Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism may agree on the common goal of fostering good deeds in people; they share opinions about theories of the Mind and Human Nature, moral cultivation and desired spiritual stations in life, but rarely do they see eye to eye when it comes to conflicting worldviews. Past academic discussions about syncretic relations between the Three Teachings in the modern era rarely touch upon the issue of worldviews. This paper shows that many Buddhist scholars during the Ming-Qing transition have concerned themselves with the similarities and differences between doctrinal worldviews held by the Three Teachings and put forward arguments that are manifold and syncretistically inclined. A large part of these viewpoints came about from exegetic interpretations of the Śūraṃgama doctrine of 'worldly continuity', also aims to topicalize the discourse at three features of the arguments: how the continuity doctrine interacts with Confucian-Taoist thought, how the Tathāgatagarbha doctrine of dependent origination incorporates the Confucian-Taoist precept of Qi as the creator of all things and the controversy sparked by Zen master Jie Huan, who interpreted the Scriptures with the Confucian-Taoist concept of Five Elements. Through a holistic assessment of myriad perspectives, the zeitgeist and theoretical contributions behind these arguments will be revealed, thereby showing that the Śūraṃgama, in fact, holds a special place in modern Chinese intellectual history.
