Millenarianism and Millenarian Movements (DuBois, Encyclopedia of Buddhism)

An entry by Thomas DuBois in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Robert E. Buswell, general editor, Macmillan Reference USA), read directly here via its reproduction at Encyclopedia.com. DuBois surveys Buddhist millenarian movements and, along the way, states the mainstream Buddhist position on Maitreya's return in his own words: it is set in "relatively vague terms" and "destined to occur only in the very distant future (five billion years, by some accounts)," which turned ordinary devotional hope toward individual paths such as rebirth in the Pure Land or Tusita heaven rather than toward an approaching collective millennium. Against this, DuBois describes how Chinese apocryphal sutras from the sixth century reworked Maitreya's arrival into an imminent cosmic cleansing arriving "at the lowest point of human suffering," the reading that fed the White Lotus tradition. DuBois writes about Buddhist millenarianism broadly rather than the Theravada Pali Canon specifically.