ingenious interpretation of nature. Countless matters which Shinto
had never attempted to explain, and could not have explained,
Buddhism expounded in detail, with much apparent consistency. Its
explanations of the mysteries of birth, life, and death were at once
consoling to pure minds, and wholesomely discomforting to bad
consciences. It taught that the dead were happy or unhappy not
directly because of the attention or the [193] neglect shown them by
the living, but because of their past conduct while in the body.* It
did not attempt to teach the higher doctrine of successive
rebirths,--which the people could not possibly have understood,--but
the merely symbolic doctrine of transmigration, which everybody could
understand. To die was not to melt back into nature, but to be
reincarnated; and the character of the new body, as well as the
conditions of the new existence, would depend upon the quality of
one's deeds and thoughts in the present body. All states and
conditions of being were the consequence of past actions. Such a man
was now rich and powerful, because in previous lives he had been
generous and kindly; such another man was now sickly and poor,
because in some previous existence he had been sensual and selfish.
This woman was happy in her husband and her children, because in the
time of a former birth she had proved herself a loving daughter and a
faithful spouse; this other was wretched and childless, because in
some anterior existence she had been a jealous wife and a cruel
mother. "To hate your enemy," the Buddhist preacher would proclaim,
"is [194] foolish as well as wrong: he is now your enemy only because
of some treachery that you practised upon him in a previous life,
when he desired to be your friend. Resign yourself to the injury
which he now does you accept it as the expiation of your forgotten
fault... The girl whom you hoped to marry has been refused you by her
parents,--given away to another. But once, in another existence, she
was yours by promise; and you broke the pledge then given.... Painful
indeed the loss of your child; but this loss is the consequence of
having, in some former life, refused affection where affection was
due.... Maimed by mishap, you can no longer earn your living as
before. Yet this mishap is really due to the fact that in some
previous existence you wantonly inflicted bodily injury. Now the evil
of your own act has returned upon you: repent of your crime, and pray
that its Karma may be exhausted by this present suffering." ... All
the sorrows of men were thus explained and consoled. Life was
expounded as representing but one stage of a measureless journey,
whose way stretched back through all the night of the past, and
forward through all the mystery of the future,--out of eternities
forgotten into the eternities to be; and the world itself was to be
thought of only as a traveller's resting-place, an inn by the
roadside.
[*The reader will doubtless wonder how Buddhism could reconcile its
doctrine of successive rebirths with the ideas of ancestor-worship,
If one died only to be born again, what could be the use of offering
food or addressing any kind of prayer to the reincarnated spirit?
This difficulty was met by the teaching that the dead were not
immediately reborn in most cases, but entered into a particular
condition called Chu-U. They might remain in this disembodied
condition for the time of one hundred years, after which they were
reincarnated. The Buddhist services for the dead are consequently
limited to the time of one hundred years.]
Instead of preaching to the people about Nirvana, [195] Buddhism
discoursed to them of blisses to be won and pains to be avoided: the
Paradise of Amida, Lord of Immeasurable Light; the eight hot hells
called To-kwatsu, and the eight icy hells called Abuda. On the
subject of future punishment the teaching was very horrible: I should
advise no one of delicate nerves to read the Japanese, or rather the
Chinese accounts of hell. But hell was the penalty for supreme
wickedness only: it was not eternal; and the demons themselves would
at last be saved.... Heaven was to be the reward of good deeds: the
reward might indeed be delayed, through many successive rebirths, by
reason of lingering Karma; but, on the other hand, it might be
attained by virtue of a single holy act in this present life.
Besides, prior to the period of supreme reward, each succeeding
rebirth could be made happier than the preceding one by persistent
effort in the holy Way. Even as regarded conditions in this
transitory world, the results of virtuous conduct were not to be
despised. The beggar of to-day might to-morrow be reborn in the
palace of a daimyo; the blind shampooer might become, in his very
next life, an imperial minister. Always the recompense would be
proportionate to the sum of merit. In this lower world to practise
the highest virtue was difficult; and the great rewards were hard to
win. But for all good deeds a recompense was sure; and there was no
one who could not acquire merit. [196] Even the Shinto doctrine of
conscience--the god-given sense of right and wrong--was not denied by
Buddhism. But this conscience was interpreted as the essential wisdom
of the Buddha dormant in every human creature,--wisdom darkened by
ignorance, clogged by desire, fettered by Karma, but destined sooner
or later to fully awaken, and to flood the mind with light.
