Master Sheng Yen had devoted himself to teaching and spreading Chinese Buddhism for all his life and obtained honorable achievements. In western society, he was taken as a qualified Chan master and had successfully established DDM Chinese Chan lineage transmission in Europe, Oceania and America. In East Asia, he founded DDM, one of the representative contemporary Chinese Buddhist organizations, to promote the idea of “spiritual environmentalism”（xinling huanbao 心靈環保）which absorbs the environmental movements into Buddhist practices and endows humanistic Buddhism a global profi le in contemporary society. As we know, Master Sheng Yen was heir to both the Gushan Linji lineage and the Jiaoshan Caodong lineage, which might motivate him to transcend the sectarian barriers and guide the developments of DDM from the synthetic vision of the whole Chinese Chan Buddhism（Zhonghua Chan 中華禪）. From the perspective of syncretism, this essay attempts to argue that the thought of Mater Sheng Yen is the synthesis of the legacy of Chinese Buddhist traditions of Chan, doctrine studies, Pure Land practices, and precepts-giving. Furthermore, the essay will suggest that this synthetic tendency could be traced back to the efforts of the eminent Chinese Buddhist masters in the late Ming. In conclusion, I will point out that the remarkable contributions of Master Sheng Yen actually coming from his taking Chinese Buddhism traditions as a whole, taking a new approach and giving them modern interpretations.
