What is a saint?

Some people will use this sentence from "Zuo Zhuan: The Twenty-Fourth Year of Duke Xiang" to describe it: The Supreme Being has to establish virtue, the second is to perform meritorious service, and the next is to establish words. Even if it is not abolished for a long time, this is It's called immortality.

This is what is now known as the three immortalities of saints: establishing virtue, establishing merit, and establishing words.

But "Zuo Zhuan" never says that this is the standard used to measure saints. People talk about these three standards here to discuss what immortality is. According to "Zuo Zhuan" According to the Dharma theory, the so-called immortality is reflected in three aspects: establishing virtue, meritorious service, and establishing reputation. That is to say, even if it lasts for a long time, this is called immortality.

Regarding saints, the "Huangdi Neijing" describes it this way: Secondly, there are saints who live in the harmony of heaven and earth, follow the principles of the eight winds, adapt to the secular world, have no hatred and anger, and conduct Don't want to leave the world, be in the military uniform, don't want to look at the world, don't work externally, don't worry about thoughts internally, take comfort as your job, take self-satisfaction as your merit, your body will not be broken, and your spirit will not be scattered, you can also Hundreds.

To put it simply, a saint is an existence that transcends the world, gets rid of low-level desires, has no greed and anger, neither deliberately alienates the world, but does not deliberately pursue the world, lives a free and easy life, and does not He is entangled in affairs, has no worries in his mind, and lives a carefree life.

According to this concept, it seems very simple, but it is very rare to actually realize it. Basically, it is like the Buddhist saying that there is no desire and no desire. I am afraid that 99% of people do this alone. Less than.

But according to secular standards, those who can become saints are basically people with high reputation and achievements, such as Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and other big thinkers, who founded sects and sects.

It is said that there are only two semi-sages in China, one is Confucius, one is Wang Yangming, and the other is Zeng Guofan.

I accept the first two, but Zeng Guofan cannot achieve it, not even half. Zeng Guofan's greatest achievement is in politics, and he has basically made no ideological achievements. He is said to be a moral person, but in fact he is nothing more. He has summed up some personal experiences and thoughts by himself, and is far from being a saint.

As for Wang Yangming, Zeng Guofan himself commented: Wang Yangming corrected the old customs and created new ones, and it was not Yu Xia's credit.

So I don’t know which lunatic is listed, so I forced Zeng Guofan into it.

Wang Yangming can still be regarded as a saint. Not to mention that he is both civil and military, but his mental knowledge is enough to put him side by side with Sage Kong. But tracing the origins of the study of mind was not pioneered by Wang Yangming. From Mencius to the Song Dynasty, many philosophers have studied it.

It’s just that when Wang Mingyang came here, he became a master.

The author has not done any research on his philosophy of mind, so I dare not talk about it. To sum up simply, he is the person with the highest achievement in idealist philosophy in ancient my country. He is different from Zhu Xi’s group.

Wang Yangming’s group is called subjective idealism, and Zhu Xi and others are called objective idealism.

What is objective idealism? Wang Yangming has a famous saying:

When you look at this flower in the future, the flower will become silent in your heart. When you look at this flower, the color of this flower will suddenly become clear to you. Then you know that this flower is not outside your heart - "Zhuan Xi Lu"

It means that if you don't see many things, it means it doesn't exist, just like when you don't see a flower, you don't know it. What state it is in, but when you look at it, you will see what color it is and what shape it is. These all depend on your heart.

So Wang Yangming said that the heart is the reason, which is similar to what we say now. What the world looks like depends on how you look at it. This is the subjectivity of the heart.

In the past, Zhu Xi’s group used objective idealism, which meant seeking knowledge or wisdom through the changing laws of objective things. However, Wang Yangming found it too troublesome, and he looked down on Zhu Xi’s ideas.

In advocating direct cultivation of conscience, he has a famous saying: There is no good or disgusting body, there are good and malicious actions, knowing good and evil is conscience, and doing good and eliminating evil is observing things.

It means that there is no good or evil in a person's heart. Good and evil arise because of human consciousness. Knowing whether something is good or not is the function of our conscience. You can use this conscience It is understood as axiom, justice, avenue, anyway, it is a positive thing.

Cultivation of the mind means preserving the good and getting rid of the evil. This is the study of things advocated by Wang Yangming. If a person always remains rational and looks at the world and all things from a correct perspective, this is considered a success.

So you see, there are many people nowadays who tend to have extreme views on things. This means they have gone astray and lost their own heart.

This is the general explanation of Wang Yangming’s philosophy of mind, but it is definitely not that simple to explain. Here is just a general summary. In short, Wang Yangming achieved his achievements with his thought.

I think he can definitely be a saint, but Zeng Guofan is far from the standard.

In addition, Wang Mingyang was also very powerful in fighting. He put down the rebellion before the emperor came, which made the emperor unhappy.