MOUNT OMEI AND CHINESE BUDDHISM
The forests and ravines of Mount Omei[23] teem with mystery and marvel,
for there are legends that carry its story far back into the dim days
when the threads of history meet together in the knots of myth. There
is hardly a peak un-garlanded with the flowers of romance, hardly a
moss-grown boulder that is not the centre of an old-world legend. The
many stories of wonderful visions and wizard sounds that have come to
the eyes and ears of the pilgrims to the shrines of Omei may raise
a smile of amusement at human credulity, yet they are easily enough
explained when we remember how strangely both sights and sounds may be
affected by mountain-mists; and it is seldom that the giant bulk of
Omei is bathed from peak to base in clear sunshine.
"The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn."
[Sidenote: LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS]
It is, indeed, true that "many-fountain'd" Omei would lose a great
part of its spell if the mists were to melt away into garish daylight.
No more could the pilgrim pour into the ears of wondering listeners
tales of how, when ascending the mountain amid gloom and silence, he
had suddenly heard his own praises of the Lord Amitabha re-chanted by
spirit voices; how a rift in the curtain of white cloud had suddenly
disclosed landscapes of unearthly loveliness, with jewelled palaces
and starry pinnacles such as were never raised by the hands of men;
how he had caught glimpses of airy forms that passed him with a sigh
or a whisper, but left no traces in the forest or the snow and made no
sound of footfall; or how when approaching unwittingly the edge of some
terrible abyss he had felt the touch of a ghostly finger that led him
back to safety.
It is believed that the Lolos, who are not Buddhists, worshipped on
Mount Omei a triad of deities of their own, and it is at least certain
that men of that race are sometimes met on Omei's slopes. But the
earliest legendary associations of the mountain are in Chinese minds
naturally connected with those mythical progenitors of the Chinese
people--Fu Hsi and Nü Wo. This carries us back to the twenty-ninth
century B.C. Both these mysterious persons have their "caves" on Mount
Omei, but they are in such inaccessible situations that no mortal eye
has ever seen them. The first of the legendary hermits was a holy
man named T'ien Chên Huang Jên,[24] the Heavenly Sage and Imperial
Man. He lived in the age of phœnixes and unicorns; and on Mount Omei
he once received a visit from Huang Ti,[25] the Yellow Emperor, who
flourished in the twenty-sixth century B.C. Though one of the few of
the world's monarchs who appear to have lived long enough to celebrate
the centenary of their succession to the throne, Huang Ti wished to
attain the crowning distinction of immortality. It was to acquire
the elixir of life from the Heavenly Sage that Huang Ti paid him his
memorable visit. A short record of the conversation between the Sage
and his imperial disciple has been preserved, and we may gather from it
that Huang Ti derived from the interview a good deal of sound practical
advice, but the Sage seems to have skilfully evaded the main point. He
kept his secret, but made such excellent personal use of it that he is
supposed to have lived for at least a millennium or two, and indeed
his death has not yet been recorded. In order to keep count of time he
acquired the useful habit of changing his name with each successive
epoch,[26] and his name in the Chou dynasty--which occupied the throne
about a millennium and a half after the Yellow Emperor's time--was the
singularly appropriate one of The Old Man.
[Sidenote: THE MONK OF A THOUSAND YEARS]
Omei-shan--like other sacred mountains in China--has always been famous
for the medicinal value of its roots and herbs, and the monks still
derive no little benefit from their sale. Perhaps it was among these
herbs that The Old Man found his elixir of life, and if so he did not
remain in exclusive possession of the secret. The records of Omei are
full of accounts of recluses and others whose span of life extended far
beyond the normal. One of them is known to legend as Pao Chang,[27] but
more popularly as Ch'ien Sui Ho Shang,[28] or "The Monk of a Thousand
Years." The period of his long and useful life is given in the records.
