Whatever we may think of these schools of philosophy, or the connection

with or indebtedness of Gautama, the Buddha, to them, they reveal to us

the conceptions which his contemporaries had of the universe and the

beings inhabiting it. These were honest human attempts to find God. In

them the various beings or six conditions of sentient existence are

devas or gods; men; asuras or monsters; pretas or demons; animals; and

beings in hell. Furthermore, these schools of Hindu philosophy show us

the conditions out of which Buddhism arose, furnish us with its

terminology and technical phrases, reveal to us what the reformer

proposed to himself to do, and, what is perhaps still more important,

show us the types to which Buddhism in its degeneration and degradation

reverted. The strange far-off oriental words which today scholars

discuss, theosophists manipulate, and charlatans employ as catchpennies

were common words in the every-day speech of the Hindu people, two or

three thousand years ago.

Glancing rapidly at the condition of religion in the era ushering in the

birth of Buddha, we note that the old joyousness of life manifested in

the Vedic hymns is past, their fervor and glow are gone. In the morning

of Hindu life there was no caste, no fixed priesthood, and no idols; but

as wealth, civilization, easy and settled life succeeded, the taste for

pompous sacrifices conducted by an hereditary priestly caste increased.

Greater importance was laid upon the detail of the ceremonies, the

attention of the worshipper being turned from the deities "to the

minutiæ of rites, the erection of altars, the fixing of the proper

astronomical moments for lighting the fire, the correct pronunciation of

prayers, and to the various requisite acts accompanying a sacrifice."[6]

In the chapter of decay which time wrote and literature reflects, we

find "grotesque reasons given for every minute rite, dogmatic

explanation of texts, penances for every breach of form and rule, and

elaborate directions for every act and moment of the worshipper."

The literature shows a degree of credulity and submission on the part of

the people and of absolute power on the part of the priests, which

reminds us of the Middle Ages in Europe. The old inspiring wars with the

aborigines are over. The time of bearing a noble creed, meaning culture

and civilization as against savagery and idolatry, is past, and only

intestine quarrels and local strife have succeeded. The age of creative

literature is over, and commentators, critics and grammarians have

succeeded. Still more startling are the facts disclosed by literary

history. The liquid poetry has become frozen prose; the old flaming fuel

of genius is now slag and ashes. We see Hindus doing exactly what Jewish

rabbis, and after them Christian schoolmen and dogma-makers, did with

the old Hebrew poems and prophecies. Construing literally the prayers,

songs and hopes of an earlier age, they rebuild the letter of the text

into creeds and systems, and erect an amazing edifice of steel-framed

and stone-cased tradition, to challenge which is taught to be heresy and

impiety. The poetical similes used in the Rig Vedas have been

transformed into mythological tales. In the change of language the Vedas

themselves are unreadable, except by the priests, who fatten on popular

beliefs in the transmigration of souls and in the power of priestcraft

to make that transmigration blissful--provided liberal gifts are duly

forthcoming. Idolatry and witchcraft are rampant. Some saviour, some

light was needed.

Buddhism a Logical Product of Hindu Thought.

At such a time, probably 557 B.C., was born Shaka, of the Muni clan, at

Kapilavastu, one hundred miles northeast of Benares. We pass over the

details[7] of the life of him called Prince, Lord, Lion of the Tribe of

Shaka, and Saviour; of his desertion of wife and child, called the first

Great Renunciation; of his struggles to obtain peace; of his

enlightenment or Buddhahood; of his second or Greater Renunciation; of

merit on account of austerities; and give the story told in a mountain

of books in various tongues, but condensed in a paragraph by Romesh

Chunder Dutt.

"At an early age, Prince Gautama left his royal home, and his

wife, and new-born child, and became a wanderer and a mendicant,

to seek a way of salvation for man. Hindu rites, accompanied by

the slaughter of innocent victims, repelled his feelings. Hindu

philosophy afforded him no remedy, and Hindu penances and

mortifications proved unavailing after he had practised them for

years. At last, by severe contemplation, he discovered the long

coveted truth; a holy and calm life, and benevolence and love

toward all living creatures seemed to him the essence of

religion. Self-culture and universal love--this was his

discovery--this is the essence of Buddhism."[8]

From one point of view Buddhism was the logical continuance of Aryan

Hindoo philosophy; from another point of view it was a new departure.

The leading idea in the Upanishads is that the object of the wise man

should be to know, inwardly and consciously, the Great Soul of all; and

by this knowledge his individual soul would become united to the Supreme

Being, the true and absolute self. This was the highest point reached in

the old Indian philosophy[9] before Buddha was born.

So, looking at Buddhism in the perspective of Hindu history and thought,

we may say that it is doubtful whether Gautama intended to found a new

religion. As, humanly speaking, Saul of Tarsus saved Christianity from

being a Jewish sect and made it universal, so Gautama extricated the new

enthusiasm of humanity from the priests. He made Aryan religion the

property of all India. What had been a rare monopoly as narrow as

Judaism, he made the inheritance of all Asia. Gautama was a protestant

and a reformer, not an agnostic or skeptic. It is more probable that he

meant to shake off Brahmanism and to restore the pure and original form

of the Aryan religion of the Vedas, as far as it was possible to do so.

In one sense, Buddhism was a revolt against hereditary and sacerdotal

privilege--an attack of the people against priestcraft. The Buddha and

his disciples were levellers. In a different age and clime, but along a

similar path, they did a work analogous to that of the so-called

Anabaptists in Europe and Independents in England, centuries later.

It is certain, however, that Buddhism has grown logically out of ancient

Hinduism. In its monastic feature--one of its most striking

characteristics--we see only the concentration and reduction to system,

of the old life of the ascetics and religious mendicants recognized and

respected by Hinduism. For centuries the Buddhist monks and nuns were

regarded in India as only a new sect of ascetics, among many others

which flourished in the land.

The Buddhist doctrine of karma, or in Japanese, _ingwa_, of cause and

effect, whereby it is taught that each effect in this life springs from

a cause in some previous incarnation, and that each act in this life

bears its fruit in the next, has grown directly out of the Hindu idea of

the transmigration of souls. This idea is first inculcated in the

Upanishads, and is recognized in Hindu systems of philosophy.

So also the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana, or the attainment of a sinless

state of existence, has grown out of the idea of final union of the

individual soul with the Universal Soul, which is also inculcated in the

Upanishads. Yet, as we shall see, the Buddhists were, in the eyes of the

Brahmans, atheists, because in the ken of these new levellers gods and

men were put on the same plane. Brahmanism has never forgiven Buddhism

for ignoring the gods, and the Hindoos finally drove out the followers

of Gautama from India. It eventuated that after a millenium or so of

Buddhism in India, the old gods, Brahma, Indra, etc., which at first had

been shut out from the ken of the people, by Gautama, found their places

again in the popular faith of the Buddhists, who believed that the gods

as well as men, were all progressing toward the blessed Nirvana--that

sinless life and holy calm, which is the Buddhist's heaven and

salvation.

It is certainly very curious, and in a sense amusing, to find

flourishing in far-off Japan the old gods of India, that one would

suppose to have been utterly dead and left behind in oblivion. As

acknowledged devas or kings and bodhisattvas or soon-to-be Buddhas, not

a few once defunct Hindu gods, utterly unknown to early Buddhism, have

forced their way into the company of the elect. Though most of them have

not gained the popularity of the indigenous deities of Nippon, they yet

attract many worshippers. They remind one that amid the coming of the

sons of Elohim before Jehovah, "the satan" came also.[10]

From another point of view Buddhism was a new religion; for it swept

away and out of the field of its vision the whole of the World or

Universal Soul theory. "It proclaimed a salvation which each man could

gain for himself and by himself, in this world during this life, without

the least reference to God, or to gods, either great or small." "It

placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no longer a

knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real nature as they

supposed it to be of men and things." In a word, Gautama never reached

the idea of a personal self-existent God, though toward that truth he

groped. He was satisfied too soon.[11] His followers were even more

easily satisfied with abstractions. When Gautama saw the power over the

human heart of inward culture and of love to others, he obtained peace,

he rested on certainty, he became the Buddha, that is, the enlightened.

Perhaps he was not the first Buddhist. It may be that the historical

Gautama, if so he is worthy to be called, merely made the sect or the

new religion famous. Hardly a religion in the full sense of the word,

Buddhism did not assume the rôle of theology, but sought only to know

men and things. In one sense Buddhism is atheism, or rather, atheistic

humanism. In one sense, also, the solution of the mystery of God, of

life, and of the universe, which Gautama and his followers attained, was

one of skepticism rather than of faith. Buddhism is, relatively, a very

modern religion; it is one of the new faiths. Is it paradoxical to say

that the Buddhists are "religious atheists?"

The Buddhist Millennium in India.

Let us now look at the life of the Founder. Day after day, the

pure-souled teacher attracted new disciples while he with alms-bowl went

around as mendicant and teacher. Salvation merely by self-control, and

love without any rites, ceremonies, charms, priestly powers, gods or

miracles, formed the burden of his teachings. "Thousands of people left

their homes, embraced the holy order and became monks, ignoring caste,

and relinquishing all worldly goods except the bare necessaries of life,

which they possessed and enjoyed in common." Probably the first monastic

_system_ of the world, was that of the Indian Buddhists.

The Buddha preached the good news during forty-five years. After his

death, five hundred of his followers assembled at Rajagriha and chanted

together the teachings of Gautama, to fix them in memory. A hundred

years later, in 377 B.C., came the great schism among the Buddhists, out

of which grew the divisions known as Northern and Southern Buddhism.

There was disagreement on ten points. A second council was therefore

called, and the disputed points determined to the satisfaction of one

side. Thereupon the seceders went away in large numbers, and the

differences were never healed; on the contrary, they have widened in the

course of ages.

The separatists began what may be called the Northern Buddhisms of

Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. The orthodox or Southern Buddhists

are those of Ceylon, Burma and Siam. The original canon of Southern

Buddhism is in Pali; that of Northern Buddhism is in Sanskrit. The one

is comparatively small and simple; the other amazingly varied and

voluminous. The canon of Southern scripture is called the Hinayana, the

Little or Smaller Vehicle; the canon of Northern Buddhism is named the

Mahayana or Great Vehicle. Possibly, also, besides the Southern and

Northern Buddhisms, the Buddhism of Japan may be treated by itself and

named Eastern Buddhism.

In the great council called in 242 B.C., by King Asoka, who may be

termed the Constantine of Buddhism, the sacred texts were again chanted.

It was not until the year 88 B.C. in Ceylon, six hundred years after

Gautama, that the three Pitakas, Boxes or Baskets, were committed to

writing in the Pali language. In a word, Buddhism knows nothing of

sacred documents or a canon of scripture contemporary with its first

disciples.

The splendid Buddhist age of India lasted nearly a thousand years, and

was one of superb triumphs in civilization. It was an age of spiritual

emancipation, of freedom from idol worship, of nobler humanity and of

peace.[12] It was followed by the Puranic epoch and the dark ages. Then

Buddhism was, as some say, "driven out" from the land of its birth,

finding new expansion in Eastern and Northern Asia, and again, a still

more surprising development in the ultima-Thule of the Asiatic

continent, Japan. There is now no Buddhism in India proper, the faith

being represented only in Ceylon and possibly also on the main land, by

the sect of the Jains, and peradventure in Persia by Babism which

contains elements from three religions.[13] Like Christianity, Buddhism

was "driven out" of its old home to bless other nations of the world. It

is probably far nearer the truth to say that Buddhism was never expelled

from India, but rather that it died by disintegration and relapse.[14]

It had become Brahmanism again. The old gods and the old idol-worship

came back. It is in Japan that the ends of the earth, eastern and

western civilization, and the freest and fullest or at least the latest

developments of Christianity and of Buddhism, have met.

In its transfer to distant lands and its developments throughout Eastern

Asia, the faith which had originated in India suffered many changes.

Dividing into two great branches, it became a notably different religion

according as it moved along the southern, the northern, or the eastern

channel. By the vehicle of the Pali language it was carried to Ceylon,

Siam, Burma, Cambodia and the islands of the south; that is, to southern

or peninsular and insular Asia. Here there is little evidence of any

striking departure from the doctrines of the Pali Pitakas; and, as

Southern Buddhism does not greatly concern us in speaking of the

religions of Japan, we may pass it by. For although the books and

writings belonging to Southern Buddhism, and comprehended under the

formula of the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, have been studied in China,

Korea and Japan, yet they have had comparatively little influence upon

doctrinal, ritualistic, or missionary development in Chinese Asia.

Astonishingly different has been the case with the Northern Buddhisms

which are those of Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Korea and

Japan. As luxuriant as the evolutions of political and dogmatic

Christianity and as radical in their departures from the primitive

simplicity of the faith, have been these forms of Buddhist doctrine,

ritual and organization. We cannot now dwell upon the wonderful details

of the vast and complicated system, differing so much in various

countries. We pass by, or only glance at, the philosophy of the Punjaub;

the metaphysics of Nepal--with its developments into what some writers

consider to be a close approach to monotheism, and others, indeed,

monotheism itself; the system of Lamaism in Tibet, which has paralleled

so closely the development of the papal hierarchy; the possibly two

thousand years' growth and decay of Chinese Buddhism; the varieties of

the Buddhism of Mongolia--almost swamped in the Shamanistic

superstitions of these dwellers on the plains; the astonishing success,

quick ripening, decay, and almost utter annihilation, among the learned

and governing classes, of Korean Buddhism;[15] and study in detail only

Eastern or Japanese Buddhism.

