Ma Yifu's Theory of Integrating Buddhism into Confucianism and His Attitude towards the Dispute between Zhulu' School

Ma Yifu's philosophy and academic thoughts, centered on Confucianism, advocates that Confucianism is justified through Buddhism and integrated Buddhism, which provides a balance for the contradiction between Chengzhu's Confucian School of the Song and Ming Dynasties and Zhuwang's Confucian School of idealist and mind philosophy. The integration of Buddhism in Confucianism is a research topic for the Confucian School of the Song and Ming Dynasties, of which the dispute between Zhulu and Zhuwang's school reflected the problem and features. Ma Yifu, in discussing the relationship between Confucianism and Buddhism, went beyond the limitation of these two philosophies. His theory was an extension of the philosophical thinking, by which his approach or departure point can be explicitly paraphrased as “no division between anient and present, between Song and Ming and between Zhu and Lu”. This indicates that Ma Yifu tried to surpass the longtime historical dispute or barrier, which represented his fundamental viewpoints on Chinese traditional culture as well as his attitude towards the reconstruction or revival of modern confucianism. In conclusion, His interpretation of Confucianism is very traditional, but his concept and attitude is quite modern. In his view, the reconstruction of Chinese culture and modern revival Confucianism, above all, is to seek the truth of Confucianism by putting aside various historical diputes or.