ct sense, such varied forms of philosophical teaching and religious practice actually meet. How they can be drawn together between these two vast nations of thought, and still comprise the meaning of Buddhism.
             In a comparison between conservative Confucianism and Buddhism, W. Pachow refers to the two as looking 'like ice and burning coal' with 'hardly any possibility of a compromise' . The two schools of thought did co-exist in theory, however only through the dramatic development of a worldly, tangible approach to Buddhist thought and practise that inadvertently complimented the non-religious nature of Chinese Classical thought. Interest in Buddhism came about in part because everything it taught went against the Confucians, who at the time of the first century were failing to bring or seek the harmony formulated by their tradition. It developed in 'an age of chaos and experimentation' , after the invasion and breakdown of the central Han political system led to 'the dispersion of the Confucian-educated ruling class and the questioning of its values' . The population was at the lowest in twenty-five decades, the country was riddled with continuous warfare, floods and droughts, which led scholars, in their refusal to succumb to such corruption as the usurpation of power by Emperor Wei , to search for transcendence. As 'scholasticism...proved of little help in meeting the problems of the day' , the Buddhist idea of renouncing the world seemed a viable alternative.
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