Lu Jiuyuan (Lu Xiangshan)

Lu Jiuyuan, also known by his honorific name Lu Xiangshan, was a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher of the Southern Song dynasty and the principal rival of Zhu Xi. Against the emphasis of Zhu Xi on principle, he held that the heart-mind is itself the source of everything, summed up in his saying that the universe is his mind and his mind is the universe. He taught that every person is born with an original mind carrying innate moral knowledge, so that long study of texts is not the road to sagehood. Their Goose Lake meetings in 1175 dramatized the Song controversy between the school of principle and the school of mind. His thought drew on Mencius, Daoism and Buddhism, was largely forgotten in China after his death, and was revived by Wang Yangming, which gave the Lu-Wang school its name.