He was born in the twelfth year of Wei Lieh Wang of the Chou dynasty,
and died in the eighth year of Kao Tsung of the T'ang dynasty at the
ripe old age of precisely one thousand and seventy-one. He was a native
of India, but came to China in the Chin dynasty (265-419 of our era)
and went to worship at the shrine of P'u Hsien Bodhisattva on Mount
Omei, where he spent the declining centuries of his life. According
to another account his arrival at Omei was a good deal earlier than
the Chin period, for his name is connected with the most famous of all
the Omei stories--one which refers to the reign of Ming Ti of the Han
dynasty.
This story relates to the foundation of what may be called the
Buddhistic history of Omei and the beginning of its long religious
association with its patron saint, P'u Hsien Bodhisattva. We are told
that in the reign of Ming Ti (58-75 of the Christian era) a certain
official named P'u[29] happened to be on Mount Omei looking for
medicinal herbs. In a misty hollow he suddenly came upon the footprints
of a deer. They were shaped not like the footprints of an ordinary
deer but like the flower of the lotus. Amazed at the strange sight, he
followed the tracks up the mountain. They led him continually upwards
until at last he found himself on the summit, and there, at the edge of
a terrible precipice, they disappeared. As he gazed over the brink he
beheld a sight most strange and wonderful. A succession of marvellous
colours, luminous and brilliant, gradually rose to the surface of the
vast bank of clouds that lay stretched out below, and linked themselves
together in the form of a glorious iridescent aureole. P'u, full of
wonder at so extraordinary a spectacle, sought the hermitage of the
famous "Monk of a Thousand Years" and told him his strange story. "You
are indeed happy!" said the monk. "What you have seen is no other than
a special manifestation to you of the glory of the great Bodhisattva
P'u Hsien: fitting it is, therefore, that this mountain should be the
centre from which his teachings may be spread abroad. The Bodhisattva
has certainly favoured you above all men." The end of the whole matter
was that P'u built, on the spot from which he had witnessed the sublime
manifestation, the first of the Buddhist temples of Mount Omei, and
dedicated it to P'u Hsien Bodhisattva; and the present monastic
buildings known as the Hsien Tsu Tien and its more modern neighbour
the Chin Tien occupy in the twentieth century the site chosen for the
original P'u Kuang Tien, or Hall of Universal Glory,[30] in the first
century.
[Sidenote: LEGENDS]
This story is interesting as carrying back the Buddhistic traditions of
Omei to the very earliest days of Buddhism in China. My readers will
probably remember that it was in the same epoch--the reign of Ming
Ti--that the emperor had his famous vision of the Golden Man, which is
supposed to have led to the introduction of Buddhism into China under
direct imperial patronage. The story is also of interest as embodying
the first record of the remarkable phenomenon known as the Glory of
Buddha, which has always been one of the principal attractions of the
mountain and may well have been the real cause--as the story itself
indicates--of its special sanctity.
The other curiosities of Omei are so numerous that most of them cannot
even be referred to. Near the foot of the mountain is a scooped-out
rock which is said to have once formed a bath in which pilgrims were
required to go through a course of purification before ascending
the mountain. This, if true, is curious and suggestive. There is a
spot shown where a miraculous lotus-plant--the lotus is sacred to
the Buddha--used to blossom in every season of the year. There is a
flying bell, the tolling of which has been heard in many different
parts of the mountain, though it is never moved by human hands.
There are rock-inscriptions written by emperors and empresses and by
the great Sung dynasty poet, Su Tung-p'o. Not far from the Wan-nien
monastery--perhaps the second oldest on the mountain--is a stream
called the Black Water. In the T'ang dynasty a wandering monk, looking
for a home, came to this stream and wished to cross it, for he espied
on the further bank a spot which he thought would make an excellent
site for a hermitage. But the stream was turbulent and violent and he
could not cross. Suddenly out of the midst of the torrent came a huge
tiger. The tiger looked at the monk, and the monk, unabashed, looked at
the tiger. The wild beast recognised a teacher of the Good Law, and lay
down at his feet, tamed and obedient. The monk mounted on his back and
was carried safely across the water. The tiger has gone and the monk
has gone, but the story must be true, for a bridge was built to span
the Black Water at the spot where the miracle occurred, and it is known
as the Tiger Bridge to this day. In another place there is a great
split rock inside which a mighty dragon slumbered for untold ages.
