 Despite Chengguan’s unfavorable evaluations of Huiyuan’s teachings, Chengguan followed Huiyuan in explicitly criticizing indigenous Chinese teachings of the ru (Confucians) and the Daoists. He identifies the cardinal teaching of the ru tradition as the five constant virtues—benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, sincerity; the cardinal teaching of Daoism as spontaneity (Ch. ziran); and the cardinal teaching of Buddhism as causality (Ch. yinyuan). Chengguan’s criticisms center upon the claim that non-Buddhist teachings endorse a kind of pseudo-causality that abnegates responsibility for actions and denigrates the role of wisdom. Against the Yijing (associated with Confucians), he argues that locating the source of the myriad things in the transformations of yin and yang ascribes responsibility for wisdom or stupidity to the impersonal workings of heaven, thereby denying the role of consciousness in creating reality. He develops a similar criticism against the Daodejing, which locates the source of the myriad things in Dao and denigrates practices of cultivation as superfluous. Against the Zhuangzi, finally, he argues that the emphasis upon spontaneity as fundamental means that enlightenment arises without cause rather than through careful practice, and that this is erroneous by virtue of ignoring the way ignorance and enlightenment depend upon prior conditions. 