China & East Asia · 1139–1193
Lu Jiuyuan (Lu Xiangshan)
Song scholar who taught that the mind is principle
“The universe is my mind, and my mind is the universe”: moral principle is complete in the original mind, so learning means first “establishing the great root” rather than fragmented study. He left mainly letters and recorded sayings.
Life and thought
Lu Jiuyuan, from a large and learned family in Jiangxi, passed the highest examination in 1172 and served in several posts, but is remembered as a teacher, above all at Elephant Mountain, which gave him his name Xiangshan. In 1175 the scholar Lü Zuqian brought him and Zhu Xi together at Goose Lake Temple to settle their differences; instead the meeting fixed them. Lu mocked Zhu’s method in a poem as “fragmented”, against his own “simple and easy” way. He died in 1193 while serving as magistrate of Jingmen.
As a boy, his chronology says, he wrote: “The universe is my mind, and my mind is the universe.” Moral principle is not something to be gathered from outside, book by book and thing by thing; it is already complete in the original mind that every person shares with the sages. Learning therefore means first “establishing what is great”, a phrase from Mencius, by turning back to that mind; once one knows the root, he said, “the Six Classics are my footnotes”. Wang Yangming revived his teaching three centuries later, and the school is called Lu–Wang after them.