Combining The Thoughts Of Confucianism, Buddhism And Taoism Into Confucianism-The Ultimate Goal Of Fang Yi-Zhi's Philosophy

Fang Yizhi(1611-1671), from Tongcheng city in Anhui province, was a important Chinese thinker during the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty--a time when society was characterized by earth-shaking transformation and complicated conflicts. He lived with frustrations throughout his life, and had to joined in Buddhism in his late life but always studied Confucianism, so he got a very high theoretical level in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Fang Yizhi intended to "collect all ideas of ancient thinkers and combine them"with the stand of Confucianism. His attempt of combining the thoughts of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism into Confucianism was the ultimate goal of his philosophy.DONGXIJUN ( 《东西均》 ) is one of Fang's most important work. In this book, Fang expounded his idea of the combination of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism into Confucianism with unique method of thinking. In order to get the goal of the influx of the three theories into Confucianism, Fang eliminated their discrepancies with the way of study and the "Great Jun " which he created himself, and criticized the late theories of the three original ideas. There were many same ideas about the characteristics of human being, which would been changing and developing by study, between Fang and Wang Fuzhi. Fang cared about the living life with the warning of "being not to waste your life" and proposed to forge one' s spirit with the suffering idea of "living from the sate of being death " .All this thoughts of caring about exiting society of Confucianism employed by Fang was to save his shaky and unstable society. His attempt to build a comprehensive theory is quite respectable, though it is difficult to achieve because of many differences among the three theories.