Buddhism Introduction

This introduction introduces important background information for the chapters that follow. Of the Great Tradition of East Asian belief systems, including Confucianism and Taoism, Buddhism spread most widely in terms of geography and adherents. Its rapid expansion is partly due to its successful incorporation into Indigenous belief systems. Unlike other, more antagonistic religious practices, syncretism meant that the Buddhist belief system absorbed local colourings as it expanded in Asia. Buddhism was packaged as a belief system that would defend the state from internal and external threats. The favourable reception of Buddhism changed in the Chosŏn period. Confucian and Buddhist beliefs were opposing ideologies, and Buddhism was an anathema to Confucian ideologues. With the early twentieth-century decline of the Chosŏn dynasty following the loss of national sovereignty – a humiliation blamed by nationalist thinkers on the weakness of Confucianised political rule – Buddhism began a revival that continues to the present.