Asian Millenarianism: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Taiping and Tonghak Rebellions in a Global Context
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Asian Millenarianism: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Taiping a ...

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Marquis Inoue Kaoru in Japan hailed the “divine aid of the new Taisho era for the development of the destiny of Japan.”4

It is possible to trace a relationship between humanity's millenarian view of the world and the course of human affairs. There are some differences between Asian and non-Asian views on millenarianism, but there are also many similarities. Non-Asians have usually believed that God created the universe, that history has a beginning and an end, and that God would make a final judgment on humanity at the end of time. Asians, however, have usually believed that God is more of a Power, resident in all things throughout the cosmos, as opposed to the personal God of Western thought. Asians have used terms such as “heaven,” “Heavenly Emperor,” “Jade Emperor,” or even “nothing” instead of the term “God.” Although Asians accept that heaven, earth, and humanity are different in nature, they still believe that they are essentially the same when seen in a spiritual context. Although they know that beginning and end, day and night, man and woman, and yin (-) and yang (+) are different, they believe that they are fundamentally the same. The Asian conception of God, related to this belief in essential similarity, was often that of a “nothing,” existing outside the realm of the physical, but having enormous creative power within that realm. These ideas are fundamentally the same in the I-jing, Buddhism, and Taoism. To the uninitiated, and even to those that are, Asian beliefs are not easy to understand because they go beyond ordinary human reason. According to the I-jing, there are changes of cosmic seasons in the universe, the same as the changes of earthly seasons such as spring and summer. The end or beginning of a cosmic cycle is often marked with apocalyptic phenomena.

Asian millenarians have practiced meditative contemplation, or the process of “thought without thinking,” to produce intuitive wisdom. In the modern world, with its constant distractions, many people do not have the proper experience to practice meditative contemplation to find truth. It is very difficult for people to understand such meditation since most people have used a speculative way to find the truth. Entering the modern period, the Eastern intuitive way and the Western rational way have started to follow increasingly similar