“_Grass, trees, countries, the earth itself,--all these shall
enter wholly into Buddhahood._”[47]
Literally, “shall become Buddha;” that is, they shall enter into
Buddhahood or Nirvana. All that we term matter will be transmuted
therefore into Mind,--Mind with the attributes of Infinite Sentiency,
Infinite Vision, and Infinite Knowledge. As phenomenon, matter is
unreal; but transcendentally it belongs by its ultimate nature to the
Sole Reality.
Such a philosophical position is likely to puzzle the average reader. To
call matter and mind but two aspects of the Ultimate Reality will not
seem irrational to students of Herbert Spencer. But to say that matter
is a phenomenon, an illusion, a dream, explains nothing;--as phenomenon
it exists, and having a destiny attributed to it, must be considered
objectively. Equally unsatisfying is the statement that phenomena
are aggregates of Karma. What is the nature of the particles of the
aggregate? Or, in plainest language, what is the illusion made of?
Not in the original Buddhist scriptures, and still less in the
literature of Buddhist cemeteries, need the reply be sought. Such
questions are dealt with in the sastras rather than in the sûtras;--also
in various Japanese commentaries upon both. A friend has furnished me
with some very curious and unfamiliar Shingon texts containing answers
to the enigma.
The Shingon sect, I may observe, is a mystical sect, which especially
proclaims the identity of mind and substance, and boldly carries out the
doctrine to its furthest logical consequences. Its founder and father
Kū-kai, better known as Kōbōdaishi, declared in his book _Hizōki_ that
matter is not different in essence from spirit. “As to the doctrine
of grass, trees, and things non-sentient becoming Buddhas” he writes,
“I say that the refined forms [_ultimate nature_] of spiritual bodies
consist of the Five Great Elements; that Ether[48] consists of the Five
Great Elements; and that the refined forms of bodies spiritual, of
ether, of plants, of trees, consequently pervade all space. This ether,
these plants and trees, are themselves spiritual bodies. To the eye of
flesh, plants and trees appear to be gross matter. But to the eye of
the Buddha _they are composed of minute spiritual entities_. Therefore,
even without any change in their substance, there can be no error or
impropriety in our calling them Buddhas.”
The use of the term “non-sentient” in the foregoing would seem to
involve a contradiction; but this is explained away by a dialogue in the
book _Shi-man-gi_:--
Q.--Are not grass and trees sometimes called sentient?
A.--They can be so called.
Q.--But they have also been called non-sentient: how can they be
called sentient?
A.--In all substance from the beginning exists the impress of
the wisdom-nature of the Nyōrai (_Tathâgata_): therefore to call
such things sentient is not error.
* * * * *
“Potentially sentient,” the reader might conclude; but this conclusion
would be wrong. The Shingon thought is not of a potential sentiency,
but of a latent sentiency which although to us non-apparent and
non-imaginable, is nevertheless both real and actual. Commenting upon
the words of Kōbōdaishi above cited, the great priest Yū-kai not only
reiterates the opinion of his master, but asserts that it is absurd
to deny that plants, trees, and what we call inanimate objects, can
practise virtue! “Since Mind,” he declares, “pervades the whole World
of Law, the grasses, plants, trees, and earth pervaded by it must all
have mind, and must turn their mind to Buddhahood and practise virtue.
Do not doubt the doctrine of our sect, regarding the Non-Duality of the
Pervading and the Pervaded, merely because of the distinction made in
common parlance between Matter and Mind.” As for _how_ plants or stones
can practise virtue, the sûtras indeed have nothing to say. But that is
because the sûtras, being intended for man, teach only what man should
know and do.
The reader will now, perhaps, be better able to follow out the really
startling Buddhist hypothesis of the nature of matter to its more than
startling conclusion. (It must not be contemned because of the fantasy
of five elements; for these are declared to be only modes of one
ultimate.) All forms of what we call matter are really but aggregates
of spiritual units; and all apparent differences of substance represent
only differences of combination among these units. The differences
of combination are caused by special tendencies and affinities of
the units;--the tendency of each being the necessary result of its
particular evolutional history--(using the term “evolutional” in a
purely ethical sense). All integrations of apparent substance,--the
million suns and planets of the universe,--represent only the affinities
of such ghostly ultimates; and every human act or thought registers
itself through enormous time by some knitting or loosening of forces
working for good or evil.
* * * * *
Grass, trees, earth, and all things seem to us what they are not, simply
because the eye of flesh is blind. Life itself is a curtain hiding
reality,--somewhat as the vast veil of day conceals from our sight the
countless orbs of Space. But the texts of the cemeteries proclaim that
the purified mind, even while prisoned within the body, may enter for
moments of ecstasy into union with the Supreme:--
“_The One Bright Moon illuminates the mind in the meditation
called Zenjō._”[49]
The “One Bright Moon” is the Supreme Buddha. By the pure of heart He may
even be seen:--
“_Hail unto the Wondrous Law! By attaining to the state of
single-mindedness we behold the Buddha._”[50]