We shall in this lecture attempt but two things:

I. A summary of the process of thought by which the chief features of

the Northern Buddhisms came into view.

II. An outline of the story of Japanese Buddhism during the first three

centuries of its existence.

The Development of Northern Buddhism

Leaving the early Buddha legends and the solid ground of history, the

makers of the newer Buddhist doctrines in Nepal occupied themselves with

developing the theory of Buddhahood and of the Buddhas;[16] for we must

ever remember that Buddha[17] is not a proper name, but a common

adjective meaning enlightened, from the root to know, perceive, etc.

They made constant and marvellous additions to the primitive doctrine,

giving it a momentum which gathered force as the centuries went on; and,

as propaganda, it moved against the sun.

This development theory ran along the line of _personification_. Not

being satisfied with "the wheel of the law," it personified both the hub

and the spokes. It began with the spirit of kindness out of which all

human virtues rise, and by the power of which the Buddhist organization

will conquer all sin and unbelief and become victorious throughout the

world. This personification is called the Maitreya Buddha, the

unconquerable one, or the future Buddha of benevolence, the Buddha who

is yet to come. Here was a tremendous and revolutionary movement in the

new faith, the beginning of a long process. It was as though the

Christians had taken the particular attributes, justice, mercy, etc., of

God and, after personifying each one, deified it, thus multiplying gods.

What was the soil for the new sowing, and what was the harvest to be

reaped in due time?

With many thousands of India Buddhists whose minds were already steeped

in Brahministic philosophy and mythology, who were more given to

speculation and dreaming than to self-control and moral culture, and who

mourned for the dead gods of Hinduism, the soil was already prepared for

a growth wholly abnormal to true Buddhism, but altogether in keeping

with the older Brahministic philosophies from which these dreamers had

been but partially converted to Buddhism.[18]

The seed is found in the doctrine which already forms part of the system

of the Little Vehicle, when it tells of the personal Buddhas and the

Buddhas elect, or future Buddhas. In the Jataka stories, or Birth tales,

"the Buddha elect" is the title given to each of the beings, man, angel,

or animal, who is held to be a Bodhisattva, or the future Buddha in one

of his former births. The title Bodhisattva[19] is the name given to a

being whose Karma will produce other beings in a continually ascending

scale of goodness until it becomes vested in a Buddha. Or, in the more

common use of the word, a Bodhisattva (Japanese bosatsu) is a being

whose essence has become intelligence, and who will have to pass through

human existence once more only before entering Nirvana.

In Southern Buddhist temples, the pure white image of Maitreya is

sometimes found beside the idol representing Gautama or the historical

Buddha. While in Southern Buddhism the idea of this possibility of

development seems to have been little seized upon and followed up, in

Northern Buddhism as early as 400 A.D. the worship of two Buddhas elect

named Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or personified Wisdom and Power, had

already become general. Manjusri,[20] the Great Being or "Prince Royal,"

is the personification of wisdom, and especially of the mystic religious

insight which has produced the Great Vehicle or canon of Northern

Buddhism; or, as a Japanese author says, the third collection of the

Tripitaka was that made by Manjusri and Maitreya. Avalokitesvara,[21]

the Lord of View or All-sided One, is the personification of power, the

merciful protector and preserver of the world and of men. Both are

frequently and voluminously mentioned in the Saddharma Pundarika,[22] in

which the good law is made plain by flowers of rhetoric, and of which we

shall have occasion frequently to speak. Manjusri is the mythical author

of this influential work,[23] the twenty-fourth chapter being devoted to

a glorification of the character, the power, and the advantages to be

derived from the worship of Avalokitesvara.

The Creation of Gods.

Possibly the name of Manjusri may be derived from that of the Indian

mendicant, the traditional introducer of Buddhism and its accompanying

civilization into Nepal. The Tibetans identify him with the minister of

a great King Strongstun, who lived in the seventh century of our era and

who was the great patron of Buddhism into Tibet. He is the founder of

that school of thought which ended in the Great Vehicle,--the literature

of Northern Buddhism.[24] From Nepal to Japan, in the books of the

Northern Buddhists there is certainly much confusion between the

metaphysical being and the legendary civilizer and teacher of Nepal. The

other name, Avalokitesvara, which means the Lord of View, "the lord who

looks down from on high," instead of being a purely metaphysical

invention, may he only an adaptation of one epithet of Shiva, which

meant Master of View.

Later and by degrees the attributes were separated and each one was

personified. For example, the power of Avalokitesvara was separated from

his protecting care and providence. His power was personified as the

bearer of the thunder-bolt, or the lightning-handed one; and this new

personification added to the two other Buddhas elect, made a triad, the

first in Northern Buddhism. In this triad, the thunder-bolt holder was

Vagrapani; Manjusri was the deified teacher; and Avalokitesvara was the

Spirit of the Buddhas present in the church. Before many centuries had

elapsed, these imaginary beings, with a few others, had become gods to

whom men prayed; and thus Buddhism became a religion with some kind of

theism,--which Gautama had expressly renounced.

If any one wants proof of this reversion into the old religions of

India, he has only to notice that the name, given to the new god made by

personification of the attribute of power, Vagrapani, or Vadjradhara, or

the bearer of the thunder-bolt, had formerly been used as an epithet of

the old fire-god of the Vedas, Indra.

It were tedious to recount all the steps in the further development of

Northern Buddhism.[25] Suffice it to say, that out of ideas and

principles set forth in the earlier Buddhism, and under the generating

force reborn from old Brahminism, the Dhyani Buddhas (that is the

Buddhas evolved out of the mind in mystic trance) were given their elect

Buddhas; and so three sets of five were co-ordinated.[26] That is,

first, five pre-penultimate Buddhas; then their Bodhisattvas or

penultimate Buddhas; and then the ultimate or human Buddhas, of which

Gautama was one. Or, first abstraction; then pre-human effluence; then

emanation.

All this multiplication of beings is unknown to Southern Buddhism,

unknown to the Saddharma Pundarika, and very probably unknown also to

the Chinese pilgrims who visited India in the fifth and seventh

centuries. Professor Rhys Davids, in his compact little manual of

Buddhism, says:[27]

"Among those hypothetical beings--the creations of a sickly

scholasticism, hollow abstractions without life or reality--the

fourth Amitabha, 'Immeasurable Light,' whose Bodhisatwa is

Avalokitesvara, and whose emanation is Gautama, occupies of

course the highest and most important rank. Surrounded by

innumerable Bodhisatwas, he sits enthroned under a Bo-tree in

Sukhavati, i.e., the Blissful, a paradise of heavenly joys,

whose description occupies whole tedious books of the so-called

Great Vehicle. By this theory, each of the five Buddhas has

become three, and the fourth of these five sets of three is the

second Buddhist Trinity, the belief in which must have arisen

after the seventh century of our era."

Buddhism has been called the light of Asia, and Gautama its illuminator;

but certainly the light has not been pure, nor the products of its

illumination wholesome. Pardon an illustration. In Christian churches

and cathedrals of Europe, there is still a great prejudice against the

use of pipes, and of gas made from coal, because of the machinery and of

the impure emanations. The prejudice is a wholesome one; for we all know

that most of the elements forming common illuminating gas are worthless

except to convey the very small amount of light-giving material, and

that these elements in combustion vitiate the air and give off

deleterious products which corrode, tarnish and destroy. Now though

Buddhist doctrine may have been the light of India, yet to reach the

Northern and Eastern nations of Asia it had, apparently, to be

adulterated for conveyance, as much as is the illuminating gas in our

cities. From the first, Northern Buddhism showed a wonderful affinity,

not only for Brahministic superstitions and speculations, but for almost

everything else with which it came in contact in countries beyond India.

Instead of combating, it absorbed. It adapted itself to circumstances,

and finding certain beliefs prevalent among the people, it imbibed them,

and thus gained by accretion until its bulk, both of beliefs and of

disciples, was in the inverse ratio of its purity. Even to-day, the

occult theosophy of "Isis Unveiled," and of the school of writers such

as Blavatsky, Olcott, etc., seems to be a perfectly logical product of

the Northern Buddhisms, and may be called one of them; yet it is simply

a repetition of what took place centuries ago. Most of the primitive

beliefs and superstitions of Nepal and Tibet were absorbed in the ever

hungry and devouring system of Buddhistic scholasticism.

The Making of a Pantheon.

Let us glance again at this Nepal Buddhism. In the tenth century we find

what at first seems to be a growth out of Polytheism into Monotheism,

for a new Being, to whom the attributes of infinity, self-existence and

omniscience are ascribed, is invented and named Adi-Buddha, or the

primordial Buddha. According to the speculations of the thinkers, he had

evolved himself out of the five Dhyani-Buddhas by the exercise of the

five meditations, while each of these had evolved out of itself by

wisdom and contemplation, the corresponding Buddhas elect. Again, each

of the latter evolved out of his own essence a material world,--our

present world being the fourth of these, that is of Avaloki. One almost

might consider that this setting forth of the primordial Buddha was real

Monotheism; but on looking more carefully one sees that it is as little

real Monotheism as was possible in the system of Gnosticism. Indeed the

force of evolution could not stop here; for, since even this primordial

Buddha rested upon Ossa of hypothesis piled upon Pelion of hypothesis,

there must be other hypotheses yet to come, and so the Tantra system, a

compound of old Brahminism with the magic and witchcraft and Shamanism

of Northern Asia burst into view. As this was to travel into Japan and

be hailed as purest Buddhism, let us note how this tenth century Tantra

system grew up. To see this clearly, is to look upon the parable of the

man with the unclean spirit being acted out on a vast scale in history.

In the sixth century of our era, one Asanga, or Asamga, wrote the

Shastra, called the Shastra Yoga-chara Bhumi.[28] With great dexterity

he erected a sort of clearing-house for both the corrupt Brahminism and

corrupt Buddhism of his day, and exchanging and rearranging the gods and

devils in both systems, he represented them as worshippers and

supporters of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara. In such a system, the old

primitive Buddhism of the noble eight-fold path of self-conquest and

pure morals was utterly lost. Instead of that, the worshipper gave his

whole powers to obtaining occult potencies by means of magic phrases and

magic circles. Then grew up whole forests of monasteries and temples,

with an outburst of devilish art representing many-headed and many-eyed

and many-handed idols on the walls, on books, on the roadside, with

manifold charms and phrases the endless repetitions of which were

supposed to have efficacy with the hypothetical being who filled the

heavens. That was _the_ age of idols for China as well as for India; and

the old Chinese house, once empty, swept and garnished by Confucianism,

was now filled with a mob of unclean spirits each worse than the first.

With more courageous logic than the more matter-of-fact Chinese, the

Tibetan erected his prayer-mills[29] and let the winds of heaven and the

flowing waters continually multiply his prayers and holy syllables. And

these inventions were duly imported into Japan, and even now are far

from being absent.[30]

Passing over for the present the history of Buddhism in China,[31]

suffice it to say that the Buddhism which entered Japan from Korea in

the sixth century, was not the simple atheism touched with morality, the

bald skepticism or benevolent agnosticism of Gautama, but a religion

already over a thousand years old. It was the system of the Northern

Buddhists. These, dissatisfied, or unsatisfied, with absorption into a

passionless state through self-sacrifice and moral discipline, had

evolved a philosophy of religion in which were gods, idols and an

apparatus of conversion utterly unknown to the primitive faith.

Buddhism Already Corrupted when brought to Japan.

This sixth century Buddhism in Japan was not the army with banners,

which was introduced still later with the luxuriances of the fully

developed system, its paradise wonderfully like Mohammed's and its

over-populated pantheon. It was, however, ready with the necessary

machinery, both material and mental, to make conquest of a people which

had not only religious aspirations, but also latent aesthetic

possibilities of a high order. As in its course through China this

Northern Buddhism had acted as an all-powerful absorbent of local

beliefs and superstitions, so in Japan it was destined to make a more

remarkable record, and, not only to absorb local ideas but actually to

cause the indigenous religion to disappear.

Let us inquire who were the people to whom Buddhism, when already

possessed of a millenium of history, entered its Ultima Thule in Eastern

Asia. At what stage of mutual growth did Buddhism and the Japanese meet

each other?

Instead of the forty millions of thoroughly homogeneous people in

Japan--according to the census of December 31, 1892--all being loyal

subjects of one Emperor, we must think of possibly a million of hunters,

fishermen and farmers in more or less warring clans or tribes. These

were made up of the various migrations from the main land and the drift

of humanity brought by the ocean currents from the south; Ainos,

Koreans, Tartars and Chinese, with probably some Malay and Nigrito

stock. In the central part of Hondo, the main island, the Yamato tribe

dominated, its chief being styled Suméru-mikoto, or Mikado. To the south

and southwest, the Mikado's power was only more or less felt, for the

Yamato men had a long struggle in securing supremacy. Northward and

eastward lay great stretches of land, inhabited by unsubdued and

uncivilized native tribes of continental and most probably of Korean

origin, and thus more or less closely akin to the Yamato men. Still

northward roamed the Ainos, a race whose ancestral seats may have been

in far-off Dravidian India. Despite the constant conflicts between the

Yamato people who had agriculture and the beginnings of government, law

and literature, and their less civilized neighbors, the tendency to

amalgamation was already strong. The problem of the statesman, was to

extend the sway of the Mikado over the whole Archipelago.

Shintō was, in its formation, made use of as an engine to conquer,

unify and civilize all the tribes. In one sense, this conquest of men

having lower forms of faith, by believers in the Kami no Michi, or Way

of the Gods, was analogous to the Aryan conquest of India and the

Dravidians. However this may be, the energy and valor displayed in these

early ages formed the ideal of Yamato Damashii (The Spirit of

unconquerable Japan), which has so powerfully influenced the modern

Japanese. We shall see, also, how grandly Buddhism also came to be a

powerful force in the unification of the Japanese people. At first, the

new faith would be rejected as an alien invader, stigmatized as a

foreign religion, and, as such, sure to invoke the wrath of the native

gods. Then later, its superiority to the indigenous cult would be seen

both by the wise and the practically minded, and it would be welcomed

and enjoyed.

The Inviting Field.

Never had a new religion a more inviting field or one more sure of

success, than had Buddhism on stepping from the Land of Morning Dawn to

the Land of the Rising Sun. Coming as a gorgeous, dazzling and

disciplined array of all that could touch the imagination, stimulate the

intellect and move the heart of the Japanese, it was irresistible. For

the making of a nation, Shintō was as a donkey engine, compared to

the system of furnaces, boilers, shaft and propeller of a

ten-thousand-ton steel cruiser, moved by the energies of a million years

of sunbeam force condensed into coal and released again through

transmigration by fire.

All accounts in the vernacular Japanese agree, that their Butsu-dō or

Buddhism was imported from Korea. In the sixteenth year of Kéitai, the

twenty-seventh Mikado (of the list made centuries after, and the

eleventh after the impossible line of the long-lived or mythical

Mikados), A.D. 534, it is said that a man from China brought with him an

image of Buddha into Yamato, and setting it up in a thatched cottage

worshipped it. The people called it "foreign-country god." Visitors

discussed with him the religion of Shaka, as the Japanese call

Shakyamuni, and some little knowledge of Buddhism was gained, but no

notable progress was made until A.D. 552, which is generally accepted

and celebrated as the year of the introduction of the faith into Japan.

Then a king of Hiaksai in Korea, sent over to the court and to the

Mikado golden images of the Buddha and of the triad of "precious ones,"

with Sutras and sacred books. These holy relics are believed to be still

preserved in the famous temple of Zenkōji,[32] belonging to the

temple of the Tendai Sect at Nagano in Northern Japan, this shrine being

dedicated to Amida and his two followers Kwannon (Avalokitesvara) and

Dai-séi-shi (Mahastanaprapta). This group of idols, as the custodian of

the shrine will tell you, was made by Shaka himself out of gold, found

at the base of the tree which grows at the centre of the universe. After

remaining in Korea for eleven hundred and twelve years, it was brought

to Japan. Mighty is the stream of pilgrims which continually sets toward

the holy place. A common proverb declares that even a cow can find her

way thither.

In A.D. 572 and again in 584, new images, sutras and teachers came over

from another part of Korea. The Mikado called a council to determine

what should be done with the idols, to the worship of which he was

himself inclined; but a majority were against the idea of insulting the

native gods by receiving the presents and thus introducing a foreign

religion. The minister of state, however, one Soga no Inamé, expressed

himself in favor of Buddhism, and put the images in his country house

which he converted into a temple. When, soon after, the land was

afflicted with a pestilence, the opponents of the new faith attributed

it to the wrath of the gods at the hospitality given to the new idols.

War broke out, fighting took place, and the Buddhist temple was burned

and the idols thrown into the river, near Osaka. Great portents

followed, and the enemies of Buddhism were, it is said, burned up by

flames descending from heaven.

The tide then turned in favor of the Indian faith, and Soga rebuilt his

temple. Priests and missionaries were invited to come over from Korea,

being gladly furnished by the allies of Japan from the state of Shinra,

and Buddhism again flourished at the court, but not yet among the

people. Once more, fighting broke out; and again the temple of the alien

gods was destroyed, only to be rebuilt again. The chief champion of

Buddhism was the son of a Mikado, best known by his posthumous title,

Shōtoku,[33] who all his life was a vigorous defender and propagator

of the new faith. Through his influence, or very probably through the

efforts of the Korean missionaries, the devastating war between the

Japanese and Koreans was ended. In the peace which followed, notable

progress was made through the vigor of the missionaries encouraged by

the regent Shōtoku, so that at his death in the year A.D. 621, there

were forty-six temples, and thirteen hundred and eighty-five priests,

monks and nuns in Japan. Many of the most famous temples, which are now

full of wealth and renown, trace their foundations to this era of

Shōtoku and of his aunt, the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), who were

friendly to the new religion. Shōtoku may be almost called the

founder of Japanese Buddhism. Although a layman, he is canonized and

stands unique in the Pantheon of Eastern Buddhism, his image being

prominently visible in thousands of Japanese temples.

Legend, in no country more luxurious than in Japan, tells us that the

exotic religion made no progress until Amida, the boundlessly Merciful

One, assuming the shape of a concubine of the imperial prince who

afterward became the Mikado Yomé, gave birth to Shōtoku, who was

himself Kwannon or the goddess of mercy in human form; and that when he

grew up, he took to wife an incarnation of the Buddha elect,

Mahastana-prapta, or in Japanese Dai-séi-shi, whose idol is honored at

Zenkōji.

The New Faith Becomes Popular.

Then Buddhism became popular, passing out from the narrow circle of the

court to be welcomed by the people. In A.D. 623, monks came over

directly from China, and we find mentioned two sects, the Sanron and the

Jōjitsu, which are no longer extant in Japan. In about A.D. 650 the

fame of Yuan Chang (Hiouen Thsang) the Chinese pilgrim to India, or the

holy land, reached-Japan; and his illustrious example was

enthusiastically followed. History now frequently repeated itself. The

Japanese monk, Dōshō, crossed the seas to China to gaze upon the

face and become the pupil of that illustrious Chinese pilgrim, who had

seen Buddha Land. Later on, other monks crossed to the land of Sinim,

until we find that in this and succeeding centuries, hundreds of

Japanese in their frail junks, braved the dangers of the stormy ocean,

in order to study Sanskrit, to read the old scriptures, to meet the new

lights of learning or revelation, and to become versed in the latest

fashions of religion. We find the pilgrims returning and founding new

sects or sub-sects, and stimulating by their enthusiasm the monks and

the home missionaries. In the year A.D. 700 the custom of cremation was

introduced. This wrought not only a profound change in customs, but also

became the seed of a rich crop of superstitions; since out of the

cremated bodies of the saints came forth the _shari_ or, in Sanskrit,

_sarira_. These hard substances or pellets, preserved in crystal

cabinets, are treated as holy gems or relics. Thus venerated, they

become the nuclei of cycles of fairy lore.

In A.D. 710, the great monastery at Nara was founded; and here we must

notice or at least glance at the great throng of civilizing influences

that came in with Buddhism, and at the great army of artists, artisans

and skilled men and women of every sort of trade and craft. We note that

with the building of this great Nara monastery came another proof of

improvement and the added element of stability in Japanese civilization.

The ancient dread which the Japanese had, of living in any place where a

person had died was passing away. The nomad life was being given up. The

successor of a dead Mikado was no longer compelled to build himself a

new capital. The traveller in Japan, familiar with the ancient poetry of

the Manyō-shu, finds no fewer than fifty-eight sites[34] as the early

homes of the Japanese monarchy. Once occupying the proud position of

imperial capitals, they are now for the most part mere hamlets,

oftentimes mere names, with no visible indication of former human

habitation; while the old rivers or streams once gay with barges filled

with silken-robed lords and ladies, have dried up to mere washerwomen's

runnels. For the first time after the building of this Buddhist

monastery, the capital remained permanent, Nara being the imperial

residence during seventy-five years. Then beautiful Kiōto was chosen,

and remained the residence of successive generations of emperors until

1868. In A.D. 735, we read of the Kégon sect. Two years later a large

monastery, with a seven-storied pagoda alongside of it, was ordered to

be built in every province. These, with the temples and their

surroundings, and with the wayside shrines beginning to spring up like

exotic flowers, made a striking alteration in the landscape of Japan.

The Buddhist scriptures were numerously copied and circulated among the

learned class, yet neither now nor ever, except here and there in

fragments, were they found among the people. For, although the Buddhist

canon has been repeatedly imported, copied by the pen and in modern

times printed, yet no Japanese translation has ever been made. The

methods of Buddhism in regard to the circulation of the scriptures are

those, not of Protestantism but of Roman Catholicism.

In the same year, the Mikado called for contributions from all the

people for the building of a colossal image of the Buddha, which was to

be of bronze and gilded. Yet, fearing that the Shintō gods might be

offended, a skilful priest named Giyoku,--probably the same man who

introduced the potter's wheel into Japan,--was sent to the shrine of the

Sun-goddess in Isé to present her with a shari or relic of the Buddha,

and find out how she would regard his project. After seven days and

nights of waiting, the chapel doors flew open and the loud-voiced oracle

was interpreted in a favorable sense. The night following the return of

the priest, the Mikado dreamed that the sun-goddess appeared to him in

her own form and said "The sun is Birushana" (Vairokana). This meant

that the chief deity of the Japanese proclaimed herself an avatar or

incarnation of one of the old Hindu gods.[35] She also approved the

project of the image; and in this same year, 759, native gold was found

in Japan, which sufficed for the gilding of the great idol that, after

eleven hundred years and many vicissitudes, still stands, the glory of a

multitude of pilgrims.

In A.D. 754 a famous priest, who introduced the new Ritsu Sect, was able

to convert the Mikado and obtain four hundred converts in the imperial

court. Thirteen years later, another tremendous triumph of Buddhism was

scored and a deadly blow at Shintō was struck. The Buddhist priests

persuaded the Mikados to abandon their ancient title of Sumeru and adopt

that of Tennō (Heavenly King or Tenshi) Son of Heaven, after the

Chinese fashion. At the same time it was taught that the emperor could

gain great merit and sooner become a Buddha, by retiring from the active

cares of the throne and becoming a monk, with the title of Hō-ō,

or Cloistered Emperor. This innovation had far-reaching consequences,

profoundly altering the status of the Mikado, giving sensualism on the

one hand and priestcraft on the other, their coveted opportunity,

changing the ruler of the nation from an active statesman into a recluse

and the recluse into a pious monk, or a licentious devotee, as the case

might be. It paved the way for the usurpation of the government by the

unscrupulous soldier, "the man on horseback," who was destined to rule

Japan for seven hundred years, while the throne and its occupant were in

the shadow. One of a thousand proofs of the progress of the propaganda

scheme is seen in the removal of the Shintō temple which had stood at

Nikkō, and the erection in its place of a Buddhist temple. In A.D.

805 the famous Tendai, and in 806 the powerful Shingon Sect were

introduced. All was now ready in Japan for the growth not only of one

new Buddhism, but of several varieties among the Northern Buddhisms

which so arouse the astonishment of those who study the simple Pali

scriptures that contain the story of Gautama, and who know only the

southern phase of the faith, that is to Asia, relatively, what

Christianity is to Europe. We say relatively, for while Buddhism made

Chinese Asia gentle in manners and kind to animals, it covered the land

with temples, monasteries and images; on the other hand the religion of

Jesus filled Europe not only with churches, abbeys, monasteries and

nunneries, but also with hospitals, orphan asylums, lighthouses, schools

and colleges. Between the fruits of Christendom and Buddhadom, let the

world judge.

Survey and Summary.

To sum up: Buddhism is the humanitarian's, and also the skeptic's,

solution of the problem of the universe. Its three great distinguishing

characteristics are atheism, metempsychosis and absence of caste. It was

in its origin pure democracy. As against despotic priesthood and

oppressive hierarchy, it was congregational. Theoretically it is so yet,

though far from being so practically. It is certainly sacerdotal and

aristocratic in organization. As in any other system which has so vast a

hierarchy with so many grades of honor and authority, its theory of

democracy is now a memory. First preached in a land accursed by caste

and under spiritual and secular oppressions, it acknowledged no caste,

but declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally

capable of being freed from sin and misery through Buddhahood, that is,

knowledge or enlightenment.[36]

The three-fold principle laid down by Gautama, and now in dogma,

literature, art and worship, a triad or formal trinity, is, Buddha, the

attainment of Buddha-hood, or perfect enlightenment, through meditation

and benevolence; Karma, the law of cause and effect; and Dharma,

discipline or order; or, the Lord, the Law and the Church. Paying no

attention to questions of cosmogony or theogony, the universe is

accepted as an ultimate fact. Matter is eternal. Creation exists but not

a Creator. All is god, but God is left out of consideration. The gods

are even less than Buddhas. Humanity is glorified and the stress of all

teaching is upon this life. In a word: a sinless life, attainable by

man, through his own exertions in this world, above all the powers or

beings of the universe, is the essence of original Buddhism. Original

Nirvana meant death which ends all, extinction of existence.

