Lu Jiuyuan

Life

His father was Lu He; his brothers included Lu Jiushao and Lu Jiuling, while Lu Jiusi was his eldest brother. Lu Xisheng was counted as an eighth-generation ancestor (taigaozu). His father-in-law was Wu Jian; his eldest son was Lu Chizhi, and his wife's younger brother was Wu Houre.

He passed the jinshi examination in 1172, the eighth year of the Qiandao reign. In 1174, the first year of Chunxi, he was appointed registrar of Jing'an County in Longxing Prefecture, but he did not take up the post before observing mourning for his stepmother. After completing the mourning period, he was transferred to the registrarship of Chong'an County in Jianning Prefecture. In the ninth year of Chunxi he became Guozi zheng; in the winter of the tenth year he moved to the Office for Editing Edicts, then became a Xuan'yi lang, and in the thirteenth year was appointed an assistant director of the Directorate of Works.

As a young man, after hearing of the Jin armies' abuses during the Jingkang era, he sought out military men and discussed plans for recovery; he also presented five proposals in a court audience, but they were rejected by Wang Xin, a supervising secretary, after which he returned home to teach. After opposition to his appointment as assistant director, he was placed in charge of Chongdao Abbey in Taizhou and returned to teach at the Xiangshan study hall in Guixi. While teaching in the capital, he attracted scholars who competed to follow him; after returning home, he taught with as many as one or two hundred students seated around him, and his lecture gatherings drew crowds that filled the space outside.

After Emperor Guangzong's accession, he became military prefect of Jingmen. In office he communicated with the people, adjudicated lawsuits, tightened the baowu system, and repaired the city walls; the commandery became tranquil, the offices repeatedly recommended him, and he also rebuilt the military city to strengthen frontier defenses. He died in the winter of the third Shaoxi year at the age of fifty-four; in 1217, the tenth year of the Jiading reign, he received the posthumous title Wen'an.

Learning and Thought

Jiuyuan's learning emphasized simplicity and directness and helped open the Learning of the Mind tradition. Its central proposition was that “mind is principle”: “the universe is my mind, and my mind is the universe.” He held that heavenly principle, human principle, and the principles of things all lay within the mind, and that all people share the same mind and the same principle. He treated “bringing the original mind to light” as the chief method of learning and held that one need not seek outside through extensive reading; the formulation “If one understands the Way, the Six Classics are merely my glosses” also appears in the variant “If one understands the root, the Six Classics are merely my glosses.”

He was as renowned as Zhu Xi, with whom he maintained a close friendship, exchanged letters, and debated learning; they met to lecture at Ehu, but their views often diverged. Zhu Xi made “investigating learning” his priority, whereas Jiuyuan took “honoring moral nature” as his principle; Neo-Confucianism consequently came to be divided into the Zhu and Lu traditions. In the Ming, Wang Yangming inherited and developed Jiuyuan's learning, which became the Lu–Wang school.

Works

His works include Xiangshan xiansheng yaoyu, and he was also a poet. His collected writings appear under the titles Xiangshan quanji, Xiangshan ji, and Xiangshan xiansheng quanji. Xiangshan ji is described as twenty-eight volumes, with a four-volume supplement, a four-volume recorded-sayings section, and one volume of poetry; the collection is also given as thirty-six volumes, with twenty-three poems.