It would seem that the Buddhist teaching of the duty of kindness to
all living creatures, and of pity for all suffering, had a powerful
effect upon national habit and custom, long before the new religion
found general acceptance. As early as the year 675, a decree was
issued by the Emperor Temmu forbidding the people to eat "the flesh
of kine, horses, dogs, monkeys, or barn-door fowls," and prohibiting
the use of traps or the making of pitfalls in catching game.* [*See
Aston's translation of the Nihongi, Vol. II, p. 329.] The fact that
all kinds of flesh-meat were not forbidden is probably explained by
this Emperor's zeal for the maintenance of both creeds;--an absolute
prohibition might have interfered with Shinto usages, and would
certainly have been incompatible with Shinto traditions. But,
although fish never ceased to be an article of food for the laity, we
may say that from about this time the mass of the nation abandoned
its habits of diet, and forswore the eating of meat, in accordance
with [197] Buddhist teaching.... This teaching was based upon the
doctrine of the unity of all sentient existence. Buddhism explained
the whole visible world by its doctrine of Karma,--simplifying that
doctrine so as to adapt it to popular comprehension. The forms of all
creatures,--bird, reptile, or mammal; insect or fish,--represented
only different results of Karma: the ghostly life in each was one and
the same; and, in even the lowest, some spark of the divine existed.
The frog or the serpent, the bird or the bat, the ox or the
horse,--all had had, at some past time, the privilege of human
(perhaps even superhuman) shape: their present conditions represented
only the consequence of ancient faults. Any human being also, by
reason of like faults, might hereafter be reduced to the same dumb
state,--might be reborn as a reptile, a fish, a bird, or a beast of
burden. The consequence of wanton cruelty to any animal might cause
the perpetrator of that cruelty to be reborn as an animal of the same
kind, destined to suffer the same cruel treatment. Who could even be
sure that the goaded ox, the over-driven horse, or the slaughtered
bird, had not formerly been a human being of closest kin,--ancestor,
parent, brother, sister, or child? ...
Not by words only were all these things taught. It should be
remembered that Shinto had no art: its ghost-houses, silent and void,
were not even [198] decorated. But Buddhism brought in its train all
the arts of carving, painting, and decoration. The images of its
Bodhisattvas, smiling in gold,--the figures of its heavenly guardians
and infernal judges, its feminine angels and monstrous demons,--must
have startled and amazed imaginations yet unaccustomed to any kind of
art. Great paintings hung in the temples, and frescoes limned upon
their walls or ceilings, explained better than words the doctrine of
the Six States of Existence, and the dogma of future rewards and
punishments. In rows of kakemono, suspended side by side, were
displayed the incidents of a Soul's journey to the realm of judgment,
and all the horrors of the various hells. One pictured the ghosts of
faithless wives, for ages doomed to pluck, with bleeding fingers, the
rasping bamboo-grass that grows by the Springs of Death; another
showed the torment of the slanderer, whose tongue was torn by
demon-pincers; in a third appeared the spectres of lustful men,
vainly seeking to flee the embraces of women of fire, or climbing, in
frenzied terror, the slopes of the Mountain of Swords. Pictured also
were the circles of the Preta-world, and the pangs of the Hungry
Ghosts, and likewise the pains of rebirth in the form of reptiles and
of beasts. And the art of these early representations--many of which
have been preserved--was an art of no mean order. We can hardly
conceive the effect upon inexperienced imagination of the crimson
frown of Emma [199] (Yama), Judge of the dead,--or the vision of that
weird Mirror which reflected, to every spirit the misdeeds of its
life in the body,--or the monstrous fancy of that double-faced Head
before the judgment seat, representing the visage of the woman
Mirume, whose eyes behold all secret sin; and the vision of the man
Kaguhana, who smells all odours of evil-doing.... Parental affection
must have been deeply touched by the painted legend of the world of
children's ghosts,--the little ghosts that must toil, under
demon-surveillance, in the Dry Bed of the River of Souls.... But
pictured terrors were offset by pictured consolations,--by the
beautiful figure of Kwannon, white Goddess of Mercy,--by the
compassionate smile of Jizo, the playmate of infant-ghosts,--by the
charm also of celestial nymphs, floating on iridescent wings in light
of azure. The Buddhist painter opened to simple fancy the palaces of
heaven, and guided hope, through gardens of jewel-trees, even to the
shores of that lake where the souls of the blessed are reborn in
lotos-blossoms, and tended by angel-nurses.
