(Sastra text.)
_The Dai-en-kyō-chi-kyō declares:--“By entering deeply into meditation,
one may behold the Buddhas of the Ten Directions.”_
(Commemorative text.)
That the noble Elder Sister[22] Chi-Shō-In-Kō-Un-Tei-Myō,[23]
now dwelling in the House of Shining Wisdom, may instantly attain to
Bodhi.[24]
(Prayer.)
Let whomsoever looks upon this sotoba be forever delivered from
the Three Evil Ways.[25]
(Record.)
_In the thirtieth year of Meiji, on the first day of the fifth month, by
the house of Inouyé, this sotoba has been set up._
The foregoing will doubtless suffice as specimens of the ordinary
forms of inscription. The Buddha praised or invoked is always the
Buddha especially revered by the sect from whose sutra or sastra the
quotation is chosen;--sometimes also the divine power of a Bodhisattva
is extolled, as in the following Zen inscription:--
_“The Sutra of Kwannon says:--‘In all the provinces of all the
countries in the Ten Directions, there is not even one temple where
Kwannon is not self-revealed.’”_
Sometimes the scripture text more definitely assumes the character of a
praise-offering, as the following juxtaposition suggests:--
“_The Buddha of Immeasurable Light illuminates all worlds in the
Ten Directions of Space._”
This for the sake of the swift salvation into Buddhahood of our
lay-brother named the Great-Secure-Retired-Scholar.
Sometimes we also find a verse of praise or an invocation addressed to
the apotheosized spirit of the founder of the sect,--a common example
being furnished by the sotoba of the Shingon rite:--
“_Hail to the Great Teacher Haijō-Kongō!_”[26]
Rarely the little prayer for the salvation of the dead assumes, as in
the following beautiful example, the language of unconscious poetry:--
“_This for the sake of our noble Elder Sister ----. May the
Lotos of Bliss by virtue of these prayers be made to bloom for her,
and to bear the fruit of Buddhahood!_”[27]
But usually the prayers are of the simplest, and differ from each other
only in the use of peculiar Buddhist terms:--
--“This for the sake of the true happiness of our
lay-brother--[_kaimyō_],--that he may obtain the Supreme Perfect
Enlightenment.”
--“This tower is set up for the sake of ----, that he may obtain
complete Sambodhi.”[28]
--“This precious tower and these offerings for the sake of ----
----,--that he may obtain the _Anattra-Sammyak-Sambodhi_.”[29]
One other subject of interest belonging to the merely commemorative
texts of sotoba remains to be mentioned,--the names of certain Buddhist
services for the dead. There are two classes of such services: those
performed within one hundred days after death, and those celebrated at
fixed intervals during a term of one hundred years,--on the 1st, 2d,
7th, 13th, 17th, 24th, 33d, 50th, and 100th anniversaries of the death.
In the Zen rite these commemorative services--(perhaps we might call
them masses)--have singular mystical names by which they are recorded
upon the sotoba of the sect,--such as Lesser Happiness, Greater
Happiness, Broad Repose, The Bright Caress, and The Great Caress.
But we shall now turn to the study of the scripture-texts proper,--those
citations from sûtra or sastra which form the main portion of a
sotoba-writing; expounding the highest truth of Buddhist belief, or
speaking the deepest thought of Eastern philosophy.