Cultivating a Vast and Unobscured Heart-Mind: Yu Ji on Educating the Existential Self

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Abstract

Under the influence of Lu Jiuyuan, Chinese Neo-Confucianist thinker Yu Ji believed cultivating the heart-mind to be the core of educating the existential self. In this cultivation, one recognizes the nature of the heart-mind as vast and brilliant through constantly shedding the obscurations such as desires, narrow-mindedness, preconceptions, and mental barriers. The transcendence of the heart-mind—a vision as vast as the open sky—relies on moment-to-moment awareness of the heart-mind. Letting the heart-mind comes back to its innate nature is a way to actualize the value of humanity in a time of uncertainty.

Author

• Xueqing Luo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign