ABSTRACT
This chapter details narratives of individual Hong Kong Buddhists and their motivations for spiritual and/or activist engagement during the 2014 Umbrella Movement. I argue that religion as expressed by Buddhists indicates political engagement to be more about future salvation and personal considerations of how to act as ‘good’ Buddhists than about the relationship between religion and politics, and. From this main argument follow two observations. First, individual motivations for political engagement are engendered by personal perceptions which are not always compatible with official religious doctrines. Second, by emphasizing the links between various political struggles, events such as the Umbrella Movement take on an extra dimension, in this case reaching beyond the specific context of Hong Kong.
