Lu Guangzu

Life

His father was 陸杲; his great-grandfather was 陸鋹, his grandfather was 陸淞, and his mother was Shen. His younger brothers were 陸光裕, 陸光祚, 陸光儒, 陸光弼, and 陸光宅; his wife was Tao, his sons were 陸基忠 and 陸基恕, and his grandson was 陸灝.

In 1537, at the age of seventeen, he and his father passed the Dingyou Shuntian provincial examination; in 1547 he passed the Dingwei jinshi examination, ranking 194th in the third class. He was first appointed magistrate of 浚縣, where he enforced the law against a prince of Neixiang who had seized the people's fields and against the household retainers of the prince of Fengqiu who were engaged in private trade, and he cleared 陸楠 of a capital charge brought by his predecessor. After four years, he left office with a reputation for good governance; on his departure, the county's people clung to his carriage and lay across the road, their cries filling the way.

In 1553 he became a secretary in the Ministry of Rites' Office of Sacrificial Worship and was promoted to langzhong. He later served in the Personnel Ministry, including as a wenxuan lang and as langzhong in the Offices of Selection Verification and Merit Assessment; after dismissing officials without yielding to requests, he was impeached for acting arbitrarily and removed from office. At his departure, he explained to Sun Piyang, who had impeached him, that petitions and personal requests crowded the Personnel Ministry and that impartial administration was impossible without acting on one's own judgment; Sun reflected, impeached himself for having spoken wrongly, and strongly recommended him, so Lu was reinstated.

After his reinstatement, Lu served successively as a grandee of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices, the Court of the Imperial Stud, and the Court of Judicial Review, and was promoted to vice minister of Works; in the early Wanli era he was vice minister of Works. He and Zhang Juzheng were fellow degree holders from the same examination cohort, but Lu did not follow him blindly. When Zhang set aside mourning in order to remain in office, Lu wrote to remonstrate with him; when they later disagreed over converting grain transport into a payment in silver, Lu resigned and returned home.

After Zhang's death, Lu was recalled and successively held the posts of Shaozai and Minister of Works in Nanjing. During the deliberations over Zhang's posthumous case, he argued that Zhang's services in assisting the emperor could not be erased; because he refused to follow the majority, he was demoted again, but later rose to Grand Judicial Commissioner and became President of the Ministry of Personnel. In 1587 he became President of the Nanjing Ministry of Justice and later President of the Ministry of Personnel; in 1592 he conducted the capital review and recommended twenty-two men, including Gu Xiancheng, winning contemporary praise, but retired to his native place in March of that year because of age and illness.

Government and principle

As head of the Personnel Ministry, Lu reorganized personnel administration, stopped seeking access through the government, refused requests from palace eunuchs, and selected twenty-one men of recognized integrity, including Xu Fuyuan and Gu Xiancheng, to purge abuses in the offices of the censors. When imperial edicts proposed direct appointments, he invoked the ancestral institutions and insisted that the system of collective recommendation could not be abandoned; his position was accepted.

Even after Zhao Yongxian and Shen Sixiao had insulted him in court debates, Lu did not hold it against them. The two men later praised his forbearance and his ability to uphold public opinion without allowing personal likes and dislikes to alter his judgment. He served across three reigns and was said to have settled major state deliberations with a single statement.

Buddhism and writings

Lu devoted himself to Buddhist teachings and used the name Wutai Jushi. With his younger brother 光宅, he invited Master Yian Tong to establish lectures between Pinghu and Huating, and after the master's death wrote an inscription for his stupa. He also solicited the printing of the Wudeng Huiyuan, restored the hall of the Yuwang relic stupa, and in later life associated with Master Zibo, collaborating in the production of a square-format Buddhist canon; he also helped print the Jiaxing Canon.

His surviving work includes the *Posthumous Drafts of Lu Zhuangjian*. He died in 1597 and was posthumously titled Zhuangjian.