IMPERMANENCE AND SOTERIOLOGY
Keywords:
Epic of Gilgamesh as an Illustration, Confucianism, Daoism, Ego Emptiness versus the Void in Sino-Japanese BuddhismAbstract
Impermanence (Chinese: wuchang; Japanese: mujō) is understood here as the basic human condition and as an entrance into the study of soteriological techniques and various practices of achieving immortality and the liberating approaches to the fact that everything that comes into existence eventually vanishes. There are differences of the notion of freedom through transitoriness among the people who have grown up in different cultural traditions. The focus of this paper are Sino-Japanese ways of approaching impermanence, the Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist and their search for an elixir of longevity and their ways of salvation.
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