Northern Song Neo-Confucian who, with his brother Cheng Yi, laid the ground of the Learning of the Way and taught that the humane person forms one body with all things
Mural guide
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Cheng Hao, courtesy name Bochun, came from Luoyang in Henan and in his teens heard Zhou Dunyi lecture together with his younger brother Cheng Yi. He passed the metropolitan examination in 1057, served as registrar of Hu and Shangyuan counties and, as magistrate of Jincheng, set up village schools. Early in the Xining reign Lu Gongzhu recommended him as an acting investigating censor, but his repeated memorials against Wang Anshi's New Policies sent him back to the provinces, among other posts as magistrate of Fugou. Recalled in 1085 when Emperor Zhezong came to the throne, he died before taking up the new post, aged fifty-four, and Wen Yanbo inscribed his tomb Master Mingdao. His teaching that learning begins with recognising humaneness survives in the sayings and letters gathered in the Surviving Works of the Chengs of Henan (Henan Chengshi yishu). The court granted him the posthumous name Chun in 1220 and placed his tablet in the Confucian temple in 1241.
Studied under Zhou Dunyi and taught in graded steps
Northern Song
The Song History says that at fifteen or sixteen Cheng Hao heard Zhou Dunyi discuss learning with his brother Cheng Yi, lost his taste for examination study and set his mind on seeking the way, spent nearly ten years among the schools of Laozi and the Buddhists, and then found it by returning to the Six Classics. He taught from attaining knowledge to resting in the good and from sweeping and answering to exhausting principle, in an orderly way, and pupils and friends followed him for decades.
Song
Literature · Poetry