Gautama's immediate purpose was to emancipate himself and his followers

from the fetters of Brahminism. He tried to leave the world of Hindu

philosophy behind him and to escape from it.

Did he succeed? Partially.

Buddha hoped also to rise above the superstitions of the common people,

but in this he was again only partially successful.[37] "The clouds

returned after the rain." The old dead gods of Brahminism came back

under new names and forms. The malarial exhalations of corrupt

Brahmanistic philosophy, continually poisoned the atmosphere which

Buddha's disciples breathed. Still worse, as his religion transmigrated

into other lands, it became itself a history of transformation, until

to-day no religion on earth seems to be such a kaleidoscopic

phantasmagoria. Polytheism is rampant over the greater part of the

Buddhist world to-day. In the larger portion of Chinese Asia, pantheism

dominates the mind. In modern Babism,--a mixture of Mohammedanism,

Christianity and Buddhism,--there are streaks of dualism. If Monotheism

has ever dawned on the Buddhist world, it has been in fitful pulses as

in auroral flashes, soon to leave darkness darker.

For us is this lesson: Buddhism, brought face to face with the problem

of the world's evil and possible improvement, evades it; begs the whole

question at the outset; prays: "Deliver us from existence. Save us from

life and give us as little as possible of it." Christianity faces the

problem and flinches not; orders advance all along the line of endeavor

and prays: "Deliver us from evil;" and is ever of good cheer, because

Captain and leader says: "I have overcome the world." Go, win it for me.

"I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more

abundantly."

CHAPTER VII - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

"All things are nothing but mind."

"The doctrines of Buddhism have no fixed forms."

"There is nothing in things themselves that enables us to

distinguish in them either good or evil, right or wrong. It is

but man's fancy that weighs their merits and causes him to

choose one and reject the other."

"Non-individuality is the general principle of

Buddhism."--Outlines of the Mahāyāna.

"It (Shintō) was smothered before reaching maturity, but

Buddhism and Confucianism had to disguise and change in order to

enter Japan."

"Life has a limited span and naught may avail to extend it. This

is manifested by the impermanence of human beings. But yet

whenever necessary I will hereafter make my appearance from time

to time as a god, a sage, or a Buddha."--Last words of Shaka the

Buddha, in Japanese biography.

"It is our opinion that Buddhism cannot long hold its ground,

and that Christianity must finally prevail throughout all

Japan.... Now, when Buddhism and Christianity are in conflict

for the ascendency, this indifference of the Japanese people to

the difference of sects is a great disadvantage to Buddhism.

That they should worship Jesus Christ with the same mind as they

do _Inari_ or _Miōjin_ is not at all inconsistent in their

estimation or contrary to their custom."--Fukuzawa, of

Tōkiō.

"How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God,

follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."--Elijah.

"Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"--Jesus.

"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and

bitter?"--James.

"What concord hath Christ with Belial?"--Paul.

CHAPTER VII - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

Syncretism in Religion.

Two centuries and a half of Buddhism in Japan, showed the leaders and

teachers of the Indian faith that complete victory over the whole nation

was yet very far off. The court had indeed been invaded and won. Even

the Mikado, the ecclesiastical head of Shintō, and the incarnation

and vicar of the heavenly gods, had not only embraced Buddhism, but in

many instances had shorn the hair and taken the vows of the monk. Yet

the people clung tenaciously to their old traditions, customs and

worship; for their gods were like themselves and indeed were of

themselves, since Shintō is only a transfiguration of Japanese life.

In the Japanese of those days we can trace the same traits which we

behold in the modern son of Nippon, especially his intense patriotism

and his warlike tendencies. To convert these people to the peaceful

dogmas of Siddartha and to make them good Buddhists, something more than

teaching and ritual was necessary. It was indispensable that there

should be complete substitution, all along the ruts and paths of

national habit, and especially that the names of the gods and the

festivals should be Buddhaized.

Popular customs are nearly immortal and ineradicable. Though wars may

come, dynasties rise and fall, and convulsions in nature take place, yet

the people's manners and amusements are very slow in changing. If, in

the history of Christianity, the European missionaries found it

necessary in order to make conquest of our pagan forefathers, to baptize

and re-name without radically changing old notions and habits, so did it

seem equally indispensable that in Japan there should be some system of

reconciliation of the old and the new, some theological revolution,

which should either fulfil, absorb, or destroy Shintō.

In the histories of religions in Western Asia, Northern Africa and

Europe, we are familiar with efforts at syncretism. We have seen how

Philo attempted to unite Hebrew righteousness and Greek beauty, and to

harmonize Moses and Plato. We know of Euhemerus, who thought he read in

the old mythologies not only the outlines of real history, but the

hieroglyphics of legend and tradition, truth and revelation.[1] Students

of Church history are well aware that this principle of interpretation

was followed only too generously by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,

Lactantius, Chrysostom and others of the Church Fathers. Indeed, it

would be hard to find in any of the great religions of the world an

utter absence of syncretism, or the union of apparently hostile

religious ideas. In the Thousand and One Nights, we have an example in

popular literature. We see that the ancient men of India, Persia and

pre-Mohammedan Arabia now act and talk as orthodox Mussulmans. In

matters pertaining to art and furniture, the statue of Jupiter in Rome

serves for St. Peter, and in Japan that of the Virgin and child for the

Buddha and his mother.[2]

What, however, chiefly concerns the critic and student of religions is

to inquire how far the process has been natural, and the efforts of

those who have brought about the union have been honest, and their

motives pure. The Bible pages bear witness, that Israelites too often

tried to make the same fountain give forth sweet waters and bitter, and

to grow thistles and grapes on the same stem, by uniting the cults of

Jehovah and the Baalim. King Solomon's enterprises in the same direction

are more creditable to him as a politician than as a worshipper.[3] In

the history of Christianity one cannot commend the efforts either of the

Gnostics or the neo-Platonists, nor always justify the medieval

missionaries in their methods. Nor can we accurately describe as

successful the ingenuity of Vossius, the Dutch theologian, who,

following the scheme of Euhemerus, discovered the Old Testament

patriarchs in the disguise of the gods of Paganism. Nor, even though

Germany be the land of learning, can the clear-headed scholar agree with

some of her rationalists, who are often busy in the same field of

industry, setting forth wild criticism as "science."

The Kami and the Buddhas.

In Japan, to solve the problem of reconciliation between the ancient

traditions of the divine ancestors and the dogmas of the Indian cult, it

was necessary that some master spirit, profoundly learned in the two

Ways, of the Kami and of the Buddhas, should be bold, and also as it

seems, crafty and unscrupulous. To convert a line of theocratic

emperors, whose authority was derived from their alleged divine origin

and sacerdotal character, into patrons and propagandists of Buddhism,

and to transform indigenous Shintō gods into Buddhas elect, or

Buddhas to come, or Buddhas in a former state of existence, were tasks

that might appall the most prodigious intellect, and even strain the

capacities of what one might imagine to be the universal religion for

all mankind.

Yet from such a task continental Buddhism had not shrunk before and did

not shrink then, nor indeed from it do the insular Japanese sects shrink

now. Indeed, Buddhism is quite ready to adopt, absorb and swallow up

Japanese Christianity. With all encompassing tentacles, and with

colossal powers of digestion and assimilation, Northern Buddhism had

drawn into itself a large part of the Brahmanism out of which it

originally sprang,[4] reversing the old myth of Chronos by swallowing

its parents. It had gathered in, pretty much all that was in the heavens

above and the earth beneath and the waters that were under the earth, in

Nepal, Tibet, China, and Korea. Thoroughly exercised and disciplined, it

was ready to devour and digest all that the imagination of Japan had

conceived.

We must remember that, at the opening of the ninth century, the Buddhism

rampant in China and indeed throughout Chinese Asia was the Tantra

system of Yoga-chara.[5] This compound of polytheism and pantheism, with

its sensuous paradise, its goddess of mercy and its pantheon of every

sort of worshipable beings, was also equipped with a system of

philosophy by which Buddhism could be adapted to almost every yearning

of human nature in its lowest or its highest form, and by which things

apparently contradictory could be reconciled. Furthermore--and this is

not the least important thing to consider when the work to be done is

for the ordinary man as an individual and for the common people in the

mass--it had also a tremendous apparatus for touching the imagination

and captivating the fancy of the unthinking and the uneducated.

For example, consider the equipment of the Buddhist priests of the ninth

century in the matter of art alone. Shintō knows next to nothing of

art,[6] and indeed one might almost say that it knows little of

civilization. It is like ultra-Puritanic Protestantism and Iconoclasm.

Buddhism, on the contrary, is the mother of art, and art is her

ever-busy child and handmaid. The temples of the Kami were bald and

bare. The Kojiki told nothing of life hereafter, and kept silence on a

hundred points at which human curiosity is sure to be active, and at

which the Yoga system was voluble. Buddhism came with a set of visible

symbols which should attract the eye and fire the imagination, and

within ethical limits, the passions also. It was a mixed and variegated

system,--a resultant of many forces.[7] It came with the thought of

India, the art-influence of Greece, the philosophy of Persia, the

speculations of the Gnostics and, in all probability, with ideas

borrowed indirectly from Nestorian or other forms of Christianity; and

thus furnished, it entered Japan.

The Mission of Art.

Thus far the insular kingdom had known only the monochrome sketches of

the Chinese painters, which could have a meaning for the educated few

alone. The composite Tantra dogmas fed the fancy and stimulated the

imagination, filling them with pictures of life, past, present and

future. "The sketch was replaced by the illumination." Whole schools of

artists, imported from China and Korea, multiplied their works and

attracted the untrained senses of the people, by filling the temples

with a blaze of glory. "This result was sought by a gorgeous but studied

play of gold and color, and a lavish richness of mounting and

accessories, that appear strangely at variance with the begging bowl and

patched garments of primitive Buddhism."[8] The change in the Japanese

temple was as though the gray clouds had been kissed by the sun and made

to laugh rainbows. The country of the Fertile Plain of Sweet Flags was

transformed. It suddenly became the land wherein gods grew not singly

but in whole forests. Like the Shulamite, when introduced among the

jewelled ladies of Solomon's harem, so stood the boor amid the sheen and

gold of the new temples.

"Gold was the one thing essential to the Buddhist altar-piece,

and sometimes, when applied on a black ground, was the only

material used. In all cases it was employed with an unsparing

hand. It appeared in uniform masses, as in the body of the

Buddha or in the golden lakes of the Western Paradise; in minute

diapers upon brocades and clothing, in circlets and undulating

rays, to form the glory surrounding the head of Amitaba; in

raised bosses and rings upon the armlets or necklets of the

Bodhisattvas and Devas, and in a hundred other manners. The

pigments chosen to harmonize with this display were necessarily

body colors of the most pronounced lines, and were untoned by

any trace of chiaroscuro. Such materials as these would surely

try the average artist, but the Oriental painter knew how to

dispose them without risk of crudity or gaudiness, and the

precious metal, however lavishly applied, was distributed over

the picture with a judgment that would make it difficult to

alter or remove any part without detriment to the beauty of the

work."[9]

In our day, Japanese art has won its own place in the world's temple of

beauty. Even those familiar with the master-pieces of Europe do not

hesitate to award to the artists of Nippon a meed of praise which,

within certain limits, is justly applied to them equally with the

masters of the Italian, the Dutch, the Flemish, or the French schools.

It serves our purpose simply to point out that art was a powerful factor

in the religious conquest of the Japanese for the new doctrines of the

Yoga system, which in Japan is called Riyōbu, or Mixed Buddhism.

We say Mixed Buddhism rather than Riyōbu Shintō, for Shintō was

less corrupted than swallowed up, while Buddhism suffered one more

degree of mixture and added one more chapter of decay. It increased in

its visible body, while in its mind it became less and less the religion

of Buddha and more and more a thing with the old Shintō heart still

in it, making a strange growth in the eyes of the continental believers.

To the Northern and Southern was now added an Eastern or Japanese

Buddhism.

Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the Gods to Buddhadom

and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all Japanese history and

traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha?

Kōbō the Wonder Worker.

The Philo and Euhemerus of Japan was the priest Kukai, who was born in

the province of Sanuki, in the year 774. He is better known by his

posthumous title Kōbō Daishi, or the Great Teacher who promulgates

the Law. By this name we shall call him. About his birth, life and

death, have multiplied the usual swaddling bands of Japanese legend and

tradition,[10] and to his tomb at the temple on Mount Kō-ya, the

Campo Santo of Japanese Buddhism, still gather innumerable pilgrims. The

"hall of ten thousand lamps," each flame emblematic of the Wisdom that

saves, is not, indeed, in these days lighted annually as of old; but the

vulgar yet believe that the great master still lives in his mausoleum,

in a state of profoundly silent meditation. Into the hall of bones near

by, covering a deep pit, the teeth and "Adam's apple" of the cremated

bodies of believers are thrown by their relatives, though the pit is

cleared out every three years. The devotees believe that by thus

disposing of the teeth and "Adam's apple," they obtain the same

spiritual privileges as if they were actually entombed there, that is,

of being born again into the heaven of the Bodhisattva or the Pure Land

of Absolute Bliss, by virtue of the mystic formulas repeated by the

great master in his lifetime.

Let us sketch the life of Kōbō,

First named Toto-mono, or Treasure, by his parents, who sent him to

Kiōtō to be educated for the priesthood, the youth spent four

years in the study of the Chinese classics. Dissatisfied with the

teachings of Confucius, he became a disciple of a famous Buddhist

priest, named Iwabuchi (Rock-edge or throne). Soon taking upon himself

the vows of the monk, he was first named Kukai, meaning "space and sea,"

or heaven and earth.[11] He overcame the dragons that assaulted him, by

prayers, by spitting at them the rays of the evening star which had

flown from heaven into his mouth and by repeating the mystic formulas

called Dharani.[12] Annoyed by hobgoblins with whom he was obliged to

converse, he got rid of them by surrounding himself with a consecrated

imaginary enclosure into which they were unable to enter against his

will.

We mention these legends only to call the attention to the fact that

they are but copies of those already accepted in China at that time, and

are the logical and natural fruit of the Tantra school at which we have

glanced. In 804, Kōbō was appointed to visit the Middle Kingdom as

a government student. By means of his clever pen and calligraphic skill

he won his way into the Chinese capital. He became the favored disciple

of a priest who taught him the mystic doctrines of the Yoga. Having

acquired the whole of the system, and equipped himself with a large

library of Buddhist doctrinal works and still more with every sort of

ecclesiastical furniture and religious goods, he returned to Japan.

Multitudes of wonders are reported about Kōbō, all of which show

the growth of the Tantra school. It is certain that his erudition was

immense, and that he was probably the most learned man of Japan in that

age, and possibly of any other age. Besides being a Japanese Ezra in

multiplying writings, he is credited with the invention of the

hira-gana, or running script, and if correctly so, he deserves on this

account alone an immortal honor equal to that of Cadmus or Sequoia. The

kana[13] is a syllabary of forty-seven letters, which by diacritical

marks, may be increased to seventy. The kata-kana is the square or print

form, the hira-kana is the round or "grass" character for writing.

Though not as valuable as a true phonetic alphabet, such as the Koreans

and the Cherokees possess, the _i-ro-ha_, or kana script, even though a

syllabary and not an alphabet, was a wonderful aid to popular writing

and instruction.

Evidently the idea of the i-ro-ha, or Japanese ABC, was derived from the

Sanskrit alphabet, or, what some modern Anglo-Indian has called the

Deva-Nagari or the god-alphabet. There is no evidence, however, to show

that Kōbō did more than arrange in order forty-seven of the

easiest Chinese signs then used, in such a manner that they conveyed in

a few lines of doggerel the sense of a passage from a sutra in which the

mortality of man and the emptiness of all things are taught, and the

doctrine of Nirvana is suggested.[14] Hokusai, the artist, in a sketch

which embodies the popular idea of this bonze's immense industry,

represents him copying the shastras and sutras. Kōbō is on a seat

before a large upright sheet of paper. He holds a brush-pen in his

mouth, and one in each of his hands and feet, all moving at once.[15]

Favorite portions of the Buddhist scriptures were indeed so rapidly

multiplied in Japan in the ninth century, as to suggest the idea, that,

even in this early age, block printing had been imported from China,

whence also afterward, in all probability, it was exported into Europe

before the days of Gutenberg and Coster.[16] The popular imagination,

however, was more easily moved on seeing five brushes kept at work and

all at once by the muscles in the fingers, toes and mouth of one man.

Yet, had his life lasted six hundred years instead of sixty, he could

hardly have graven all the images, scaled all the mountain peaks,

confounded all the sceptics, wrought all the miracles and performed all

the other feats with which he is popularly credited.[17]

Kōbō Irenicon.

Kōbō indeed was both the Philo and Euhemerus of Japan, plus a

large amount of priestly cunning and what his enemies insist was

dishonesty and forgery. Soon after his return from China, he went to the

temples of Isé,[18] the most holy place of Shintō.[19] Taking a

reverent attitude before the chief shrine, that of Toko Uké Bimé no Kami

or Abundant-Food-Lady-God, or the deified Earth as the producer of food

and the upholder of all things upon its surface, the suppliant waited

patiently while fasting and praying.

In this, Kōbō did but follow out the ordinary Shintō plan for

securing god-possession and obtaining revelation; that is, by starving

both the stomach and the brain.[20] After a week's waiting he obtained

the vision. The Food-possessing Goddess revealed to him the yoke (or

Yoga) by which he could harness the native and the imported gods to the

chariot of victorious Buddhism. She manifested herself to him and

delivered the revelation on which his system is founded, and which,

briefly stated, is as follows:

All the Shintō deities are avatars or incarnations of Buddha. They

were manifestations to the Japanese, before Gautama had become the

enlightened one, or the jewel in the lotus, and before the holy wheel of

the law or the sacred shastras and sutras had reached the island empire.

Further more, provision was made for the future gods and deified holy

ones, who were to proceed from the loins of the Mikado, or other

Japanese fathers, according to the saying of Buddha which is thus

recorded in a Japanese popular work:

"Life has a limited span, and naught may avail to extend it.

This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings, but yet,

whenever necessary, I will hereafter make my appearance from

time to time as a god (Kami), a sage (Confucian teacher), or a

Buddha (Hotoké)."[21]

In a word, the Shintō goddess talked as orthodox (Yoga) Buddhism as

the ancient characters of the Indian, Persian and pre-Islam-Arabic

stories in the Arabian Nights now talk the purest Mohammedanism.[22]

According to the words put into Gautama's mouth at the time of his

death, the Buddha was already to reappear in the particular form and in

all the forms, acceptable to Shintōists, Confucianists, or Buddhists

of whatever sect.

Descending from the shrine of vision and revelation, with a complete

scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shintō and

Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly

named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, Kōbō

forthwith baptized each native Shintō deity with a new

Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shintō festival he arranged a

corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a

band of disciples, he sent them forth proclaiming the new irenicon.

The Hindu Yoga Becomes Japanese Riyōbu.

It was just the time for this brilliant and able ecclesiastic to

succeed. The power and personal influence of the Mikado were weakening,

the court swarmed with monks, the rising military classes were already

safely under the control of the shavelings, and the pen of learning had

everywhere proved itself mightier than the sword and muscle.

Kōbō's particular dialectic weapons were those of the Yoga-chara,

or in Japanese, the Shingon Shu, or Sect of the True Word.[23] He, like

his Chinese master, taught that we can attain the state of the

Enlightened or Buddha, while in the present physical body which was born

of our parents.

This branch of Buddhism is said to have been founded in India about A.D.

200, by a saint who made the discovery of an iron pagoda inhabited by

the holy one, Vagrasattva, who communicated the exact doctrine to those

who have handed it down through the Hindoo and Chinese patriarchs. The

books or scriptures of this sect are in three sutras; yet the essential

point in them is the Mandala or the circle of the Two Parts, or in

Japanese Riyōbu. Introduced into China, A.D. 720, it is known as the

Yoga-chara school.

Kōbō finding a Chinese worm, made a Japanese dragon, able to

swallow a national religion. In the act of deglutition and the long

process of the digestion of Shintō, Japanese Buddhism became

something different from every other form of the faith in Asia. Noted

above all previous developments of Buddhism for its pantheistic

tendencies, the Shingon sect could recognize in any Shintō god,

demi-god, hero, or being, the avatar in a previous stage of existence of

some Buddhist being of corresponding grade.

For example,[24] Amatérasŭ or Ten-Shō-Dai-Jin, the sun-goddess,

becomes Dai Nichi Niōrai or Amida, whose colossal effigies stand in

the bronze images Dai Butsu at Nara, Kiōto and Kamakura. Ojin, the

god of war, became Hachiman Dai Bosatsu, or the great Bodhisattva of the

Eight Banners. Adopted as their patron by the fighting Genji or Minamoto

warriors of mediæval times, the Buddhists could not well afford to have

this popular deity outside their pantheon.

For each of the thirty days of the month, a Bodhisattva, or in Japanese

pronunciation Bosatsu, was appointed. Each of these Bodhisattvas became

a Dai Miō Jin or Great Enlightened Spirit, and was represented as an

avatar in Japan of Buddha in the previous ages, when the Japanese were

not yet prepared to receive the holy law of Buddhism.

Where there were not enough Dai Miō Jin already existing in native

traditions to fill out the number required by the new scheme, new titles

were invented. One of these was Ten-jin, Heavenly being or spirit. The

famous statesman and scholar of the tenth century, Sugawara Michizané,

was posthumously named Tenjin, and is even to this day worshipped by

many children of Japan as he was formerly for a thousand years by nearly

all of them, as the divine patron of letters. Kompira, Benten and other

popular deities, often considered as properly belonging to Shintō,

"are evidently the offspring of Buddhist priestly ingenuity."[25] Out of

the eight millions or so of native gods, several hundred were catalogued

under the general term Gon-gen, or temporary manifestations of Buddha.

In this list are to be found not only the heroes of local tradition, but

even deified forces of nature, such as wind and fire. The custom of

making gods of great men after their death, thus begun on a large scale

by Kōbō, has gone on for centuries. Iyéyasŭ, the political

unifier of Japan, shines as a star of the first magnitude in the heavens

of the Riyōbu system, under the mime of Tō-shō-gū, or Great

Light of the East. The common people speak of him as Gon-gen Sama, the

latter word being an honorary form of address for all beings from a baby

to a Bosatsu.

In this way, Kōbō arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock

company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings,

in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable.

In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repetition

in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India

three centuries before. It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara

Bhumi. The succession of syncretists in India, China and Japan is

Asanga, Hiukiō and Kōbō.

The Happy Family of Riyōbu.

Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an

ox and ass in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success. It

will sometimes happen that one god escapes the classification made by

the Buddhists and slips into the fold of Shintō, or _vice versa_;

while again the label-makers and pasters--as numerous in scholastic

Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom--have hard work to make the labels

stick. A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Miō-jin, whose name and renown has

for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as

regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old

Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield

outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the

efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in

recent years by fiercely zealous Shintōists, savor of the smartness

of New Japan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It

often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous

Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shintō, to extricate the

various gods out of the mixture and mess of Riyōbu Shintō, and to

keep them from jostling each other.

This reclaiming and kidnapping of gods and transferring them from one

camp to another, has been especially active since 1870, when, under

government auspices, the Riyōbu temples were purged of all Buddhist

idols, furniture and influences. The term Dai Miō Jin, or Great

Illustrious Spirit, is no longer officially permitted to be used of the

old kami or gods of Shintō, who were known to have existed before the

days of Kōbō. In some cases these gods have lost much of the

esteem in which they were held for centuries. Especially is this true of

the infamous rebel of the tenth century, Masakado.[26] On the entrance

into Yedo of the Imperial army, in 1868, his idol was torn from its

shrine and hacked to pieces by the patriots. His place as a deity (Kanda

Dai Miō Jin, or Great Illustrious Spirit of Kanda) was taken by

another deified being, a brother to the aboriginal earth-god who, in the

ages of the Kami, "resigned his throne in favor of the Mikado's

ancestors when they descended from Heaven." The apotheosis of the rebel

Masakado had been resorted to by the Buddhist canonizers because the

unquiet spirit of the dead man troubled the people. This method of

laying a ghost by making a god of him, was for centuries a favorite one

in Japanese Buddhism. Indeed, a large part of the practical and

parochial duties of the bonzes consists in quieting the restless spirits

of the departed.

All Japanese popular religion of the past has been intensely local and

patriotic. The ancient idea that Nippon was the first country created

and the centre of the world, has persisted through the ages, modifying

every imported religion. Hence the noticeable fact in Japanese Buddhism,

of the comparative degradation of the Hindu deities and the exaltation

of those which were native to the soil.

The normal Japanese, be he priest or lay brother, theologian or

statesman, is nothing if not patriotic. Even the Chinese gods and

goddesses which, clothed in Indian drapery and still preserving their

Aryan features, were imported to Japan, could not hold their own in

competition with the popularity of the indigenous inhabitants of the

Japanese pantheon. The normal Japanese eye does not see the ideals of

beauty in the human face and form in common with the Aryan vision.

Benten or Knanon, with the features and drapery of the homelike beauties

of Yamato or Adzuma, have ever been more lovely to the admiring eye of

the Japanese sailor and farmer, than the Aryan features of the idols

imported from India. So also, the worshipper to whom the lovely scenery

of Japan was fresh from the hands of the kami who were so much like

himself, turned naturally in preference, to the "gods many" of his own

land.

Succeeding centuries only made it worse for the imported devas or gods,

while the kami, or the gods sprung from the soil created by Izanami and

Izanagi steadily rose in honor.

Degradation of the Foreign Deities.

