This talk will examine paintings of the future Buddha Maitreya’s earthly paradise in cave temples on the Silk Road near Dunhuang, China. We will examine how artists from the 6th to 13th centuries imagined an earthly utopia that included a striking number of everyday details. How do people in paradise live and die? How do they grow food, obtain clothing, get married, or go to the bathroom? This presentation brings to life a Buddha world that integrates daily human life into a transcendent vision. This talk will examine paintings of the future Buddha Maitreya’s earthly paradise in cave temples on the Silk Road near Dunhuang, China. We will examine how artists from the 6th to 13th centuries imagined an earthly utopia that included a striking number of everyday details. How do people in paradise live and die? How do they grow food, obtain clothing, get married, or go to the bathroom? This presentation brings to life a Buddha world that integrates daily human life into a transcendent vision.

April D. Hughes is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University. Her monograph, Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021) examines apocalypticism during the reign of China’s only woman emperor, Wu Zhao (r. 690-705).