Ruoshui was dissolved into "at will, at will, with the body, with the family, with the country, with the world", and then he regarded the study and life of the academy, as well as the relationship between teachers and students, family members, and masters and servants, as "everywhere", and the study of "industries" such as soldiers and farmers, Qiangu, and water conservancy in daily life as "everywhere", and the work of the examination as "everywhere"... He taught students to "cultivate their hearts", "be respectful in all things", and "temper in things", and understand the heavenly principles from them. This greatly shortens the distance between "mind science" and ordinary people, education and life, because the Heavenly Principle exists in everyone's heart and must be obtained by preserving and expanding people's good deeds everywhere.
Since then, Guangdong Academy has set academic standards
There is also a rather interesting phenomenon. Due to the late start of ancient Guangdong scholarship, most of the Guangdong Academies in the Song and Yuan Dynasties were revered and worshipped by Lingbei academic elites, such as Han Yu, Su Shi, Zhou Dunyi, etc. This shows that at that time, Guangdong's local scholarship had not yet formed a climate, and the cultural personality of Guangdong Academy was not enough to compete with the Lingbei region. It was not until Zhan Ruoshui set up a large academy and took the sacrifice of Mr. Baisha as its own responsibility to promote the study of the heart that the situation changed significantly.
Beginning with the honorific of Mr. Baisha, the objects of sacrifice in guangdong academies in the Ming Dynasty have undergone a fundamental turn, and the local elites of Guangdong such as Qiu Mao, Zhan Ruoshui, Huo Tao, Fang Xianfu, Pang Song, Huang Zuo, and Hai Rui have gradually become the main objects of local academy sacrifices. Since then, Guangdong Academy has truly begun to have a academy sacrifice system and academic standards led by local academic masters, which also echoes the social changes in the rise of Lingnan culture and religion in the Ming Dynasty.
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Chen Baisha: One person from Lingnan from the Temple of Confucius
The Temple of Confucius is the supreme affirmation of true Confucianism by the imperial court in ancient society, which means the comprehensive promotion of its academic achievements, Confucian cultivation, and personal morality. Since ancient times, lingnan has been able to get from the Temple of Confucius only chen xianzhang in the Ming Dynasty.
Chen Xianzhang (1428-1500) was a famous thinker, educator and poet of the Ming Dynasty. Because he lived in Baisha Village, Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, to study and lecture, he was known as Mr. Baisha or Chen Baisha in history. Chen Xianzhang studied under the Jiangxi theorist Wu Youbi when he was young, and later returned to his hometown because of "unknown entry". He studied behind closed doors on the balcony of his hometown Zhuchun and sat quietly for ten years, and finally realized the "beginning of tranquility" and "self-satisfied learning", completed the "work of holiness", founded the Baisha Xinxue, and broke the exclusive status of Cheng Zhu Lixue. Since then, the ming dynasty scholarship has "begun to be subtle" (Huang Zongxi), and has conveyed a fresh style of study of ideological emancipation.
In 1483, Emperor Mingxianzong ordered him to enter Beijing, and when he passed through Guangzhou, Mr. Baisha took the "bus" equipped by the government according to the ancient ceremony and toured from the north of the city to the south of the city, attracting thousands of people in Yangcheng to watch, and the grand situation was the same.
Since the age of 38, Mr. Baisha has set up a library in his hometown to give lectures. He emphasized that "for the Sake of the Tao, we should seek all hearts", led the disciples who came to follow the study to swim in the landscape, chanted the wind and the moon, pursued the realm of poetry teaching enlightenment of "flying fish leaping", and created the first mature academic school in Lingnan, the "Jiangmen School", with "learning from the noble and self-satisfied" and "learning from the noble and knowing the doubts" as the core. Later, as the disciples Zhan Ruoshui, Zhang Xue, Liang Chu, Lin Guang and others advanced in their careers, and at the same time continued to give lectures and run colleges, the influence of Baisha Xinxue was further expanded, which not only deeply infiltrated the academic fashion and behavior of Lingnan scholars until the Qing Dynasty, but also prompted "Lingxue" to first appear on the center of the Stage of Chinese Confucian culture. In 1584, Chen Xianzhang and Wang Yangming entered the Temple of Confucius together. Before and after this, a series of new atmospheres such as the indoctrination of Lingnan Academy, the formation of the Cantonese scholar-doctor group, and the entry of regional Confucianism into mainstream orthodoxy appeared, and Guangdong was no longer synonymous with the land of barbarism.
