This article is about Wang Yang-ming's critiques of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism (the three religions), meaning to explain Wang's opinions about the knowledge frameworks of Taoism and Buddhism. Learning the way of the transcendence and Zen Buddhism in early years, Wang established his own framework of Confucianism after his epiphany and never again bothered with the concerns of Taoism and Buddhism, while his opinions about the three religions afterward are worthy of serious investigation. However, the key to his critiques was his own philosophical position, that is, theoretically, Wang's metaphysical position. Yet, rather than a highly metaphysical Confucian, Wang was a successful Confucian in practice. His profound insights and practice justified the Confucian values and worldview; the grounds of his practice converged in the idea of conscience; and the idea of conscience was the benchmark of Wang's metaphysics, the supreme criterion of his metaphysical ideas and the entity of the cosmos. In terms of the philosophical fundamental issues of onto-cosmology, conscience was the ent