For example, the Indian saint Dharma is reputed to have come to the

Dragon-fly Country long before the advent of Buddhism, but the people

were not ready for him or his teachings, and therefore he returned to

India. So at least declares the book entitled San Kai Ri[27] (Mountain,

Sea and Earth), which is a re-reading and explanation of Japanese

mythology and tradition as recorded in the Kojiki, by a Kiōtō

priest of the Shin Shu Sect. Of this Dharma, it is said, that he outdid

the Roman Regulus who suffered involuntary loss of his eyelids at the

hands of the Carthaginians. Dharma cut off his own eyelids, because he

could not keep awake.[28] Throwing the offending flesh upon the ground,

he saw the tea-plant arise to help holy men to keep vigil. Daruma, as

the Japanese spell his name, has a temple in central Japan. It is

related that when Shōtoku, the first patron of Buddhism, was one day

walking abroad he found a poor man dying of hunger, who refused to

answer any questions or give his name. Shōtoku ordered food to be

given him, and wrapped his own mantle round him. Next day the beggar

died, and the prince charitably had him buried on the spot. Shortly

afterward it was observed that the mantle was lying neatly folded up, on

the tomb, which on examination proved to be empty. The supposed dying

beggar was no other than the Indian Saint Dharma, and a pagoda was built

over the grave, in which images of the priest and saint were

enshrined.[29] Yet, alas, to-day Daruma the Hindoo and foreigner,

despite his avatar, his humility, his vigils and his self-mutilation,

has been degraded to be the shop-sign of the tobacconists. Besides being

ruthlessly caricatured, he is usually pictured with a scowl, his lidless

eyes as wide open as those upon a Chinese junk-prow or an Egyptian

coffin-lid. Often even, he has a pipe in his mouth--a comical

anachronism, suggestive to the smoker of the dark ages that knew no

tobacco, before nicotine made the whole world of savage and of civilized

kin. Legless dolls and snow-men are named after this foreigner, whose

name is associated almost entirely with what is ludicrous.

On Kōbō's expounding his scheme to the Mikado, the emperor was so

pleased with his servant's ingenuity, that he gave it the name of

Riyōbu[30] Shintō; that is, the two-fold divine doctrine, double

way of the gods, or amalgamated theology. Henceforth the Japanese could

enter Nirvana or Paradise through a two-leaved gate. As for the people,

they also were pleased, as they usually are when change or reform does

not mean abolition of the old festivals, or of the washings, sousings,

and fun at the tombs of their ancestors in the graveyards, or the

merry-makings, or the pilgrimages,[31] which are usually only other

names for social recreation, and often for sensual debauch. The Yoga had

become a _kubiki_, for Shintō and Buddhism were now harnessed

together, not indeed as true yoke-fellows, but yet joined as inseparably

as two oxen making the same furrow.

Many a miya now became a tera. At first in many edifices, the rites of

Shintō and Buddhism were alternately performed. The Buddhist symbols

might be in the front, and the Shintōist in the rear of the sacred

hall, or _vice versa_, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the

two blended. Instead of austere simplicity, the Shintō interior

contained a museum of idols.

Image carvers had now plenty to do in making, out of camphor or _hinoki_

wood, effigies of such of the eight million or so of kamis as were given

places in the new and enlarged pantheon. The multiplication was always

on the side of Buddhism. Soon, also, the architecture was altered from

the type of the primitive hut, to that of the low Chinese temple with

great sweeping roof, re-curved eaves, many-columned auditorium and

imposing gateway, with lacquer, paint, gilding and ceilings, on which,

in blazing gold and color, were depicted the emblems of the Buddhist

paradise. Many of these still remain even after the national purgation

of 1870, just as the Christian inscriptions survive in the marble

palimpsests of Mahometan mosques, converted from basilicas, at Damascus

or Constantinople. The torii was no longer raised in plain hinoki wood,

but was now constructed of hewn stone, rounded or polished. Sometimes it

was even of bronze with gilded crests and Sanskrit monograms,

surmounted, it may be, with tablets of painted or stained wood, on which

were Chinese letters glittering with gold. This departure from the

primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, "somewhat on

the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[32] was a radical one in the ninth

century. The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted

boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still

more radical and even scandalous innovation.

Shintō Buried in Buddhism.

So complete was the victory of Riyōbuism, that for nearly a thousand

years Shintō as a religion, except in a few isolated spots, ceased

from sight and sank to a mere mythology or to the shadow of a mythology.

The very knowledge even of the ancient traditions was lost in the

Buddhaized forms in which the old stories[33] were cast, or in the

omnipresent ritual of the Buddhist tera.

Yet, after all, it is a question as to which suffered most, Buddhism or

Shintō. Who can tell which was the base and which was the true metal

in the alloy that was formed? The San Kai Ri shows how superstitious

manifold became imbedded in Buddhism. It was not alone through the

Shingon sect, which Kōbō introduced, that this Yoga or union came.

In the other great sect called the Tendai, and in the later sects, more

especially in that of Nichiren, the same principle of absorption was

followed. These sects also adopted many elements derived from the

god-way and thus became Shintōized. Indeed, it seems certain that

that vast development of Japanese Buddhism, peculiar to Japan and

unknown to the rest of the Buddhist world, scouted by the Southern

Buddhists as dreadful heresy, and rousing the indignation of students of

early Buddhism, like Max Müller and Professor Whitney, is largely owing

to this attempted digestion of Japanese mythology. The anaconda may

indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its

abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the

ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least

made helpless before the destroying hunter. When sweet potatoes and

pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on

the table, it is hard to tell whether it is tuber or hollow fruit,

subterranean or superficial growth, that we are eating. So in Riyōbu,

whether it be most _imo_ or _kabocha_ is a fair question. If the

Buddhism in Japan did but add a chapter of decay and degradation to the

religion of the Light of Asia, is not this owing to the act of

Kōbō--justified indeed by those who imitated his example, yet

hardly to be called honest? A stroke of ecclesiastical dexterity, it may

have been, but scarcely a lawful example or an illustrious and

commendable specimen of syncretism in religion.

Many students have asked what is the peculiar, the characteristic

difference between the Buddhism of Japan and the other Buddhisms of the

Asian continent. If there be one cause, leading all others, we incline

to believe it is because Japanese Buddhism is not the Buddhism of

Gautama, but is so largely Riyōbu or Mixed. Yet in the alloy, which

ingredient has preserved most of its qualities? Is Japanese Buddhism

really Shintōized Buddhism, or Buddhaized Shintō? Which is the

parasite and which the parasitized? Is the hermit crab Shintō, and

the shell Buddhism, or _vice versa_? About as many corrupt elements from

Shintō entered into the various Buddhist sects as Buddhism gave to

Shintō.

This process of Shintōizing Buddhism or of Buddhaizing

Shintō--that is, of combining Shintō or purely Japanese ideas and

practices with the systems imported from India, went on for five

centuries. The old native habits and mental characteristics were not

eradicated or profoundly modified; they were rather safely preserved in

so-called Buddhism, not indeed as dead flies in amber but as live

creatures, fattening on a body, which, every year, while keeping outward

form and name, was being emptied of its normal and typical life. It is

no gain to pure water to add either microbes or the food which nourishes

them.

Buddhism Writes New Chapters of Decay.

Phenomenally, the victory was that of Buddhism. The mustard-seed has

indeed become a great tree, lodging every fowl of heaven, clean and

unclean; but potentially and in reality, the leavening power, as now

seen, seems to have been that of Shintō. Or, to change metaphor,

since the hermit crab and the shell were separated by law only one

generation ago, in 1870, we shall soon, before many generations, discern

clearly which has the life and which has only the shell.[34]

There are but few literary monuments[35] of Riyōbuism, and it has

left few or no marks in the native chronicles, misnamed history, which

utterly omit or ignore so many things interesting to the student and

humanist.[36] Yet to this mixture or amalgamation of Buddhism with

Shintō, more probably than to any other direct influence, may also be

ascribed that striking alteration in the system of Chinese ethics or

Confucianism which differentiates the Japanese form from that prevalent

in China. That is, instead of filial piety, the relation of parent and

child, occupying the first place, loyalty, the relation of lord and

retainer, master and servant, became supreme. Although Buddhism made the

Mikado first a King (Tennō) or Son of Heaven (Ten-Shi), and then a

monk (Hō-ō), and after his death a Hotoké or Buddhist deity, it

caused him early to abdicate from actual life. Buddhism is thus directly

responsible for the habitual Japanese resignation from active life

almost as soon as it is entered, by men in all classes. Buddhism started

all along and down through the lines of Japanese society the idea of

early retirement from duty; so that men were considered old at forty,

and _hors concours_ before forty-five.[37] Life was condemned as vanity

of vanities before it was mature, and old age a friend that nobody

wished to meet,[38] although Japanese old age is but European prime. In

a measure, Buddhism is thus responsible for the paralysis of Japanese

civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the

top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the

Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone,

Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a

whole library of despondency and despair.

Nevertheless, the ethical element held its own in the Japanese mind; and

against the pessimism and puerility of Buddhism and the religious

emptiness of Shintō, the bond of Japanese society was sought in the

idea of loyalty. While then, as we repeat, everything that comes to the

Japanese mind suffers as it were "a sea change, into something new and

strange," is it not fair to say that the change made by Kōbō was

at the expense of Buddhism as a system, and that the thing that suffered

reversion was the exotic rather than the native plant? For, in the

emergence of this new idea of loyalty as supreme, Shintō and not

Buddhism was the dictator.

Even more after Kōbō's death than during his life, Japan improved

upon her imported faith, and rapidly developed new sects of all degrees

of reputableness and disreputableness. Had Kōbō lived on through

the centuries, as the boors still believe;[39] he could not have

stopped, had he so desired, the workings of the leaven he had brought

from China. From the sixth to the twelfth century, was the missionary

age of Japanese Buddhism. Then followed two centuries of amazing

development of doctrine. Novelties in religion blossomed, fruited and

became monuments as permanent as the age-enduring forests Hakoné, or

Nikkō. Gautama himself, were he to return to "red earth" again, could

not recognize his own cult in Japan.

In China to-day Buddhism is in a bad state. One writer calls it, "The

emasculated descendant that now occupies the land with its drone of

priests and its temples, in which scarce a worthy disciple of the

learned patriarchs of ancient days is to be found. Received with open

arms, persecuted, patronized, smiled upon, tolerated, it with the last

phase of its existence, has reached, not the halcyon days of peace and

rest, but its final stage, foreshadowing its decay from rottenness and

corruption."[40] So also, in a like report, agree many witnesses. The

common people of China are to-day Taoists rather than Buddhists.[41]

If this be the position in China, something not very far from it is

found in Japan to-day. Whatever may be the Buddhism of the few learned

scholars, who have imbibed the critical and scientific spirit of

Christendom, and whatever be the professions and representations of its

earnest adherents and partisans, it is certain that popular Buddhism is

both ethically and vitally in a low state. In outward array the system

is still imposing. There are yet, it may be, millions of stone statues

and whole forests of wayside effigies, outdoors and

unroofed--irreverently called by the Japanese themselves, "wet gods."

Hosts upon hosts of lacquered and gilded images in wood, sheltered under

the temple tiles or shingles, still attract worshippers. Despite

shiploads of copper Buddhas exported as old metal to Europe and America,

and thousands of tons of gods and imps melted into coin or cannon, there

are myriads of metal reminders of those fruits of a religion that once

educated and satisfied; but these are, in the main, no longer to the

natives instruments of inspiration or compellers to enthusiasm. In this

time of practical charity, they are poor substitutes for those hospitals

and orphan asylums which were practically unknown in Japan until the

advent of Christianity.

Kōbō's smart example has been followed only too well by the people

in every part of the country. One has but to read the stacks of books of

local history to see what an amazing proportion of legends, ideas,

superstitions and revelations rests on dreams; how incredibly numerous

are the apparitions; how often the floating images of Buddha are found

on the water; how frequently flowers have rained out of the sky; how

many times the idols have spoken or shot forth their dazzling rays--in a

word; how often art and artifices have become alleged and accepted

reality. Unfortunately, the characteristics of this literature and

undergrowth of idol lore are monotony and lack of originality; for

nearly all are copies of Kōbō's model. His cartoon has been

constantly before the busy weavers of legend.

It may indeed be said, and said truly, that in its multiplication of

sects and in its growth of legend and superstition, Buddhism has but

followed every known religion, including traditional Christianity

itself. Yet popular Buddhism has reached a point which shows, that,

instead of having a self-purgative and self-reforming power, it is

apparently still treading in the steps of the degradation which

Kōbōbegan.

The Seven Gods of Good Fortune.

We repeat it, Riyōbu Buddhism is Japanese Buddhism with vengeance. It

is to-day suffering from the effect of its own sins. Its _ingwa_ is

manifest. Take, for example, the little group of divinities known as the

Seven Gods of Good Fortune, which forms a popular appendage to Japanese

Buddhism and which are a direct and logical growth of the work done by

Kōbō, as shown in his Riyōbu system. Not from foreign writers

and their fancies, nor even from the books which profess to describe

these divinities, do we get such an idea of their real meaning and of

their influence with the people, as we do by observation of every-day

practice, and a study of the idols themselves and of Japanese folk-lore,

popular romance, local history and guidebooks. Those familiar

divinities, indeed, at the present day owe their vitality rather to the

artists than to priests, and, it may be, have received, together with

some rather rude handling, nearly the whole of their extended popularity

and influence from their lay supporters. The Seven Happy Gods of Fortune

form nominally a Buddhist assemblage, and their effigies on the

kami-dana or god-shelf, found in nearly every Japanese house, are

universally visible. The child in Japan is rocked to sleep by the

soothing sound of the lullaby, which is often a prayer to these gods.