Interview
Chen Xianzhang Zhan Ruoshui can be called the earliest educator in Guangdong
Wang Jianjun is a professor at the School of Politics and Public Administration, South China Normal University
Yangcheng Evening News: Zhan Ruoshui mainly inherits the psychology theory of teacher Chen Baisha academically, and has made outstanding contributions to the education of the academy and the promotion and popularization of Lingnan scholarship, which can be said to be a landmark figure of Lingnan indoctrination in the Kaiming Dynasty, and also enjoys a high reputation in the country. What did he rely on?
Wang Jianjun: It can be said that it was Chen Xianzhang who opened the Lingnan Confucianism system, but it was Zhan Ruoshui who raised the banner of Confucianism in the Lingnan region. Zhan Ruoshui's academy, with the call of "Qibaisha", has surpassed Chen Xianzhang's teaching tradition. Here, Zhan Ruoshui did several important tasks: First, he interpreted the purpose, he revised Chen Xianzhang's purpose of "cultivating clues in silence" and put forward a new purpose of "recognizing heavenly principles everywhere"; second, he constructed the academy, so that Chen Xianzhang's heart study had a fixed teaching and dissemination place; third, he established a shrine to make Chen Xianzhang's heart study an institutional knowledge resource for the teaching of the college; fourth, the regulation system, Zhan Ruoshui promulgated the "Two Industry Unity Training", "Dake Discipline Regulations", "Dake Shutang Training", "Seeking Reassurance", "Mental Diagram" and other regulatory regulations. A series of rules of thought and behavior such as the purpose of learning, the study curriculum, the etiquette of respect and inferiority, and the work and rest system of the students of the college are clearly and in detail, so that Chen Xianzhangxinxue, who pays attention to natural self-sufficiency and simplicity and freedom, can be incorporated into the teaching organization of the college and complete its integration with the teaching of the traditional college.
In short, on the basis of inheriting and developing Chen Xianzhang's theory, Zhan Ruoshui's educational thought took "recognizing heavenly principles everywhere" as the purpose of a generation of pulpits, and was half-divided from Wang Shouren, setting off a wave of lectures in the Ming Dynasty and influencing the study style of the middle and late Ming Dynasty for hundreds of years. In particular, it has a more far-reaching impact on promoting the teaching of colleges in Guangdong, so that the Baisha and Ganquan schools can take root in the Lingnan region, becoming a banner for the study of Confucianism in Guangdong to begin to move towards independence and maturity, and also marking that Guangdong Colleges have embarked on a stage of independent and mature development.
Yangcheng Evening News: Zhan Ruoshui's ideas and practices in the management of the college, where do you think the most valuable places are?
Wang Jianjun: The most valuable place in the management of Zhan Ruoshui in the college is the organic combination of theoretical study and self-cultivation practice through institutional management. Zhan Ruoshui has subscribed to the "Dake Discipline" and the "Dake Shutang Training", which integrates the connotation of "recognizing heavenly principles everywhere" into the institutionalized teaching arrangement, looking for "starting and working hard" in the students' college life, and emphasizing a "respectful" word, which should be respected. It can be seen that Zhan Ruoshui places the profound and mysterious study of the mind in the world of students' lives, and this concept of college management has important historical significance in the development of China's college management system.
However, due to the orthodox status of Cheng Zhu Lixue, the significance of Zhan Ruoshui Academy's management ideology did not attract enough attention. Whenever the ancient historians talked about the academy system, they all took Zhu Xi's "Revelation of the White Deer Cave Academy" as a benchmark, which had the problem of traditional educational value orientation. The "everywhere" emphasized by Zhan Ruoshui is basically the content of people's life and labor, which runs counter to the traditional educational values of "heavy road light instrument" and "heavy book and light end", so it cannot be paid attention to by the academic orthodoxy of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the contemporary academic community has also ignored it.
Yangcheng Evening News: How to evaluate the position of Zhan Ruoshui and Chen Xianzhang in the history of education?
Wang Jianjun: Chen Xianzhang and Zhan Ruoshui are the pioneers in the history of education in Guangdong. Before the Ming Dynasty, Guangdong did not have a figure who could be called an "educator". In the Ming Dynasty, the educational achievements of the two of them were not only the most influential in Guangdong, but also affected the whole country, laying the foundation for the rise of Confucianism in Lingnan and the promotion of education in Guangdong in the Ming Dynasty.