One night in a terrible thunderstorm the rock was cleft asunder by
lightning. The dragon flew away and was never seen again, but the story
is true, because the sundered rock is still there and can be touched.
[Sidenote: FAMOUS CAVES AND TREES]
The numerous caves on the mountain have endless stories connected
with them. One is supposed to be the haunt of nine great demons. Once
upon a time some audacious monks determined that they would probe
its mysteries. They advanced some distance into the interior without
accident, when suddenly they were met by a prodigious bat that breathed
fire. The monks turned round and walked away, wiser and sadder.
Another cave--the Thunder Cavern--is the haunt of a ghostly dragon, who
lurks in the depths of a gloomy tarn. This cave, with its lake, has
probably a very ancient history, for it seems to be associated in some
way with animistic worship, of which there are many traces on Omei.[31]
In seasons of drought it is or was formerly the custom to go to the
cave with offerings of rich silks. If rain did not speedily fall as a
result of the offerings, the correct procedure was to insult the dragon
by throwing into his cave a dead pig and some articles of a still more
disagreeable nature. This infallibly raised the wrath of the dragon,
who immediately issued forth from his damp and gloomy home and roared.
This meant thunder, and then the rain fell and all was well.
Mount Omei has several famous trees. Of one of them this story is told.
In the Hui Tsung period (1101-25) of the Sung dynasty there was a very
old tree, which about the year 1112 was torn open by a violent storm.
Inside it was found a Buddhist monk, alive, in a state of ecstatic
trance. The whole of his body was covered with his long hair and
whiskers, and his nails were so long that they encircled his body. The
emperor having heard of this living relic of the past, directed that
he was to be carefully conveyed to the capital. Having with difficulty
induced him to emerge from his tree, the messenger asked him his name.
"I am the disciple," he replied, "of Yüan Fa-shih of Tung Lin. My name
is Hui Ch'ih. I came to Omei on pilgrimage and entered into meditation
in this tree. How is my master Yuan? Is he well?" "Your master Yuan,"
said the imperial emissary, "lived in the time of the Chin dynasty,
and died seven hundred years ago." Hui Ch'ih answered not a word,
but turned his back and resumed meditation in his tree. A somewhat
similar story is as follows. In the fourteenth century of our era
there was a monk who had chosen for the scene of his meditations the
hollow interior of an ancient decayed tree. There he sat cross-legged
in silent contemplation until he was about eighty years of age. His
piety apparently communicated some mysterious vitality to the tree, for
suddenly it underwent an extraordinary change: the withered branches
put forth fresh shoots, green foliage reappeared, and the gaping
fissure in the trunk closed up, leaving the contemplative monk inside.
The chronicler goes on to remark with ill-timed levity that the monk
had begun by taking possession of the tree, but the tree had ended by
taking possession of the monk. It is understood, however, that the
accident by no means interrupted his meditations, and that he is still
sitting cross-legged in the darkened interior of his sylvan retreat,
wrapped in profound reverie.
There is a legend that the Buddha himself visited Mount Omei, and his
footprint in a rock is still shown near the summit, though in this age
of little faith its outline is scarcely recognisable. As one of the
monasteries also possesses an alleged Buddha's tooth it is clear that
the fame of Omei ought to be as far-reaching as that of Adam's Peak and
Kandy combined; but Ceylon and China are not the only countries that
rejoice in the possession of footprints and teeth of the Buddha.
