 Moving into the Three Kingdoms and the Wei and Jin periods, we see the rise of Buddhist thought (and philosophy) in China and the development of “religious Daoism”, as personal and individual concerns start to take central stage, over the communal and political concerns that had been central to earlier periods of Chinese history. The reasons for this shift are not altogether clear, but one plausible story is that the breakdown of Han government and the roots of the shift to the internal with its roots in Eastern Han withdrawal and culminating in Xuanxue thought of figures like Guo Xiang (252–312 CE) and Wang Bi (226–249 CE) are partly responsible for this shift (Holcombe 1994: 87–90). Many of the concerns and themes of Eastern Han endure throughout the history of Chinese thought. Particularly, the conflict between individual retirement from worldly concerns (in either Confucian or Buddhist mode) and the duty to engage in the social project, as well as eremeticism as a form of protest, remain major features of Chinese intellectual life down to the current day.