umphs and denunciation and punishment. During a period of banishment,
he experienced “enlightenment” while meditating on the nature of bamboo;
again this is a syncretism with Buddhism and Taoism, although subordinating
meditation and immortality-seeking to an intellectual insight with political
overtones. Reinterpreting Chu Hsi’s “investigation of things” as an inner rather
than an outward process, Wang held that the world is produced by the thought
of a world spirit, identical with the thoughts of all people collectively. Wang’s
idealism supported the conclusion that everyone has the same innate moral
intuitions, and everyone could potentially become a sage by uncovering the
original mind from the obstacles of selfish desires: “The streets are full of
sages.”
Wang Yang-ming’s doctrine constituted an egalitarian attack on the ladder
of examinations, which had grown even longer and more formalized in the
Ming than in the Sung. The earlier two-level system of local and metropolitan
examinations was complicated still further into three levels with the addition
of a provincial examination and subdivision of the first, prefectural examina-
tion into three consecutive steps (Chaffee, 1985: 23, 183). Competition had
become enormous, in part because alternative routes to office were closed, as
a huge number of candidates struggled for a tiny set of positions. Like previous
FIGURE 6.5. NEO-CONFUCIAN ORTHODOXY AND THE IDEALIST
MOVEMENT, 1435–1565Revolutions: Buddhist and Neo-Confucian China • 315