[Sidenote: MYTHS OF THE PATRON SAINT]
The local myths that have gathered round the name of the patron saint
of Omei, P'u Hsien[32] Bodhisattva, who is said to have brought
the sacred books of Buddhism from India to China on the back of an
elephant, and deposited them on the mountain, are quite devoid of
historical foundation, for P'u Hsien was merely one of the numerous
figures invented by the Mahayana Buddhists to fill up the broad
canvas of their vast symbolical system.[33] He represents, or rather
is, the Samanta Bhadra of Indian Buddhism, and figures as such in
that great Chinese Buddhist work, the _Hua Yen Ching_,[34] one of
the voluminous productions of Nāgārjuna.[35] The monks of Omei have
invented the famous elephant-ride simply because Samanta Bhadra is
always associated with an elephant in such authoritative Mahayana works
as the Saddharma-Pundarîka. The third last chapter of that work (in
Kumarajiva's translation) deals with P'u Hsien, who is represented as
declaring to the Buddha that he will "mount a white elephant with six
tusks" and take good monks under his special protection, shielding
them from gods, goblins and Mara the Evil One. The monks of Omei
say that having come to the mountain on his elephant he established
himself there as a teacher of the Law of Buddha, and attracted
three thousand pupils or disciples. It is quite possible that one of
the original Buddhist hermits or monks of Omei acquired so great a
celebrity that he became identified in the popular imagination with P'u
Hsien. Something of the kind certainly happened in the case of other
Bodhisattvas--Manjusri and Avalokiteçvara, for instance. But all trace
of historic truth soon vanished in myth. In a Buddhistic work that
relates to Omei, P'u Hsien is described as the eldest son of the Buddha
himself. "The Tathâgata (Buddha) sits on a great lotus consisting
of 1000 leaves. Each leaf has 3000 Universes. Each Universe has a
Buddha to expound the Law, and each Buddha has a P'u Hsien as eldest
son (_changtzŭ_)." This is not an attempt to identify P'u Hsien with
Rahula, the son of the historical Buddha; it refers to the Mahayana
doctrine that Samanta Bhadra or P'u Hsien is the spiritual son or
reflex of the celestial Vairocana, one of the five mythical Buddhas,
just as Gautama Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha) was supposed to be
the earthly embodiment of the celestial Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara,
the spiritual son or reflex of the celestial Buddha Amitabha. As
regards the significance of the elephant, it need only be mentioned
here that in Indian Buddhistic mythology this animal (apart from its
sacred association with the well-known dream of the Buddha's mother) is
symbolical of self-control.[36]
[Illustration: CHINESE BUDDHIST MONKS IN "UNDRESS." [_To face p. 65._]
[Sidenote: CHINESE BUDDHISM]
The earliest religious buildings on Mount Omei were no doubt solitary
hermitages, erected by recluses whose religious enthusiasm impelled
them to find in the deep recesses of its forests and gorges a welcome
retreat from the noise and vanity of a world that they despised. As
time went on, richly-endowed monasteries--nobler and more splendid
than any now existing--rose in its silent ravines and by the side
of its sparkling water-courses, and opened their doors to welcome
those whom spiritual ecstasy or longing for a life of philosophic
contemplation, or perhaps the anguish of defeated ambition, drove from
the haunts of men. But gradually as religious fervour died away, the
mountain recluses and solitary students of early days were succeeded
by smaller men, distinguished neither for piety nor for scholarship.
It must, indeed, be confessed that no tradition of sound learning
has been kept up in the Buddhist Church in China. To some extent the
lack of scholarship among Chinese Buddhists may perhaps be traced not
too fancifully to the practice and teaching of Bodhidarma,[37] the
so-called twenty-eighth patriarch of the Indian Buddhists, and the
first of the patriarchs of China. He it was who, having landed in China
early in the sixth century of our era, at once made it his business
to discourage book-learning in the monasteries and to inculcate the
doctrine that supreme enlightenment or mystical union with the Buddha
can only be achieved by disregarding all exoteric teaching and by
passive contemplation. By the recognition of all phenomena, including
one's own personality, as illusory, the mind was to be maintained in
a condition of intellectual quiescence and receptivity, whereby it
would be in a fit state to enter into communion with the Absolute.
