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The World Of The Apocalypse

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Introduction
Unsurprisingly, apocalyptic tendencies make their way into nearly every civilization time and time again. From modern day film and literature, to ancient religions, talk of the apocalypse is unavoidable. Despite Buddhism being a religion with tenants based on detachment from the material, emphasis on the distinguishment of suffering, and an enlightened existence, there have been several notable moments in East Asian history when Buddhism was the source of all apocalyptic panic. The first took place in 6th century China when Chinese intellectuals closely examined the “Three Ages of Dharma”-- dharma being a word “used to describe both the teachings of the Buddha and their underlying moral laws” (9, The Art of Buddhism, Denise …show more content…

The same Three Age theory then made its way to 9th century Japan but had adverse effects on the culture. Instead of increasing their production of Buddhist art, intellectuals turned to writing pessimistic texts reflecting on the failures of the government and the military. In terms of explaining how an apocalyptic Buddhist panic can be considered a moral panic, turning to the writing of Sean P. Hier is most revealing. He writes, “scholars within and beyond the panic literature commonly conceptualize moral panics as exceptional rather than ordinary phenomena to explain seemingly irrational reactions to putative threats” (1, Bringing Moral Panic Studies into Focus, Hier). With this scholarly interpretation, Hier details a moral panic as being some “phenomena” with “irrational reactions”; a broad definition that certainly allows the tumultuous stages of an apocalyptic panic to translate to a moral panic. In China, they followed a specific outline of apocalyptic moral panics in that they felt their existence threatened, accepted their fate, proceeded to frantically increase their production of art and text in order to leave a legacy, and finally turned to their religion for salvation. Japan’s reaction was far different, proving the existence of a background ebb and flow

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