Moreover, for people accustomed only to such simple architecture as
that of the Shinto miya, the new temples erected by the Buddhist
priests must have been astonishments. The colossal Chinese gates,
guarded by giant statues; the lions and lanterns of bronze and stone;
the enormous suspended [200] bells, sounded by swinging-beams; the
swarming of dragon-shapes under the caves of the vast roofs; the
glimmering splendour of the altars; the ceremonial likewise, with its
chanting and its incense-burning and its weird Chinese music,--cannot
have failed to inspire the wonder-loving with delight and awe. It is
a noteworthy fact that the earliest Buddhist temples in Japan still
remain, even to Western eyes, the most impressive. The Temple of the
Four Deva Kings at Osaka--which, though more than once rebuilt,
preserves the original plan--dates from 600 A.D.; the yet more
remarkable temple called Horyuji, near Nara, dates from about the
year 607.
Of course the famous paintings and the great statues could be seen at
the temples only; but the Buddhist image-makers soon began to people
even the most desolate places with stone images of Buddhas and of
Bodhisattvas. Then first were made those icons of Jizo, which still
smile upon the traveller from every roadside,--and the images of
Koshin, protector of highways, with his three symbolic Apes,--and the
figure of that Bato-Kwannon, who protects the horses of the
peasant,--with other figures in whose rude but impressive art
suggestions of Indian origin are yet recognizable. Gradually the
graveyards became thronged with dreaming Buddhas or
Bodhisattvas,--holy guardians of the dead, throned upon lotos-flowers
of [201] stone, and smiling with closed eyes the smile of the Calm
Supreme. In the cities everywhere Buddhist sculptors opened shops, to
furnish pious households with images of the chief divinities
worshipped by the various Buddhist sects; and the makers of ihai, or
Buddhist mortuary tablets, as well as the makers of household
shrines, multiplied and prospered.
Meanwhile the people were left free to worship their ancestors
according to either creed; and if a majority eventually gave
preference to the Buddhist rite, this preference was due in large
measure to the peculiar emotional charm which Buddhism had infused
into the cult. Except in minor details, the two rites differed
scarcely at all; and there was no conflict whatever between the old
ideas of filial piety and the Buddhist ideas attaching to the new
ancestor-worship, Buddhism taught that the dead might be helped and
made happier by prayer, and that much ghostly comfort could be given
them by food-offerings. They were not to be offered flesh or wine;
but it was proper to gratify them with fruits and rice and cakes and
flowers and the smoke of incense. Besides, even the simplest
food-offerings might be transmuted, by force of prayer, into
celestial nectar and ambrosia. But what especially helped the new
ancestor-cult to popular favour, was the fact that it included many
beautiful and touching customs not known to the old. Everywhere [202]
the people soon learned to kindle the hundred and eight fires of
welcome for the annual visit of their dead,--to supply the spirits
with little figures made of straw, or made out of vegetables,
to-serve for oxen or horses,*--also to prepare the ghost-ships
(shoryobune), in which the souls of the ancestors were to return,
over the sea, to their under-world. Then too were instituted the
Bon-odori, or Dances of the Festival of the Dead,** and the custom of
suspending white lanterns at graves, and coloured lanterns at
house-gates, to light the coining and the going of the visiting dead.
[*An eggplant, with four pegs of wood stuck into it, to represent
legs, usually stands for an ox; and a cucumber, with four pegs,
serves for a horse.... One is reminded of the fact that, at some of
the ancient Greek sacrifices, similar substitutes for real animals
were used. In the worship of Apollo, at Thebes, apples with wooden
pegs stuck into them, to represent feet and horns, were offered as
substitutes for sheep.
**The dances themselves--very curious and very attractive to
witness--are much older than Buddhism; but Buddhism made them a
feature of the festival referred to, which lasts for three days. No
person who has not witnessed a Bon-odori can form the least idea of
what Japanese dancing means: it is something utterly different from
what usually goes by the name,--something indescribably archaic,
weird, and nevertheless fascinating. I have repeatedly sat up all
night to watch the peasants dancing. Japanese dancing girls, be it
observed, do not dance: they pose. The peasants dance.]
