Postponement in Perpetuality: the Buddha’s Prophecy of the End of Buddhism and Its Transmission in East Asia

The Buddha prophesied that his teachings would vanish a few hundred years after his passing, creating an existential dilemma for Chinese Buddhists on the brink of Buddhism’s disappearance.This book examines the origins of this prophecy and the famie 法灭 (‘end of Buddhism’) belief in Indian and Central Asian Buddhism, and the centuries-long struggle of Chinese Buddhists to interpret and adapt this prophecy. This resulted in the unique East Asian Buddhist belief of mofa 末法 (‘the final age of Buddhism’), which profoundly influenced medieval China and Japan.

Yi Liu, Ph.D. (2000), is a professor in the School of History at Capital Normal University. He has published eight monographs and more than 160 articles on Daoism and Buddhism, including a monograph on the intellectual historical background of the formation of medieval Philosophical Daoism (Zhonghua shuju, 2005), and a monograph on medieval Daoist Lingbao scriptures during the Six Dynasties (Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2018). Jinhua Chen, Ph.D. (1997), is a professor of East Asian Buddhism at the University of British Columbia and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Jinhua Chen has authored six monographs and a few dozen articles on trans-national narratives of Buddhism, church-state relationships, Buddhist monasticism, translations of Buddhist texts, and manuscript cultures.