In this essay I would like to explore the meaning of "Gong De" in Chinese which literally mean "merit and virtue." The term comes from the Buddhist scripture and means "the benefits of Buddhism calling for good deeds". In the past studies, scholars of Liang Xiaohong and Zhu Ming used "word formation" and "rhetoric" to argue that the term of "Gong De" means "general good deeds can be called", which belongs to the borrowing generation with its own words. However, scholar of Chu Chia-ning noticed that compound words in ancient Chinese vocabulary often included words and phrases. In the past, scholars interpreted "Gong De" as "general good deeds can be called" in a generational way without fully distinguishing the importance of words and phrases. From the analysis of corpus, there are enough abundant materials to prove that the term of "Gong De" has been lexicalized and generated new sememe due to the long-term use of Buddhist sutras. For this reason, this paper analyzes the structure of words and phrases. In terms of words, the analysis of "Gong" and "De" from the ancient Chinese words in the sememe of "acquired" is the same meaning field. On the other hand, this paper analyzes "Gong De" in the Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures which were translated into Chinese etymology semanteme; which have "property", "morality", "virtuous causes", "meritorious actions", "blessings", and many other meanings. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson thought that different interpretations of the same word can correspond to concepts related to mental space. Accordingly, Gilles Fauconnier further divided mental space into four spaces based on the analysis of the two conceptual domains corresponding to vocabulary and psychology. The third space is the common concept of "generic space" extracted; from the first two spaces the fourth space is selected and mapping to "blend space". By combining the above methods, it can be seen that the moaning of "merit and virtue" is derived from the process of conceptualizing the meaning of the words "Gong De" as "the benefits of Buddhism calling for good deeds."
