Long before anything was called “Confucianism” or “Taoism”, the Yellow River peoples had a complete religious world. It held a high god in the sky, royal ancestors consulted through cracked bones, spirits of mountain and soil, gods of the door…
Part 10. East Asia
Part 10 starts from Shang divination and the Mandate of Heaven. It then covers Confucian state orthodoxy, Daoism from Laozi to the Celestial Masters, Chinese Buddhism, State Shinto, Japanese Buddhism, the Dalai Lama institution, and Korea from shamanism to Juche.
Chapters 94–103
- Heaven, Ancestors and Spirits: The Foundations of Chinese Religion
- Confucius and the Making of a State Orthodoxy
- The Way and Its Power: Laozi, Zhuangzi and the Birth of Religious Daoism
- The Dharma Comes East: Chinese Buddhism, Chan and Pure Land
- The Way of the Kami: Shinto, the Imperial Myth and State Shinto
- Buddhism in Japan: From Nara Temples to Zen, Pure Land, Nichiren and the Shamans
- The Roof of the World: Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama Institution
- Korea: Shamans, Confucian Kings, Christians and the Kim Dynasty
- Mandate and Revolt: Secret Societies and Millenarian Rebellions from the Yellow Turbans to the Boxers
- New Religions and the Party-State: Falun Gong, Soka Gakkai, Aum, Cao Dai and Keshe's China
Chapter 95. Confucius and the Making of a State Orthodoxy
Kongzi (traditionally 551–479 BCE), latinised as Confucius, was a disappointed minor official in his lifetime. Within four centuries he was the patron sage of an empire, and from 1313 to 1910 his canon was memorised by every candidate for office.…
Chapter 96. The Way and Its Power: Laozi, Zhuangzi and the Birth of Religious Daoism
Daoism has two faces. One is the philosophy of the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, quietist and paradoxical, yet full of advice to rulers. The other is a church of hereditary Celestial Masters, healing parishes that collected rice and confessions, armies, emperor-killing…
Chapter 97. The Dharma Comes East: Chinese Buddhism, Chan and Pure Land
Buddhism was the first great foreign religion to take root in China. Within a few centuries it had become, in John Clark Archer’s words, the religion of a land that stayed “without doubt Confucian” in its general culture [Archer, Faiths…
Chapter 98. The Way of the Kami: Shinto, the Imperial Myth and State Shinto
Shinto has no founder and no fixed creed, and for most of its history it had no name. Yet from its earliest records it was bound up with the legitimacy of a ruling house. The Yamato claim of descent from…
Chapter 99. Buddhism in Japan: From Nara Temples to Zen, Pure Land, Nichiren and the Shamans
Buddhism reached Japan as a court religion, carried by the Soga clan and protected by kami who were enlisted to guard its temples (Chapter 98). Over the next millennium the Japanese remade it. The Kamakura period (1185–1333) produced popular faiths…
Chapter 100. The Roof of the World: Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama Institution
Tibet is the clearest Asian case of a Buddhist clergy becoming a state: a warrior monarchy adopted Indian Buddhism, monastic schools then competed for Mongol and Manchu patronage, and one reincarnating line came to rule from the Potala. Sam van…
Chapter 101. Korea: Shamans, Confucian Kings, Christians and the Kim Dynasty
Korea’s religious history comes in layers, and each layer was laid down by a political power. The oldest is a native shamanism tied to a foundation myth. Three kingdoms and then Goryeo made Buddhism a political force. Joseon replaced it…
Chapter 102. Mandate and Revolt: Secret Societies and Millenarian Rebellions from the Yellow Turbans to the Boxers
Chinese political theory contained its own justification for overthrowing the ruler. The ancient idea of the Mandate of Heaven, “that a ruler was selected by the deities to lead the people” [History of East Asia, #71236, Part 1 ch. 1],…
Chapter 103. New Religions and the Party-State: Falun Gong, Soka Gakkai, Aum, Cao Dai and Keshe’s China
In the twentieth century revolutionary and nationalist states took up the old East Asian question of who decides orthodoxy. China’s Party encouraged, then crushed, a qigong revival. Japan’s postwar freedom produced hundreds of new religions, one armed with nerve gas.…