Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxi Lu)

Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxi Lu) collects the teachings of the leading exponent of the Neo-Confucian School of Mind. Its central claim is that principle is found not in external things but within: the mind possesses liangzhi, an innate moral knowing or intuitive conscience that, when uncovered and trusted, directly apprehends what is right.

From this follows the celebrated doctrine of the unity of knowing and acting: genuine knowledge is not separate from action but already expressed in it, so that to truly know the good is to do it, and knowledge that fails to issue in conduct is not real knowledge. The teaching turns the search for truth inward while binding it inseparably to behavior.

Reacting against the rationalist program that sought principle through the external investigation of things, the work makes inner intuitive knowing the authoritative source of truth. Its insistence that real knowing is enacted offers a corrective to any spirituality that leaves a gap between insight and deed.