But perhaps the greatest value of Buddhism to the nation was
educational. The Shinto priests were not teachers. In early times
they were mostly aristocrats, religious representatives of the clans;
and the idea of educating the common people could not even have
occurred to them. Buddhism, on [203] the other hand, offered the boon
of education to all,--not merely a religious education, but an
education in the arts and the learning of China. The Buddhist temples
eventually became common schools, or had schools attached to them;
and at each parish temple the children of the community were taught,
at a merely nominal cost, the doctrines of the faith, the wisdom of
the Chinese classics, calligraphy, drawing, and much besides. By
degrees the education of almost the whole nation came under Buddhist
control; and the moral effect was of the best. For the military class
indeed there was another and special system of education; but Samurai
scholars sought to perfect their knowledge under Buddhist teachers of
renown; and the imperial household itself employed Buddhist
instructors. For the common people everywhere the Buddhist priest was
the schoolmaster; and by virtue of his occupation as teacher, not
less than by reason of his religious office, he ranked with the
samurai. Much of what remains most attractive, in Japanese
character--the winning and graceful aspects of it--seems to have been
developed under Buddhist training.
It was natural enough that to his functions of public instructor, the
Buddhist priest should have added those of a public registrar. Until
the period of disendowment, the Buddhist clergy remained, throughout
the country, public as well as religious officials. They kept the
parish records, and furnished [204] at need certificates of birth,
death, or family descent.
To give any just conception of the immense civilizing influence which
Buddhism exerted in Japan would require many volumes. Even to
summarize the results of that influence by stating only the most
general facts, is scarcely possible,--for no general statement can
embody the whole truth of the work accomplished. As a moral force,
Buddhism strengthened authority and cultivated submission, by its
capacity to inspire larger hopes and fears than the more ancient
religion could create. As teacher, it educated the race, from the
highest to the humblest, both in ethics and in esthetics. All that
can be classed under the name of art in Japan was either introduced
or developed by Buddhism; and the same may be said regarding nearly
all Japanese literature possessing real literary quality,--excepting
some Shinto rituals, and some fragments of archaic poetry. Buddhism
introduced drama, the higher forms of poetical composition, and
fiction, and history, and philosophy. All the refinements of Japanese
life were of Buddhist introduction, and at least a majority of its
diversions and pleasures. There is even to-day scarcely one
interesting or beautiful thing, produced in the country, for which
the nation is not in some sort indebted to Buddhism. Perhaps the best
and briefest way of [205] stating the range of such indebtedness, is
simply to, say that Buddhism brought the whole of Chinese
civilization into Japan, and thereafter patiently modified and
reshaped it to Japanese requirements. The elder civilization was not
merely superimposed upon the social structure, but fitted carefully
into it, combined with it so perfectly that the marks of the welding,
the lines of the juncture, almost totally disappeared.
[207]
THE HIGHER BUDDHISM
Philosphical Buddhism requires some brief consideration in this
place,--for two reasons. The first is that misapprehension or
ignorance of the subject has rendered possible the charge of atheism
against the intellectual classes of Japan. The second reason is that
some persons imagine the Japanese common people--that is to say, the
greater part of the nation--believers in the doctrine of Nirvana as
extinction (though, as a matter of fact, even the meaning of the word
is unknown to the masses), and quite resigned to vanish from the face
of the earth, because of that incapacity for struggle which the
doctrine is supposed to create. A little serious thinking ought to
convince any intelligent man that no such creed could ever have been
the religion of either a savage or a civilized people. But myriads of
Western minds are ready at all times to accept statements of
impossibility without taking the trouble to think about them; and if
I can show some of my readers how far beyond popular comprehension
the doctrines of the higher Buddhism really are, something will have
been accomplished for the cause of truth and [208] common-sense. And
besides the reasons already given for dwelling upon the subject,
there is this third and special reason,--that it is one of
extraordinary interest to the student of modern philosophy.
