王陽明
Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren), probably the second most influential neo-Confucian, came to another conclusion: namely, that if "li" is in all things, and "li" is in one's heart-mind, there is no better place to seek than within oneself. His preferred method of doing so was "jingzuo" (), a practice that strongly resembles zazen or Chan (Zen) meditation. Wang Yangming developed the idea of "innate knowing", arguing that every person knows from birth the difference between good and evil. Such knowledge is intuitive and not rational. These revolutionizing ideas of Wang Yangming would later inspire prominent Japanese thinkers like Motoori Norinaga, who argued that because of the Shinto deities, Japanese people alone had the intuitive ability to distinguish good and evil without complex rationalization. Wang Yangming's school of thought ("Ōyōmei-gaku" in Japanese) also provided, in part, an ideological basis for some samurai who sought to pursue action based on intuition rather than scholasticism. As such, it also provided an intellectual foundation for the radical political actions of low ranking samurai in the decades prior to the Meiji Ishin (1868), in which the Tokugawa authority (1600–1868) was overthrown.