I have seen an article discussing the question of who is the first brother of the Ming Dynasty in the end between Zhu Yuanzhang and Wang Yangming, and I am not interested in this issue. I think that Wang Yangming himself may not be interested, because in his article, Ming Taizu has never been mentioned. The difference between the two years of birth and death is more than 100 years, and on the surface, the two do not directly intersect.
However, from the perspective of historical materialism, Wang Yangming's imprisonment and his enlightenment in Longchang are inextricably linked to Zhu Yuanzhang's killings in the early Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang is no stranger to everyone, he is the hero who led the army to overthrow the brutal rule of the Yuan Dynasty and open a new dynasty. Before joining the Red Turban Army, all his family members were starved to death, and he had been a monk to eat. He has super military talent and the ability to recruit a group of heroes for his own use.
Wenchen such as Liu Bowen and Li Shanchang, and military generals such as Xu Da, Chang Yuchun, and Feng Sheng are all well-known figures, and in the early days of the founding of the dynasty, these characters either died of illness or were killed by Zhu Yuanzhang is also a well-known story.
The Hongwu Emperor did not shy away from killing relatives, and not only that, the officials and gentry landlords at or above the zhixian (including zhixian) in the whole territory were among the people who could be killed, and even the common people did not let go when they were fierce. Moreover, the law of the Law of Not Condemning the Masses does not exist in his place. For example, in the empty seal case, all the main Indian officials were executed, and even a simple person related to this matter was charged with the army because of intercession.
On the surface, Zhu Yuanzhang's indiscriminate killing mode is simply mad, but in fact, it is not so. The people Zhu Yuanzhang killed were roughly divided into three categories: 1. those who threatened his own authority (heroes); 2. corrupt officials (which were related to his tragic experience in his early years); and 3. political needs (Hu Weiyong's case).
Hu Weiyong was the second chancellor of the early Ming Dynasty, and of course, the last. He was punished for killing people, and there was nothing to say about it. However, since then, there has been no official position of chancellor in Chinese history, and the imperial power and the xiang power are all concentrated in the body of the emperor. For more than a thousand years, with the emperor as the spiritual leader, the situation of co-ruling with imperial power and official power has come to an end.
Although the Hongwu Emperor and Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, with their prestige, made the hundred officials willing to become commissars with meager salaries and limited powers, there is no doubt that Zhu Yuanzhang sowed the seeds of opposition to the imperial family and the bureaucratic class in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
It was the bane planted by this seed that made the future Wang Yangming fall into the predicament of the ancients, and under the impetus of this dilemma, he had the Dragon Field Enlightenment.
The system designed by Zhu Yuanzhang had a fatal problem: with the authority of the emperor alone and the diligence of more than 5,000 commissioners, it was impossible to manage a country with a population of up to 60 million, nearly million square kilometers from north to south, and different geomorphological, economic and social structures from place to place. In particular, the foundation of the regime in the early Ming Dynasty was not yet stable, and once there was a disaster, the entire empire would inevitably face a mess.
Therefore, in order to enable power to penetrate into all corners of the empire, the inspectors who directly obeyed the emperor's orders, such as the imperial guards, the Jinyi Guards, and the Dongxi Factory, which supervised the fraud for personal gain, the detectives defected to the enemy and committed treason, and the arrest of evil words and deception appeared. If these institutions can handle their cases impartially and do their duty as they were designed, it will not hurt.
However, this is not possible. It is no exaggeration to say that the emergence of Jinyiwei and Dongxi Factory is the nightmare of every aspiring young man with the heart of serving the country and the people. There are countless benevolent officials who have been killed by their poisonous hands because of conflicts of interest and personal vendettas.
Among them, including Wang Yangming, who was retaliated against and hunted down by the eunuch Liu Jin.
If you have read Wang Yangming's book, you must understand the story of Liu Jin's persecution of Wang Yangming. Space is limited and will not be explained here. On the surface, it was Emperor Zhu Houzhao who coveted pleasure, and the eunuch Liu Jin and his team "Eight Tigers" were favored and relied on the emperor's authority to do wrong. Loyal ministers wrote to liu jin to be brought to justice, and as a result, they were dismissed, tortured, and charged, including Wang Yangming.
But in essence, as we said above, this farce is actually a close-up of the opposition between the imperial power and the entire bureaucratic class. If we start from a utilitarian perspective, Wang Yangming, as a member of the entire bureaucratic class, is understandable. However, since Longchang enlightenment, he declared war on Zhu Xili with the study of the heart, pushing the entire bureaucratic class to the opposite side of himself.
In the system of mind science, the mind is the master of the human self. This concept undoubtedly challenged the imperial power. From this point of view, Wang Yangming's behavior is not at all in the world of mercenary interests. Rather, it is another invisible, bright world.
We often hear people say that as long as it is not related to life and death, everything else is a small matter. But the dragon field where Wang Yangming was located was dying and struggling on the line of life and death every day, and the heaven and earth of the dragon field was a darkness that could not see the five fingers for Wang Yangming.
In such darkness, no one could rescue him. He was not part of the bureaucratic class that embraced science, and from childhood to adulthood, his doubts about science never stopped, and in the official arena, he also witnessed firsthand how his colleagues armed this ideological system into a weapon against imperial power. However, the frank Wang Yangming had no interest in this struggle.
As far as the eye can see, there is no one to rely on. We can never understand why Wang Yangming, who is struggling on the line of death, can emerge inward and burst out the power of the unity of knowledge and action. However, judging from the brilliance of his subsequent cutting of melons and chopping vegetables, Wang Yangming finally embarked on a lonely but sanctified life in Longchang due to his inner transformation.
Today, we rarely have the opportunity to be in the dangerous situation of Mr. Yang Ming, and we do not have to face the theoretical cage and power suppression he faces. You can still be like Mr. Yang Ming, born inward, grasping the ray of sunshine in your heart, and fighting against all the darkness that confuses you with a lonely posture.