Of Bodhidarma the story is told that he sat for nine years in one
position looking at a wall, which is a crude way of explaining that he
was a contemplative mystic. In China his teachings have undoubtedly
had a sterilising influence on thought, somewhat similar--though for
different reasons--to the baneful influence exercised in Europe by
the too-exclusive devotion of the mediæval schoolmen to Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas.
It may seem a far-fetched hypothesis to attribute part of the present
degeneracy of the Buddhist monkhood in China to the teachings of a
wall-gazing recluse who died nearly fourteen centuries ago. It might
be urged that in searching for the cause of the present state of
decay one need only point to the low orders of society from which the
monks are recruited, the disfavour with which Buddhism is and always
has been regarded by the orthodox Confucian, and the contempt which
the thoroughly practical and worldly-minded Chinese layman almost
invariably feels and expresses for the monastic profession. That these
causes have powerfully assisted in accelerating the corruption that
we witness to-day is unquestionably true; but there is a good deal of
historical justification for the view that they are results rather
than causes of Buddhist decay, and that the first and third would
never have come into existence if Buddhism in China had not sunk into
a state of intellectual torpor. If it had retained sufficient vigour
and independence to reject all esoteric teachings and alien dogmas,
even the great controversies with Confucianism would probably never
have assumed the bitterness they did. Unfortunately, the extravagances
of the later Mahayana doctrines and the foolish eclecticism which led
the Buddhist Church to admit into its own system the crudities and
banalities of corrupt Taoism, rendered the Buddhist position liable
to attack at indefensible points, and compel us to admit that the
controversial victories gained by Confucianism over its rival were
the victories of light over darkness. It is strange that the repeated
defeats and persecutions of Buddhism in China have not had the effect
of bringing about either extinction or reform.
Chinese Buddhism is _sui generis_, and without a qualifying adjective
it can scarcely be said to be Buddhism at all. This is no place to
attempt a sketch of the history of that great religion in either its
orthodox or its heretical aspects, but a few words may be necessary
to enable the general reader to judge for himself whether Buddhism
in China--quite apart from its present stagnant condition or the
corruption of the monkhood--is entitled to the name it bears.
[Sidenote: KARMA]
If there is one tenet of real Buddhism--by which I mean the doctrines
on religious, philosophical and ethical subjects taught or sanctioned
by the historical Buddha--which is more characteristic of that system
than any other, it is the doctrine of the non-existence of the _attā_
(_âtman_) or "soul." It was this doctrine, among others, which
made Buddhism a Brahmanical heresy, for it involved the rejection
of the Vedas as the final and supreme authority on matters of
religion. The crude impression of some people that Buddhism teaches
the "transmigration of souls" is absurd, for the simple reason that
in the Buddhist system "souls" in the Western sense do not exist.
What survives the death of the individual and transfers itself to
another living being is not his soul but the cleaving to existence, a
_tanha_ or thirst for life, an unconscious--or semi-conscious--"will
to live"; and with this _tanha_ is inevitably associated _karma_,
the integrated results of action or character. Buddhism regards the
cleaving to existence as the outcome of the worst kind of ignorance
or delusion--the mistaking of the phenomenal for the real, the false
for the true; and until this delusion has been completely removed
and the character purified from all lusts and all evil tendencies,
the reintegration of karma in a world of pain, sorrow, sickness and
death cannot by any possibility be avoided. Karma,[38] apart from its
technical connotation, signifies "action" or "deeds." In the Buddhist
sense it represents the accumulated results of the past actions and
thoughts which every individual has inherited from countless multitudes
of dead men, and which he will hand on, modified by the newly-generated
karma of his own life-span, to countless generations yet unborn. It is
karma which forms the character of each individual, and determines the
condition of life in which he finds himself placed. The man dies, and
his conscious individuality ceases to be; but his karma continues, and
determines the character and condition of life of another individual.