Even though it may be with laughing and merriment, that, in their name

the evil gods and imps are exorcised annually on New Year's eve, with

showers of beans which are supposed to be as disagreeable to the

Buddhist demons "as drops of holy water to the Devil," yet few

households are complete without one or more of the images or the

pictures of these favorite deities.

The separate elements of this conglomerate, so typical of Japanese

religion, are from no fewer than four different sources: Brahmanism,

Buddhism, Taoism and Shintōism. "Thus, Bishamon is the Buddhist

_Vâis'ramana_[42] and the Brahmanic Kuvera; Benten is Sarasvatî, the

wife of Brahmâ; Daikoku is an extremely popularised form of Mahakala,

the black-faced Temple Guardian; Hotéi has Taoist attributes, but is

regarded as an incarnation of Màitreyâ, the Buddhist Messiah;

Fuku-roku-jiu is of purely Taoist origin, and is perhaps a

personification of Lao-Tsze himself; Ju-ró-jin is almost certainly a

duplicate of Fuku-roku-jiu; and, lastly, Ebisu, as the son of Izanagi

and Izanami, is a contribution from the Shintō hero-worship."[43] If

Riyōbu Buddhism be two-fold, here is a texture or amalgam that is

_shi-bu_, four-fold. Let us watch lest _go-bu_, with Christianity mixed

in, be the next result of the process. To play the Japanese game of

go-ban, with Christianity as the fifth counter, and Jesus as a

Palestinian avatar of some Dhyani Buddha, crafty priests in Japan are

even now planning.

This illustration of the Seven Gods of Happiness, whose local

characters, functions and relations have been developed especially

within the last three or four hundred years, is but one of many that

could be adduced, showing what proceeded on a larger scale. The

Riyōbu process made it almost impossible for the average native to

draw the line between history and mythology. It destroyed the boundary

lines, as Pantheism invariably does, between fact and fiction, truth and

falsehood. The Japanese mind, by a natural, possibly by a racial,

tendency, falls easily into Pantheism, which may be called the destroyer

of boundaries and the maker of chaos and ooze. Pretty much all early

Japanese "history" is ooze; yet there are grave and learned men, even in

the Constitutional Japan of the Méiji era--masters in their arts and

professions, graduates of technical and philosophical courses--who

solemnly talk about their "first emperor ascending the throne, B.C.

660," and to whom the dragon-born, early Mikados, and their

fellow-tribesmen, seen through the exaggerated mists of the Kojiki, are

divine personages.

The Gon-gen in the Processions.

While living in Japan between 1870 and 1874, the writer used to enjoy

watching and studying the long processions which celebrated the

foundation of temples, national or local festivals, or the completion of

some great public enterprise, such as the railway between Tōkio and

Yokohama. In rich costume, decoration, and representation most of the

cultus-objects were marvels of art and skill. Besides the gala dresses

and uniforms, the fantastic decorations and personal adornments, the

dances which represented the comedies and tragedies of the gods and the

striking scenes in the Kojiki, there wore colossal images of Kami,

Bodhisattvas, Gon-gen, Dai Miō Jin, and of imps, oni, mythical animal

forms and imaginary monsters.[44] More interesting than anything else,

however, were the male and female figures, set high upon triumphal cars

having many tiers, and arrayed in characteristic primeval, ancient,

medieval, or early modern dress. Some were of scowling, others of benign

visage. In some years, everyone of the eight hundred and eight streets

of Yedo sent its contribution of men, money, decorations, or vehicles.

As seen by four kinds of spectators, the average ignorant native, the

Shintōist, the learned Buddhist, and the critical historical scholar,

these effigies represented three different characters or creations.

Especially were those divine personages called Gon-gen worth the study

of the foreign observer.

(1) The common boor or streetman saluted, for example, this or that Dai

Miō Jin, as the great illustrious spirit or god of its particular

district. To this spirit and image he prayed; in his honor he made

offerings; his wrath he feared; and his smile he hoped to win, for the

Gon-gen was a divine being.

(2) To the Shintōist, who hated Buddhism and the Riyōbu Shintō

which had overlaid his ancestral faith, and who scorned and tabooed this

Chinese term Dai Miō Jin, this or that image represented a divine

ancestor whose name had in it many Japanese syllables, with no defiling

Chinese sounds, and who was the Kami or patron deity of this or that

neighborhood.

(3) To the Buddhist, this or that personage, in his lifetime, in the

early ages of Japanese history, had been an avatar of Buddha who had

appeared in human flesh and brought blessings to the people and

neighborhood; yet the people of the early ages being unprepared to

receive his doctrine or revelation, he had not then revealed or preached

it; but now, as for a thousand years since the time of the illustrious

and saintly Kōbō, he had his right name and received his just

honors and worship as an avatar of the eternal Buddha. So, although

Buddhist and Shintōist might quarrel as to his title, and divide,

even to anger, on minor points, they would both agree in letting the

common people take their pleasure, enjoy the festivals and merriment,

and preserve their reverence and worship.

(4) Still another spectator studied with critical interest the swaying

figure high in air. With a taste for archaeology, he admired the

accuracy of the drapery and associations. He was amused, it may be, with

occasional anachronisms as to garments or equipments. He knew that the

original of this personage had been nothing more than a human being, who

might indeed have been conspicuous as a brave soldier in war, or as a

skilful physician who helped to stop the plague, or as a civilizer who

imported new food or improved agriculture.

In a word, had this subject of the ancient Mikado lived in modern

Christendom, he might be honored through the government, patent office,

privy council, the admiralty, the university, or the academy, as the

case or worth might be. He might shine in a plastic representation by

the sculptor or artist, or be known in the popular literature; but he

would never receive religious worship, or aught beyond honor and praise.

In this swamping of history in legend and of fact in dogma, we behold

the fruit of Kōbō's work, Riyōbu Buddhism.

Kōbō's Work Undone.

Buddhism calls itself the jewel in the lotus. Japanese poetry asks of

the dewdrop "why, having the heart of the lotus for its home, does it

pretend to be a gem?" For a thousand years Riyōbu Buddhism was

received as a pure brilliant of the first water, and then the

scholarship of the Shintō revivalists of the eighteenth century

exposed the fraudulent nature of the unrelated parts and declared that

the jewel called Riyōbu was but a craftsman's doublet and should be

split apart. Only a splinter of diamond, they declared, crowned a mass

of paste. Indignation made learning hot, and in 1870 the cement was

liquefied in civil war. The doublet was rent asunder by imperial decree,

as when a lapidist melts the mastic that holds in deception adamant and

glass, while real diamond stands all fire short of the hydro-oxygen

flame. The Riyōbu temples were purged of all Buddhist symbols,

furniture, equipment and personnel, and were made again to assume their

august and austere simplicity. In the eyes of the purely aesthetic

critic, this national purgation was Puritanical iconoclasm; in those of

the priests, cast out to earn rice elsewise and elsewhere, it was

outrage, which in individual instances called for reprisal in blood,

fire and assassination; to the Shintōist, it was an exhibition of the

righteous judgment of the long-insulted gods; in the ken of the critical

student, it seems very much like historic and poetic justice.

In our day and time, Riyōbu Buddhism furnishes us with a warning,

for, looked at from a purely human point of view, what happened to

Shintō may possibly happen to Japanese Christianity. The successors

of those who, in the ninth century, did not scruple to Buddhaize

Shintō, and in later times, even our own, to Shintōize Buddhism

while holding to Buddha's name and all the revenue possible, will

Buddhaize Christianity if they have power and opportunity; and signs are

not wanting to show that this is upon their programme.

The water of stagnant Buddhism is still a swarming mass, which needs

cleansing to purity by a knowledge of one God who is Light and Love.

Without such knowledge, the manifold changes in Buddhism will but form

fresh chapters of degradation and decay. Holding such knowledge,

Christianity may pass through endless changes, for this is her

capability by Divine power and the authorization of her Founder. The now

Buddhism of our day is endeavoring to save itself through reformation

and progress. In doing so, the danger of the destruction of the system

is great, for thus far change has meant decay.

CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS

"To the millions of China, Corea, and Japan, creator and

creation are new and strange terms,"--J.H. De Forest.

"The Law of our Lord, the Buddha, is not a natural science or a

religion, but a doctrine of enlightenment; and the object of it

is to give rest to the restless, to point out the Master (the

Inmost Man) to those that are blind and do not perceive their

Original State."

"The Saddharma Pundarika Sutra teaches us how to obtain that

desirable knowledge of the mind as it is in itself [universal

wisdom] ... Mind is the One Reality, and all Scriptures are the

micrographic photographs of its images. He that fully grasps the

Divine Body of Sakyamuni, holds ever, even without the written

Sutra, the inner Saddharma Pundarika in his hand. He ever reads

it mentally, even though he would never read it orally. He is

unified with it though he has no thought about it. He is the

true keeper of the Sutra."--Zitsuzen Ashitsu of the Tendai sect.

"It [Buddhism] is idealistic. Everything is as we think it. The

world is my idea.... Beyond our faith is naught. Hold the

Buddhist to his creed and insist that such logic destroys

itself, and he triumphs smilingly, 'Self-destructive! Of course

it is. All logic is. That is the centre of my philosophy.'"

"It [Buddhism] denounces all desire and offers salvation as the

reward of the murder of our affections, hopes, and aspirations.

It is possible where conscious existence is believed to be the

chief of evils."--George William Knox.

"Swallowing the device of the priests, the people well

satisfied, dance their prayers."--Japanese Proverb.

"The wisdom that is from above is ... without variance, without

hypocrisy."--James.

"The mystery of God, even Christ in whom are all the treasures

of wisdom and knowledge."--Paul.

CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS

Chronological Outline.

In sketching the history of the doctrinal developments of Buddhism in

Japan, we note that the system, greatly corrupted from its original

simplicity, was in 552 A.D. already a millennium old. Several distinct

phases of the much-altered faith of Gautama, were introduced into the

islands at various times between the sixth and the ninth century. From

these and from others of native origin have sprung the larger Japanese

sects. Even as late as the seventeenth century, novelties in Buddhism

were imported from China, and the exotics took root in Japanese soil;

but then, with a single exception, only to grow as curiosities in the

garden, rather than as the great forests, which had already sprung from

imported and native specimens.

We may divide the period of the doctrinal development of Buddhism in

Japan into four epochs:

I. The first, from 552 to 805 A.D., will cover the first six sects,

which had for their centre of propagation, Nara, the southern capital.

II. Then follows Riyōbu Buddhism, from the ninth to the twelfth

centuries.

III. This was succeeded by another explosion of doctrine wholly and

peculiarly Japanese, and by a wide missionary propagation.

IV. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, there is little that

is doctrinally noticeable, until our own time, when the new Buddhism of

to-day claims at least a passing notice.

The Japanese writers of ecclesiastical history classify in three groups

the twelve great sects as the first six, the two mediæval, and the four

modern sects.

In this lecture we shall merely summarize the characteristics of the

first five sects which existed before the opening of the ninth century

but which are not formally extant at the present time, and treat more

fully the purely Japanese developments. The first three sects may be

grouped under the head of the Hinayana, or Smaller Vehicle, as Southern

or primitive orthodox Buddhism is usually called.

Most of the early sects, as will be seen, were founded upon some

particular sutra, or upon selections or collections of sutras. They

correspond to some extent with the manifold sects of Christendom, and

yet this illustration or reference must not be misleading. It is not as

though a new Christian sect, for example, were in A.D. 500 to be formed

wholly on the gospel of Luke, or the book of the Revelation; nor as

though a new sect should now arise in Norway or Tennessee because of a

special emphasis laid on a combination of the epistle to the Corinthians

and the book of Daniel. It is rather as though distinct names and

organizations should be founded upon the writings of Tertullian, of

Augustine, of Luther, or of Calvin, and that such sects should accept

the literary work of these scholars not only as commentaries but as Holy

Scripture itself.

The Buddhist body of scriptures has several times been imported and

printed in Japan, but has never been translated into the vernacular. The

canon[1] is not made up simply of writings purporting to be the words of

Buddha or of the apostles who were his immediate companions or

followers. On the contrary, the canon, as received in Japan, is made up

of books, written for the most part many centuries after the last of the

contemporaries of Gautama had passed away. Not a few of these writings

are the products of the Chinese intellect. Some books held by particular

sects as holy scripture were composed in Japan itself, the very books

themselves being worshipped. Nevertheless those who are apparently

farthest away from primitive Buddhism, claim to understand Buddha most

clearly.

The Standard Doctrinal Work.

One of the most famous of books, honored especially by several of the

later and larger sects in Japan, and probably the most widely read and

most generally studied book of the canon, is the Saddharma Pundarika.[2]

Professor Kern, who has translated this very rhetorical work into

English, thinks it existed at or some time before 250 A.D., and that in

its most ancient form it dates some centuries earlier, possibly as early

as the opening of the Christian era. It has now twenty-seven chapters,

and may be called the typical scripture of Northern Buddhism. It is

overflowingly full of those sensuous images and descriptions of the

Paradise, in which the imagination of the Japanese Buddhist so revels,

and in it both rhetoric and mathematics run wild. Of this book, "the

cream of the revealed doctrine," we shall hear often again. It is the

standard of orthodoxy in Japanese Buddhism, the real genius of which is

monastic asceticism in morals and philosophical scepticism in religion.

In most of the other sutras the burden of thought is ontology.

Doctrinally, Buddhism seems to be less a religion than a system of

philosophy. Hundreds of volumes in the canon concern themselves almost

wholly with ontological speculations. The Japanese mind,[3] as described

by those who have studied most acutely and profoundly its manifestations

in language and literature, is essentially averse to speculation. Yet

the first forms of Buddhism presented to the Japanese, were highly

metaphysical. The history of thought in Japan, shows that these

abstractions of dogma were not congenial to the islanders. The new faith

won its way among the people by its outward sensuous attractions, and by

appeals to the imagination, the fancy and the emotions; though the men

of culture were led captive by reasoning which they could not answer,

even if they could comprehend it. Though these early forms of dogma and

philosophy no longer survive in Japan, having been eclipsed by more

concrete and sensuous arguments, yet it is necessary to state them in

order to show: first, what Buddhism really is; second, doctrinal

development in the farthest East; and, third, the peculiarities of the

Japanese mind.

In this task, we are happy to be able to rely upon native witness and

confession.[4] The foreigner may easily misrepresent, even when

sincerely inclined to utter only the truth. Each religion, in its theory

at least, must be judged by its ideals, and not by its failures. Its

truth must be stated by its own professors. In the "History of The

Twelve Japanese Sects," by Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A. Oxon., and in "Le

Bouddhisme Japonais," by Ryauon Fujishima, we have the untrammelled

utterances, of nine living lights of the religion of Shaka as it is held

and taught in Dai Nippon. The former scholar is a master of texts, and

the latter of philosophy, each editor excelling in his own department;

and the two books complement each other in value.

Buddhism, being a logical growth out of Brahmanism, used the old sacred

language of India and inherited its vocabulary. In the Tripitaka, that

is, the three book-baskets or boxes, we have the term for canon of

scripture, in the complete collection of which are _sutra_, _vinaya_ and

_abidharma_. We shall see, also, that while Gautama shut out the gods,

his speculative followers who claimed to be his successors, opened the

doors and allowed them to troop in again. The democracy of the

congregation became a hierarchy and the empty swept and garnished house,

a pantheon.

A sutra, from the root _siv_, to sew, means a thread or string, and in

the old Veda religion referred to household rites or practices and the

moral conduct of life; but in Buddhist phraseology it means a body of

doctrine. A shaster or shastra, from the Sanskrit root _ças_, to govern,

relates to discipline. Of those shastras and sutras we must frequently

speak. In India and China some of those sutras are exponents, of schools

of thought or opinion, or of views or methods of looking at things,

rather than of organizations. In Japan these schools of philosophy, in

certain instances, become sects with a formal history.

In China of the present day, according to a Japanese traveller and

author, "the Chinese Buddhists seem ... to unite all different sects, so

as to make one harmonious sect." The chief divisions are those of the

blue robe, who are allied with the Lamaism of Tibet and whose doctrine

is largely "esoteric," and those of the yellow robe, who accept the

three fundamentals of principle, teaching and discipline. Dhyana or

contemplation is their principle; the Kégon or Avatamsaka sutra and the

Hokké or Saddharma Pundarika sutra, etc., form the basis of their

teaching; and the Vinaya of the Four Divisions (Dharmagupta) is their

discipline. On the contrary, in Japan there are vastly greater

diversities of sect, principle, teaching and discipline.

Buddhism as a System of Metaphysics.

The date of the birth of the Buddha in India, accepted by the Japanese

scholars is B.C. 1027--the day and month being also given with

suspicious accuracy. About nine centuries after Gautama had attained

Nirvana, there were eighteen schools of the Hinayana or the doctrine of

the Smaller Vehicle. Then a shastra or institute of Buddhist ontology in

nine chapters, was composed, the title of which in English, is, Book of

the Treasury of Metaphysics. It had such a powerful influence that it

was called an intelligence-creating, or as we say, an epoch-making book.

This Ku-sha shastra, from the Sanskrit _kosa_, a store, is eclectic, and

contains nine chapters embodying the views of one of the schools, with

selections from those of others. It was translated in A.D. 563, into

Chinese by a Hindu scholar; but about a hundred years later the famous

pilgrim, whom the Japanese call Gen-jō, but who is known in Europe as

Hiouen Thsang,[5] made a better translation, while his disciples added

commentaries.

In A.D. 658, two Japanese priests[6] made the sea-journey westward into

China, as Gen-jō had before made the land pilgrimage into India, and

became pupils of the famous pilgrim. After long study they returned,

bringing the Chinese translation of this shastra into Japan. They did

not form an independent sect; but the doctrines of this shastra, being

eclectic, were studied by all Japanese Buddhist sects. This Ku-sha

scripture is still read in Japan as a general institute of ontology,

especially by advanced students who wish to get a general idea of the

doctrines. It is full of technical terms, and is well named The

Store-house of Metaphysics.

The Ku-sha teaches control of the passions, and the government of

thought. The burden of its philosophy is materialism; that is, the

non-existence of self and the existence of the matter which composes

self, or, as the Japanese writer says: "The reason why all things are so

minutely explained in this shastra is to drive away the idea of self,

and to show the truth in order to make living beings reach Nirvana."

Among the numerous categories, to express which many technical terms are

necessary, are those of "forms," eleven in number, including the five

senses and the six objects of sense; the six kinds of knowledge; the

forty-six mental qualities, grouped under six heads; and the fourteen

conceptions separated from the mind; thus making in all seventy-two

compounded things and three immaterial things. These latter are

"conscious cessation of existence," "unconscious cessation of

existence," and "space."

The Reverend Shuzan Emura, of the Shin-shu sect of Japan, after

specifying these seventy-five Dharmas, or things compounded and things

immaterial, says:[7] "The former include all things that proceed from a

cause. This cause is Karma, to which everything existing is due, Space

and Nirvana alone excepted. Again, of the three immaterial things the

last two are not subjects to be understood by the wisdom not free from

frailty. Therefore the 'conscious cessation of existence' is considered

as being the goal of all effort to him who longs for deliverance from

misery."

In a word, this one of the many Buddhisms of Asia is vastly less a

religion, in any real sense of the word, than a system of metaphysics.

However, the doctrine to be mastered is graded in three Yanas or

Vehicles; for there are now, as in the days of Shaka, three classes of

being, graded according to their ability or power to understand "the

truth." These are:

(I.) The Sho-mon or lowest of the disciples of Shaka, or hearers who

meditate on the cause and effect of everything. If acute in

understanding, they become free from confusion after three births; but

if they are dull, they pass sixty kalpas[8] or aeons before they attain

to the state of enlightenment.

(II.) The Engaku or Pratyeka Buddhas, that is, "singly enlightened," or

beings in the middle state, who must extract the seeds or causes of

actions, and must meditate on the twelve chains of causation, or

understand the non-eternity of the world, while gazing upon the falling

flowers or leaves. They attain enlightenment after four births or a

hundred kalpas, according to their ability.

(III.) The Bodhisattvas or Buddhas-elect, who practise the six

perfections (perfect practice of alms-giving, morality, patience,

energy, meditation and wisdom) as preliminaries to Nirvana, which they

reach only after countless kalpas.

These three grades of pupils in the mysteries of Buddha doctrine, are

said to have been ordered by Shaka himself, because understanding human

beings so thoroughly, he knew that one person could not comprehend two

ways or vehicles (Yana) at once. People were taught therefore to

practise anyone of the three vehicles at pleasure.

We shall see how the later radical and democratic Japanese Buddhism

swept away this gradation, and declaring but the one vehicle (éka),

opened the kingdom to all believers.

The second of the early Japanese schools of thought, is the

Jō-jitsu,[9] or the sect founded chiefly upon the shastra which means

The Book of the Perfection of the Truth, containing selections from and

explanations of the true meaning of the Tripitaka. This shastra was the

work of a Hindu whose name means Lion-armor, and who lived about nine

centuries after Gautama. Not satisfied with the narrow views of his

teacher, who may have been of the Dharmagupta school (of the four

Disciplines), he made selections of the best and broadest

interpretations then current in the several different schools of the

Smaller Vehicle. The book is eclectic, and attempts to unite all that

was best in each of the Hinayana schools; but certain Chinese teachers

consider that its explanations are applicable to the Great Vehicle also.

Translated into Chinese in 406 A.D., the commentaries upon it soon

numbered hundreds, and it was widely expounded and lectured upon.

Commentaries upon this shastra were also written in Korean by

Dō-zō. From the peninsula it was introduced into Japan. This

Jō-jitsu doctrine was studied by prince Shōtoku, and promulgated

as a division of the school called San-Ron. The students of the

Jō-jitsu school never formed in Japan a distinct organization.

The burden of the teachings of this school is pure nihilism, or the

non-existence of both self and of matter. There is an utter absence of

substantiality in all things. Life itself is a prolonged dream. The

objects about us are mere delusive shadows or mirage, the product of the

imagination alone. The past and the future are without reality, but the

present state of things only stands as if it were real. That is to say:

the true state of things is constantly changing, yet it seems as if the

state of things were existing, even as does a circle of fire seen when a

rope watch is turned round very quickly.

Japanese Pilgrims to China.

The Ris-shu or Vinaya sect is one of purely Chinese origin, and was

founded, or rather re-founded, by the Chinese priest Dōsen, who lived

on Mount Shunan early in the seventh century, and claimed to be only

re-proclaiming the rules given by Gautama himself. He was well

acquainted with the Tripitaka and especially versed in the Vinaya or

rules of discipline. His purpose was to unite the teachings of both the

Greater and the Lesser Vehicle in a sutra whose burden should be one of

ethics and not of dogma.

The founder of this sect was greatly honored by the Chinese Emperor.

Furthermore, he was honored in vision by the holy Pindola or

Binzura,[10] who praised the founder as the best man that had

promulgated the discipline since Buddha himself. In later centuries,

successors of the founder compiled commentaries and reproclaimed the

teachings of this sect.

In A.D. 724 two Japanese priests went over to China, and having mastered

the Ris-shu doctrine, received permission to propagate it in Japan. With

eighty-two Chinese priests they returned a few years later, having

attempted, it is said, the journey five times and spent twelve years on

the sea. On their return, they received an imperial invitation to live

in the great monastery at Nara, and soon their teachings exerted a

powerful influence on the court. The emperor, empress and four hundred

persons of note were received into the Buddhist communion by a Chinese

priest of the Ris-shu school in the middle of the eighth century. The

Mikado Shō-mu resigned his throne and took the vow and robes of a

monk, becoming Hō-ō or cloistered emperor. Under imperial

direction a great bronze image of the Vairokana Buddha, or Perfection of

Morality, was erected, and terraces, towers, images and all the

paraphernalia of the new kind of Buddhism were prepared. Even the earth

was embroidered, as it were, with sutras and shastras. Symbolical

landscape gardening, which, in its mounds and paths, variously shaped

stones and lanterns, artificial cascades and streamlets, teaches the

holy geography as well as the allegories and hidden truths of Buddhism,

made the city of Nara beautiful to the eyes of faith as well as of

sight.

This sect, with its excellence in morality and benevolence, proved

itself a beautifier of human life, of society and of the earth itself.

Its work was an irenicon. It occupied itself exclusively with the higher

ethics, the higher meditations and the higher knowledge. Interdicting

what was evil and prescribing what was good, its precepts varied in

number and rigor according to the status of the disciple, lay or

clerical. It is by the observance of the _sila_, or grades of moral

perfection, that one becomes a Buddha. Besides making so powerful a

conquest at the southern capital, this sect was the one which centuries

afterward built the first Buddhist temple in Yedo. Being ordinary human

mortals, however, both monk and layman occasionally illustrated the

difference between profession and practice.

These three schools or sects, Ku-sha, Jō-jitsu, and Ris-shu, may be

grouped under the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, with more or less

affiliation with Southern Buddhism; the others now to be described were

wholly of the Northern division.

The Hossō-shu, or the Dharma-lakshana sect, as described by the Rev.

Dai-ryo Takashi of the Shin-gon sect, is the school which studies the

nature of Dharmas or things. The three worlds of desire, form and

formlessness, consist in thought only; and there is nothing outside

thought. Nine centuries after Gautama, Maitreya,[11] or the Buddha of

kindness, came down from the heaven of the Bodhisattva to the

lecture-hall in the kingdom in central India at the request of the

Buddhas elect, and discounted five shastras. After that two Buddhist

fathers who were brothers, composed many more shastras and cleared up

the meaning of the Mahāyanā. In 629 A.D., in his twenty-ninth

year, the famous Chinese pilgrim, Gen-jō (Hiouen-thsang), studied

these shastras and sciences, and returning to China in 645 A.D., began

his great work of translation, at which he continued for nineteen years.

One of his disciples was the author of a hundred commentaries on sutras

and shastras. The doctrines of Gen-jō and his disciples were at four

different times, from 653 to 712 A.D., imported into Japan, and named,

after the monasteries in which they were promulgated, the Northern and

Southern Transmission.

The Middle Path.