This philosopher’s family name was “Wang,” his personal name was “Shouren,” and his “courtesy name” was  “Bo–an.”[1]  However, he is normally known today as “Wang Yangming,” based on a nickname he adopted when he was living in the Yangming Grotto of Kuaiji Mountain.  Born in 1472 near Hangzhou in what is now Zhejiang Province, Wang was the son of a successful official.  As such, he would have received a fairly conventional education, with a focus on the Four Books of the Confucian tradition: the Analects (the sayings of Confucius and his immediate disciples), the Great Learning (believed to consist of an opening statement by Confucius with a commentary on it by his leading disciple, Zengzi), the Mean (attributed to Zisi, the grandson of Confucius, who was also a student of Zengzi), and the Mengzi (the sayings and dialogues of Mencius, a student of Zisi).  The young Wang would have literally committed these classics to memory, along with the commentaries on them by the master of orthodox Confucianism, Zhu Xi (1130–1200).  The study of these classics–cum–commentary was thought to be morally edifying; however, people also studied them in order to pass the civil service examinations, which were the primary route to government power, and with it wealth and prestige.  At the age of seventeen (1489), Wang had a conversation with a Daoist priest that left him deeply intrigued with this alternative philosophical system and way of life.  Wang was also attracted to Buddhism, and remained torn between Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism for much of his early life.  Whereas Confucianism emphasizes our ethical obligations to others, especially family members, and public service in government, the Daoism and Buddhism of Wang’s era encouraged people to overcome their attachment to the physical world.  Wang continued the serious study of Zhu Xi’s interpretation of Confucianism, but was disillusioned by an experience in which he and a friend made a determined effort to apply what they took to be Zhu Xi’s method for achieving sagehood: