Chapter 26 Yangming Gezhu

After serious thinking, Wang Shouren made a difficult decision. He picked up a friend surnamed Qian and said: Let's investigate things together. Friend Qian asked: "It's very good, there is food and drink, why do you have to check things?" Wang Shouren said: The sage Zhu Xi once said that every plant and every tree contains the ultimate truth.We start from the bamboo in the window to find out the truth hidden in the bamboo, and if we find out, we will be sages.Once you become a sage, you don't have to worry about eating and drinking. Friends Qian was overjoyed, so he and Wang Shouren lay on the window sill and began to look at the bamboo.

This thing is really not so easy to qualify.On the first day, the two of them didn't figure out anything.The next day, Yinmao was still not particularly tall.And on the third day, poor friend Champ, Ged had worn himself out. Seeing that his friend withdrew from the competition due to illness, Wang Shouren was overjoyed: This sage belongs to me... So he continued to lie on the window sill to check for the fourth day, the fifth day, the sixth day, and waited until the seventh day. He too fell ill. This incident is recorded in history as a failure case. The great Confucian Huang Zongxi commented on Wang Shouren's trip to investigate things in this way:

Mr.'s study began to flood in the poems and chapters, and then read the books of Kaoting all over the place, and studied things sequentially.So he went in and out of the Buddha and the old man for a long time. "Entry with no income" means that Wang Shouren has been looking for things for a long time, but he still has no way to get in, which is a complete failure.After the failure, Wang Shouren went to Xunxian to ask, trying to escape reality in this way... Not to mention Huang Zongxi of later generations, even Wang Shouren himself at that time admitted that he "learned poems as the world goes", which means: From today onwards, I will be a kind-hearted young man of literature, reciting a poem in the morning and writing a poem before going to bed. A gift, live a happy life, don't take the path of sages... The path of sages is really not walked by humans, it is too difficult, too difficult.

But in fact, Wang Shouren succeeded.Not only did he succeed, even that friend Qian had already reached the threshold of a sage, but due to physical reasons, he was not good at finishing the door and failed to enter the room, so they all thought they had failed.And others don't understand what tricks they are up to. Hearing them yell that they have failed, they will only yell more fiercely than the two of them.After all, in this world, many people cannot achieve their own success because they lack the awareness of struggle, and can only experience a bit of bitter happiness from the failure of others.

Then what reason do we have to prove that Wang Shouren succeeded? The reason lies in Wang Shouren's investigation process.