When is the end of the world coming? Who will survive? What horrors await us?
This course offers an alternative history of religion in China by focusing on visions of the end of the world in Chinese Buddhist and Daoist thought and practice. These ideas often developed on the margins of society or in direct opposition to the state. How did these groups conceive of time and space? What experiences did members of these movements have? What did they gain from participation in them? By moving these groups to the centre of Chinese history, we may then be able to reconsider how we think about Chinese society and culture.
Unit one overviews ideas about the apocalypse in general and conceptions of time in China and early Buddhism. Unit two covers the early developments in organized Daoism and Chinese Buddhism and their apocalyptic visions. Unit three jumps forward in time to late imperial China to discuss a variety of sectarian religious movements with millenarian beliefs. Unit four considers the modern qigong movement Falun Gong and their conception of salvation.