Before going further, I must remind you that the metaphysics of
Buddhism can be studied anywhere else quite as well as in Japan,
since the more important sutras have been translated into various
European languages, and most of the untranslated texts edited and
published. The texts of Japanese Buddhism are Chinese; and only
Chinese scholars are competent to throw light upon the minor special
phases of the subject. Even to read the Chinese Buddhist canon of
7000 volumes is commonly regarded as an impossible feat,--though it
has certainly been accomplished in Japan. Then there are the
commentaries, the varied interpretations of different sects, the
multiplications of later doctrine, to heap confusion upon confusion.
The complexities of Japanese Buddhism are incalculable; and those who
try to unravel them soon become, as a general rule, hopelessly lost
in the maze of detail. All this has nothing to do with my present
purpose, I shall have very little to say about Japanese Buddhism as
distinguished from other Buddhism, and nothing at all to say about
sect-differences. I shall keep to general facts as regards the higher
doctrine,--selecting from among such facts only those most suitable
[209] for the illustration of that doctrine. And I shall not take up
the subject of Nirvana, in spite of its great importance,--having
treated it as fully as I was able in my _Gleanings in Buddha-Fields_,
--but confine myself to the topic of certain analogies between the
conclusions of Buddhist metaphysics and the conclusions of
contemporary Western thought.
In the best single volume yet produced in English on the subject of
Buddhism,* the late Mr. Henry Clarke Warren observed: "A large part
of the pleasure that I have experienced in the study of Buddhism has
arisen from what I may call the strangeness of the intellectual
landscape. [*Buddhism in Translations, by Henry Clarke Warren
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1896). Published by Harvard University.]
All the ideas, the modes of argument, even the postulates assumed and
not argued about, have always seemed so strange, so different from
anything to which I have been accustomed, that I felt all the time as
though walking in Fairyland. Much of the charm that the Oriental
thoughts and ideas have for me appears to be because they so seldom
fit into Western categories." ... The serious attraction of Buddhist
philosophy could not be better suggested: it is indeed "the
strangeness of the intellectual landscape," as of a world inside-out
and upside-down, that has chiefly interested Western [210] thinkers
heretofore. Yet after all, there is a class of Buddhist concepts
which can be fitted, or very nearly fitted, into Western categories.
The higher Buddhism is a kind of Monism; and it includes doctrines
that accord, in the most surprising manner, with the scientific
theories of the German and the English monists. To my thinking, the
most curious part of the subject, and its main interest, is
represented just by these accordances,--particularly in view of the
fact that the Buddhist conclusions have been reached through mental
processes unknown to Western thinking, and unaided by any knowledge
of science.... I venture to call myself a student of Herbert Spencer;
and it was because of my acquaintance with the Synthetic Philosophy
that I came to find in Buddhist philosophy a more than romantic
interest. For Buddhism is also a theory of evolution, though the
great central idea of our scientific evolution (the law of progress
from homogeneity to heterogeneity) is not correspondingly implied by
Buddhist doctrine as regards the life of this world. The course of
evolution as we conceive it, according to Professor Huxley, "must
describe a trajectory like that of a ball fired from a mortar; and
the sinking half of that course is as much a part of the general
process of evolution as the rising." The highest point of the
trajectory would represent what Mr. Spencer calls Equilibration,--the
supreme point of development preceding the period [211] of decline;
but, in Buddhist evolution, this supreme point vanishes into Nirvana.
I can best illustrate the Buddhist position by asking you to imagine
the trajectory line upside-down,--a course descending out of the
infinite, touching ground, and ascending again to mystery....
Nevertheless, some Buddhist ideas do offer the most startling analogy
with the evolutional ideas of our own time; and even those Buddhist
concepts most remote from Western thought can be best interpreted by
the help of illustrations and of language borrowed from modern
science.
I think that we may consider the most remarkable teachings of the
higher Buddhism,--excluding the doctrine of Nirvana, for the reason
already given,--to be the following:--
That there is but one Reality;--
That the Consciousness is not the real Self;--
That Matter is an aggregate of phenomena created by the force of acts
and thoughts;--
That all objective and subjective existence is made by Karma,-- the
present being the creation of the Past, and the actions of the
present and the past, in combination, determining the conditions of
the future.... (Or, in other words, that the universe of Matter, and
the universe of [conditioned] Mind, represent in their evolution a
strictly moral order.)
It will he worth while now to briefly consider [212] these doctrines
in their relation to modern thought, beginning with the first, which
is Monism:--