Each individual may make or mar the karma that he has inherited: if he
spoils it he may literally sink lower than the beasts; if he improves
it he may literally rise higher than the gods. But to the Buddhist
the final goal to be aimed at was not a continued personal existence,
either in this world or elsewhere: it was the total extinction of
reproductive karma by the attainment of Arahatship or Nirvana, and
final release from the ever-circling wheel of existence, with its
endless rotation of birth, disease, sorrow and death.[39]
[Sidenote: NIRVANA]
On the question of a _primum mobile_--the force which produced the
conditions under which arose the will-to-live with its illusions, and
which brought into being the first appearance of karma --Buddhism
is agnostic or silent,[40] just as it is on the question of the
existence of a supreme God. What Buddhism emphatically teaches is
that karma once produced, continues ceaselessly to reproduce itself,
carrying with it the modifications impressed upon it by the successive
individuals through whom it has "transmigrated"; that the only way to
release karma from the wheel of phenomenal existence is to eradicate
the desire for a continuance or renewal of conscious personality; and
that this end can only be attained by following the Noble Eightfold
Path,[41] leading to Nirvana, which was pointed out by the Buddha.
Mystical and fanciful interpretations of the meaning of Nirvana were
forthcoming at an early date, but the canonical scriptures know nothing
of such interpretations. It is quite clear that Nirvana was not the
infinite prolongation of individual existence in a state of spiritual
beatitude nor an absorption into a pantheistic Absolute; nor was the
word intended to be a euphemism for death. It was simply a release from
the thraldom of sense and passion; a "blowing-out" of personality and
selfishness, of ignorance and delusion; an enfranchisement which in
this present life would confer the boon of "the peace which passeth all
understanding," and after this life would prevent rebirth, or rather
reintegration of karma, in a world of pain and sorrow. To the Buddhist
the whole world of sense, in which while subject to karma we live and
move and have our being, is an illusion and unreal,--far more so than
to the Platonist, to whom the phenomenal world is the reflexion,
though an imperfect one, of an ideal archetype; and as the early
Buddhist believed that the idea of self or personality was closely
interwoven with the net of illusion, he was quite consistent when he
held that the destruction of the one must involve the destruction of
the other, and that release from the net is a desirable consummation.
Nirvana may thus be described as full enlightenment as to the unreality
and impermanence of phenomena, the removal of delusions about the self,
and the eradication of the cleaving to life. Those who attained this
enlightenment were the saints or "arahats" of primitive Buddhism.[42]
The Buddha himself, it must be remembered, never laid any claim to
godhead or even to personal immortality. His disciples reverenced him
as the Fully Enlightened Sage, the Blessed One, the Teacher of gods and
men, and he was the expounder of truths by the grasp of which men would
be enabled to realise the condition of arahatship; but in the last
resort it was to themselves and not to Buddha that men must look for
salvation. "Therefore, O Ananda," said the Buddha in one of his last
discourses, "be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves.
Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a
lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to any
one besides yourselves."[43]
[Sidenote: AMITABHISM]
How vastly different are the teachings of Chinese Buddhists from
those of the simple creed promulgated by the Buddha is obvious to all
who have visited a Chinese monastery, or glanced at the wearisome
sutras, in which the unorthodox dogmas are so elaborately set forth.
The Brahmanical belief in the _âtman_ or "soul" is practically
reintroduced; arahatship is no longer the ideal to be aimed at by the
virtuous man; Nirvana ceases to have any intelligible meaning; faith
takes the place of works as a means to salvation. Celestial (Dhyâni)
Buddhas are invented as heavenly reflexes of the various human Buddhas
that are supposed to have lived on earth, and some of them receive
worship as immortal gods; arahats are regarded as inferior to a class
of mythical Bodhisattvas, who purposely refrain from entering into
the state of Buddhahood in order that they may continue to exercise
a beneficent influence among the beings who are still bound to the
wheel of existence; the most glorious lot attainable by the ordinary
man is held to be not a release from delusion and the pains of birth,
sickness, and death, but a final rebirth in the glittering Paradise
of the West. In this Paradise reigns the Lord of Eternal Life and
Boundless Light, the great Dhyâni Buddha Amitabha; on his right and
left are enthroned the Bodhisattvas Mahâsthâma and Avalokiteçvara,[44]
the lords of infinite strength and pity, the saviours of mankind.
