Wang Yang Ming's Lament & Sigh

Wang Yang Ming, Neo-Confucian sage, enlightenment

Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529)
Harvard Fogg Art Museum
Cambridge, Massachusetts

A Sage's Lament
When all people are in the depths of merriment, I alone weep and lament,
and when the whole world happily runs after erroneous doctrines, I alone
worry with an aching heart and a knit brow. Either I have lost my mind
or there must surely be a great grief hidden away in the situation. Who
except the most humane in the world can understand it? (Section #176)

A Sage's Sigh
The Sage said with a sigh, “People who know how to pursue learning
have only this little trouble which they cannot remove, and that is
that they do not share the good with others.” Ou-yang Ch'ung said,
“This trouble is primarily the love for exalted positions and the
inability to forget oneself.” (Section #303)

— Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529),
Instructions for Practical Living (Ch'uan-hsi lu) (1518), Part I.176, 303
Translated by Wing-tsit Chan, Columbia University Press, NY, 1963, pp. 163-164, 235