The arising of Neo-Confucianism in the early period of this century was largely indebted to the revival of Buddhism in modern China. This is an indisputable fact. The evidence can be found in the writings of any Neo-Confucian thinker, such as Liang Shuming (1893-1988), Hsiung Shih-li(1885-1968), Tang Chun-I (1909-1978) or Mou Tsung-san (1909- 1995). In this paper, I will focus on the cases of Hsiung and Mou only. How is Buddhism interpreted and assimilated in Hsiung's and Mou's philosophy? In the case of Hsiung, the answer to this question can be best seen in Hisung's"turn" from Yogacara idealism to Neo-Confucian dynamic ontology in the 1920s. In the case of Mou, the twofold ontology elaborated in The Awakening of Faith is taken as the common ground of his Kantianized Confucian philosophy. In both cases, it is clear that Buddhism is read by them with a pair of specific hermeneutical lens. In this paper, I am rather concerned with the way of how the meanings of Buddhist concepts in Hsiung's and Mou's systems are disseminated and displaced in the chain of the various semantic and rhetorical contexts.
