Yangming Investigating Bamboo
In his youth Wang Yangming, strictly following Zhu Xi’s teaching of the "investigation of things and extension of knowledge," sat with a friend before the bamboo in the courtyard in meditation for seven days and nights, trying to exhaustively inquire into the heavenly principle behind the bamboo, only to gain nothing and fall gravely ill from over-exertion of the mind — this failed attempt became an important intellectual starting point for his lifelong questioning and eventual overturning of Zhu Xi’s path of "investigating things outward to seek principle."
Enlightenment at Longchang
Wang Yangming, having offended the powerful eunuch Liu Jin, was banished to serve as post-station master at Longchang in Guizhou, a near-wild place, in extreme hardship, even preparing a stone coffin for himself to be ready to face death at any time. In this very extremity he suddenly awoke deep in the night: "The way of the sage is complete within my own nature; to have sought principle in external things was a mistake!" From then he established "mind is principle," the core stance of the study of mind, and this sudden enlightenment at life’s lowest ebb was thereafter called the most legend-laden "enlightenment at Longchang" in the history of Chinese thought.