Chapter 25 - Daoism

Summary

Among the many social, political, and ideological changes that took place during the period covered by this volume, none matches in impact or endurance those brought about in the realm of religion. We need recall here only a few of the changes: with increasing acceptance of Buddhism from roughly the third through the seventh centuries, Chinese gained new notions of the self, of time and cosmos, and of postmortem existence, and new possibilities for voluntary social organization. With the birth and growth of the Daoist religion, which began as an attempt to establish a kingdom, but ended as something we would recognize as a religious organization, China gained its first native translocal religion. This religion, too, introduced novel conceptions of the human body, of time, of cosmos, and of celestial hierarchies, both independently and in response to Buddhist innovations. Through these developments, Chinese culture was changed profoundly. To name but one indicator of this, in the second century ce, religious organizations were local and community-based.