To win utter happiness in Sukhâvatî, the Western Paradise, is the
object of the longings and prayers of the devout Chinese Buddhist.
The name of Sakyamuni Buddha means little to him, and he may even be
ignorant of who the Buddha was, and where he lived; but the names
of "O-mi-to-fo" (Amitabha Buddha)[45] and of Kuan Yin P'u Sa (the
Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara) stand to him for everything that is
holiest and most blissful. To such an extent have Amitabha and his
attendant Bodhisattvas taken the place of the "Three Refuges"[46] of
orthodox Buddhism that one almost feels justified in suggesting that
the prevailing (though not the only) form of Buddhism in China should
once and for all be differentiated from that of Burma and Ceylon, by
the adoption of the name of Amitabhism, just as the corrupt religion of
Tibet has rightly been given the special name of Lamaism.
If the Mahayana teachers in China had been satisfied with substituting
the doctrine of a more or less sensual heaven for that of the orthodox
arahatship or Nirvana on the ground that it was more suited to the
comprehension of the ordinary layman, and would be more effective
in teaching the people to lead virtuous lives, their distortion of
the early teachings might, perhaps, to some extent be justified;
but unfortunately the form which the new doctrine took at a very
early stage shows that no such theory was in their minds. Instead of
exhorting to strenuous lives of virtue and good works, they went out of
their way to teach that nothing was really necessary to salvation but
loud and frequent appeals to the name of Amitabha Buddha and zealous
repetitions of the appropriate sutras. One of the principal sutras
of this class contains the following emphatic statement:--"Beings
are not born in that Buddha country of the Tathâgata Amitâyus as a
reward and result of good works performed in this present life. No,
whatever son or daughter of a family shall hear the name of the blessed
Amitâyus, the Tathâgata, and having heard it, shall keep it in mind,
and with thoughts undisturbed shall keep it in mind for one, two,
three, four, five, six or seven nights,--when that son or daughter of
a family comes to die, then that Amitâyus, the Tathâgata, surrounded
by an assembly of disciples and followed by a host of Bodhisattvas,
will stand before them at their hour of death, and they will depart
this life with tranquil minds. After their death they will be born in
the world Sukhâvatî, in the Buddha country of the same Amitâyus, the
Tathâgata. Therefore, then, O Sâriputra, having perceived this cause
and effect, I with reverence say thus, Every son and every daughter
of a family ought with their whole mind to make fervent prayer for
that Buddha country."[47] Numerous Buddhist tracts are in existence and
widely circulated among the people, in which it is explicitly stated
that if a man calls sufficiently often on the name of Kuan Yin, he will
be delivered from any danger or difficulty in which he may be placed,
quite regardless of his deserts. There are popular stories in which it
is told that even if a man be guilty of grave crimes for which he has
been imprisoned and condemned to death, the knife of the executioner
will break in pieces and do him no hurt provided only he has, with a
believing heart, summoned to his aid the "Goddess of Mercy." Stories of
this kind, even if educated men do not believe in them, can hardly have
a beneficent effect upon morality, and hardly redound to the credit of
the monks who invented them.
[Illustration: CHINESE PLAN WITH AMITABHA BUDDHA AS CENTRAL FIGURE.
