 Most of the leading Confucian thinkers in the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties are now described in English as Neo-Confucians, using a term of somewhat ambiguous scope and significance. In the broadest sense, “Neo-Confucian” refers to a thinker and practitioner of the Tang dynasty (618–907) or later who identified with and worked to revive Confucian values, beliefs, and practices after the rise of Buddhism in China. Construed more narrowly, “Neo-Confucian” refers to a subset of the above thinkers that belonged or traced much of their philosophical origins to an important group of Confucians in the 11th century. This group included Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073), Zhang Zai (1020–1077), and on some accounts Shao Yong (1011–1077), but the philosophers who loomed largest among them were the brothers Cheng Hao (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi (1033–1107). The Cheng brothers were most influential of this group, having explicated the metaphysics and techniques of mental discipline that they took to be implicit in Confucian texts and thereby positioning Confucianism as a direct and more formidable rival to Buddhism. Many of the Neo-Confucians who saw themselves as building on the tradition of the Cheng brothers identified with a movement known in Chinese as Daoxue 道學, “The Learning of the Way”, whose goal at the movement’s inception was to shift the emphasis of formal education away from literary attainments and refocus it on the moral Way (Dao 道) (Bol 2008). With a few notable exceptions in the late Ming dynasty, nearly all of the leading Confucian thinkers in the Song-Ming period were Neo-Confucians in both the broader and narrower senses: they sought to reestablish Confucianism after many generations of neglect; they saw learning the moral Way as the central aim of a proper education; and they were either in the 11th century group that included the Cheng brothers or identified with the Chengs’ lineage and teachings.