Modern Chinese intellectual elite play three roles in Buddhism:Monks are professional religionists.They focus on health education and has made certain contribution to modern buddhist transformation and to the response to the challenge of western culture.Lay Buddhists,the secular believers,put emphasis on the compromise and reconciliation between retreat from and return to the worldly society;they advocate the pure land and the pursuit of Buddhism and pure enlightenment,and free their mind and complete the transition from traditional scholar-bureaucrat to modern intellectuals by taking both Buddhism and Confucianism or just Buddhism.The study of Buddhism originated from Gong Zizhen’s study of Tiantai Sect in his later years,with which he made contribution to the comparison between modern Buddhism and western learning,and thus promoted the integration of Chinese and western culture.
