Eschatology considered

I did another speed reading quick hit on the University of Queensland library yesterday (I've explained before why I do this), and the book of choice was this:

Eschatology - what a great word.  And such an important subject in religion, particularly Christianity.

But the chapter I sped through was on Buddhist eschatology, and it was interesting in its own way.

I guess I hadn't realised that it (naturally, coming from that place) had picked up the Indian idea of  cyclical creation and destruction.   I hadn't thought much about Hinduism and its obsession with that topic until recently watching both Sacred Games on Netflix (the second series became very messy, a bit ridiculous, and hard to follow, with an unsatisfactory ending) as well as this cartoon summary of key Hindu belief on Youtube:



So getting back to Buddhism:  there was a lot of interesting stuff in the chapter on its eschatology, but I was not able to copy it and the book does not seem to be on Scribd, so it is hard to remember it all.

Ideas that I hadn't realised before:  that it's long been a Buddhist belief that Buddhism would eventually no longer exist (one of the few religions with a prediction of its own extinction, I would bet);  that there can only be one Buddha in a world (universe - I think), hence you have to wait for the next cycle of destruction and creation to get another.   Maitreya is the Buddha to come - and as one page I did take a photo of says:

A vast span of time was expected to pass between the death of Sakyamuni Buddha and the coming of Maitreya, who would not appear until just after the next cycle of progress reaches its peak.  Once again, scholastic writers have attempted to calculate the time involved, with the most common being a figure of 5.6 billion years.

 A long time between drinks, so to speak.  

I'm not sure whether any branch of Buddhism, in light of modern understanding of the universe, thinks that it's not only one Buddha per entire universe.   Any scope for the equivalent of multiple incarnations of Christ on other, alien inhabited planets, I wonder?   (An idea which CS Lewis was sympathetic to.)   I'm not sure that Buddhists have ever given much thought to aliens.

The chapter did mention how the Indian sourced religions have taken some heart from modern cosmological theories of the universe cycling between Big Bang and Big Crunch - "see, we sensed that thousands of years ago!" they can say.   (And really, the 5.6 billion years figure is at least on the right scale of talking about cosmological time.)   But then, as with Christianity, the latest idea of a universe continually expanding into eternal darkness doesn't help much.

There was other interesting stuff - one Buddhist text with the Buddha sounding like a very sexist fellow with very low regard for women stepping out of their place (although as with so much Buddhist source material, how close it is to the words of the actual Buddha is anyone's guess.)

Anyway, all interesting stuff.  I see the book is available for around $80.   It is Father's Day soon...

Update:  I suppose I should state the obvious - the chapter I read was not very long, and tried to give a "big picture" view of eschatology in Buddhist belief, and I may have got some of the details wrong and be contradicted by those who know more about the many complicated variations on Buddhist belief within its branches.

I think the Wikipedia entry on it and eschatology is not very good - it seems to be bits and pieces without trying to give an overview in context.   However, the entry on Maitreya is better, and I didn't realise that there had been so many claimants to the title (including stupid old con man L Ron Hubbard):

The following list is just a small selection of those people who claimed or claim to be the incarnation of Maitreya. Many have either used the Maitreya incarnation claim to form a new Buddhist sect or have used the name of Maitreya to form a new religious movement or cult.

• In 613 the monk Xiang Haiming claimed himself Maitreya and adopted an imperial title.^[24]
• In 690 Wu Zetian, empress regnant of the Wu Zhou interregnum (690–705), proclaimed herself an incarnation of the future Buddha Maitreya, and made Luoyang the "holy capital." In 693 she temporarily replaced the compulsory Dao De Jing in the curriculum with her own Rules for Officials.^[25]
• Gung Ye, a Korean warlord and king of the short-lived state of Taebong during the 10th century, claimed himself as the living incarnation of Maitreya and ordered his subjects to worship him. His claim was widely rejected by most Buddhist monks and later he was dethroned and killed by his own servants.
• Lu Zhongyi (1849-1925), the 17th patriarch of Yiguandao, claimed to be an incarnation of Maitreya.
• L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the belief systems Dianetics and Scientology, suggested he was "Metteya" (Maitreya) in the 1955 poem Hymn of Asia. Numerous editors and followers of Hubbard claim that in the book's preface, specific physical characteristics said to be outlined—in unnamed Sanskrit sources—as properties of the coming Maitreya were properties with which Hubbard's appearance supposedly aligned.

So, just as Christianity has had its problems with wannabe leaders claiming to be a new version of (or related to) Christ, so has Buddhism.  Not sure any of them caused as much trouble as Hong Xiuquan, though - 10 million deaths by the self proclaimed brother of Christ!