The 7th Cross-Straits Guoxue Lecture drew to a close Wednesday night at Taiwan Entrepreneurial Park of Pingtan. Lin Anwu, a well-known philosopher and religion scholar, has delivered a wonderful speech themed “Wang Yangming’s thoughts of conscience”, attracting over a hundred Guoxue （refer to study of traditional Chinese culture) lovers to the site.

The 7th Cross-Straits Guoxue Lecture

Live streams on social media platforms such as Weibo, Sina, and Tencent were available, attracting 1.75 million viewers online. Meanwhile, the event has also attracted numerous overseas fans. Up to now, the exposure for the 7th Cross-Straits Guoxue Lecture have reached over 13 million locally and internationally.

Lin Anwu has given us his personal thoughts to Wang Yangming's thoughts on social conscience. He claimed that the core of the ideology is to treat others with benevolence; an individual is part of a community which acts as an inseparable unit. The ideology also highlights the take up the initiative to put thoughts into action and to act in accordance to one’s personal judgment of being good or bad.

Lin Anwu

In the lecture, Prof. Lin also emphasized to start small by putting more attention on rectifying daily imperfections in our daily life. He shared his personal experience on practicing "conscience". He recounted that when he was waiting for bus at a station, he came across a noisy air-conditioner issue and took the effort to make a prompt feedback to the bus station. And viola, several days later the bus station gave feedback with their rectifications and the problem was solved. This was a simple example of how conscience and effort can change things for better.

With the rising Chinese economy, the Chinese culture needs to play an even greater part in building up a nation that is on par with the economic and development boom. Lin suggested that everyone should start small by reflecting on the inner self first to contribute to build up the country.

During Q&A part, Mr. Huang among the audience asked Prof. Lin about how theory of mind explains the inner connection of things. "To internalize the theory of mind, one should have a comprehensive understanding of everything. It is not a mastery of knowledge, but a grasp of practicing which focus more on personal initiatives.

Among the attendees in the lecture were several Taiwan compatriots.  Xu Weijie, one of the group exclaimed that he was very excited about the speech and this was a very rare opportunity. He was impressed by how Prof. Lin shared his personal accounts and related it with his opinions on ideology to make the ideology more relatable. "It is not unattainable as imagined, I will put this into practice with diligence,” said Xu.