Confucian Spirituality a Zen Neurotheological Comparison of the Enlightenment of Wang Yangming and Chen Baisha

This article first describes Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472-1529) and his enlightenment at Dragon Field. In Part Two, two accounts of this event are compared for the purpose of ascertaining (a) the spiritual aspect of the awakening, and (b) the core content of the enlightened truth. The third part of the article introduces the spiritual methods of neo-Confucianism. The lineage of that School of Mind is reviewed from its origins (c1100) to Chen Baisha 陳白沙 (1428-1500) in the Ming Dynasty. The fourth part describes how Chen's last and most accomplished student Zhan Ganquan (湛甘泉, also Zhan Ruoshui 湛若水, 1466-1560) directly imparted Chen's new ideas to Wang.Part Five compares the spiritual journey of Wang with that of Chen Baisha in terms of James H. Austin's neurological model of enlightenment in six stages and milestones. The stages of spiritual growth of Chen and Wang are set side by side according to Austin's classification. To assist comprehending the stages, I add one more scheme of spiritual growth, the ten grounds 十地 of Chinese Chan Buddhism. A brief analysis is given in Part Six on the conceptual equivalence of the key idea of Wang's 1508 Enlightenment and his final teaching in 1527. In the last part the major findings are pooled and their implications for the present day are discussed.