 Ironically, due to the pervasive influence of Buddhism, Neo–Confucian philosophers often reinterpreted Mencius’s views in the light of Buddhist metaphysical and ethical concepts. Confucians adopted the view that ethical cultivation was a matter of becoming enlightened (wù) about the fundamental Pattern (lǐ, also translated principle) of the universe and thereby overcoming the selfishness (sī) of human desires (rén yù) and forming one body (yì tǐ) with everyone and everything else. However, these terms are either absent or used in different senses in the texts of Confucius and  Mencius.[26]  This criticism was made within the Chinese tradition by later Confucians such as Dai Zhen (1724–1777), who argued that, due to Buddhist influence, the Neo–Confucians understood terms like “Pattern” in anachronistic ways, and were led to an ethics that unnaturally devalued physical human desires (see Dai 1777). 