A Textual Research into the Social Association of Deng Huoqu and Zhao Zhenji

In his middle years, Deng Huoqu took his country fellow Zhao Zhenji as his teacher in Shengshui Temple in his hometown Neijiang and began the learning of Yangming Studies.Due to the different growth background, interest and natural endowment, they finally stepped to the different development roads of the Studies.Zhao was strongly interested in Buddhist and Taoist thoughts, but stuck to the Confucian doctrines and ethics to the last.He behaved with the heart he brought when he had entered this world, and he studied Confucianism with the Buddhism as the beginning.Since his choice of Zhao Zhenji as his teacher, Deng had decisively stepped into a Buddha-worship and self-ease road.He did not stick to any disciplines.At last, he abandoned Confucianism and converted to Buddhism.The different life standing led to the break of their relationships of teacher and student.The change from their good relationship to its break has shown the great divergence in the derivation path of Yangming Studies in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.