[_To face p. 74._]
[Sidenote: KUAN YIN]
To blame the Chinese Buddhists, however, for failing to preserve
their religion from corrupt influences is hardly fair: for it must be
admitted that the stream of Buddhist literature and tradition that
flowed for centuries into China from Northern India and Nepal issued
from a source that was already tainted. Sakyamuni Buddha probably
died in the fifth century B.C. Buddhism did not obtain a foothold
in China till five or six centuries later, and it was not till the
fourth century of our era that native Chinese began in large numbers
to take the vows as Buddhist monks. By this time primitive Buddhism
had already been cruelly distorted. Where it was at all possible,
the Mahayana dogmas were read into the simple scriptures that formed
the Asokan canon; where the utmost ingenuity failed to find the germs
of these dogmas in the canon, the doctors of the Mahayana school
deliberately set themselves to compile a series of colossal forgeries
by putting forth new sutras, purporting to have been uttered by the
Buddha himself, but containing an entirely new book of doctrine.[48]
Part of it was probably brought from Persia and Arabia, and nearly all
was totally inconsistent with the primitive doctrine of the Buddha.
Like the founder of the Mormons in after-ages, the pious forgers--let
us hope they were unconscious of their guilt--pretended to be merely
the "finders" of the new sutras. Sometimes they were said to have been
discovered in caves guarded by demons. Nāgārjuna, for instance, who was
one of the worst offenders, is supposed to have found in "the palace of
the Dragon" the great Hua Yen sutra, already referred to, a work which
justifies us in regarding Nāgārjuna as one of the principal inventors
or adapters of the Mahayana doctrines, or at least as one of those who
grafted them on the original Buddhistic stock. The Chinese admire him
so much that they have elevated him into the position of a Bodhisattva,
and celebrate his birthday on the 25th day of the seventh moon. Among
the principal speakers in the Hua Yen sutra are the Buddha himself and
the mythical Bodhisattvas P'u Hsien and Manjusri.
[Sidenote: THE MAHAYANA]
The Mahayana doctrine concerning this order of being is, as I have
said, totally unknown to early Buddhism; and out of or beside this
central doctrine of the Mahayana system grew up a cluster of dogmas
which, like some parasitic weed, could only have the effect of choking
and killing the original plant of which the Buddha himself had sown
the seed. The Chinese "fathers" were not primarily responsible for all
this. The vast mythology that culminates in the doctrine of Amitabha's
heaven was accepted in China only too readily, but it was not a
Chinese invention. If the history of these fanciful dogmas can be more
readily traced in China and Tibet than elsewhere, it is only because
Buddhism practically ceased to exist in the country of its origin.
What Chinese Buddhism might have been if it had sought to establish
itself upon the Asokan canon instead of upon a bundle of crude myths
and grotesque allegories may be realised easily enough by comparing it
with the Buddhism of Burma and Siam, which--in spite of their tolerance
of a system of animistic worship alien to Buddhism--have preserved
almost intact the body of doctrine that they inherited through Ceylon
from the orthodox Church. What with the growth of the mystic schools
derived from Bodhidarma, the Tantra schools with their magic spells and
incantations, the Lin Tzŭ school that teaches religion in the form of
enigmas, the Wu Wei school with its doctrine of a Golden Mother, the
hideous demonology introduced into Buddhism by a debased wonder-working
Taoism, and the innumerable schools that unite in their praises of the
bejewelled Western Heaven which can be attained merely by repeating
the name of Amitabha Buddha or Kuan Yin P'u Sa, it is no wonder that
Buddhism in China has fallen a victim to the fangs of its own grotesque
offspring.
[Sidenote: CHRISTIAN MISSIONS]
In the following chapter some further remarks on Mount Omei will, I
trust, serve to emphasise the observations already made, and will
perhaps help the European reader who has not visited China to form
some conception of the theory and practice of Chinese Buddhism at
the present day. I hope I may be excused if I depart so far from the
usual practice of travellers in China as to refrain from entering
into a discussion of the general question of religion, especially in
connection with Christian propaganda. For my own part, I may perhaps
venture to express the hope and belief that the missionary question
is one which time will solve at no very distant date. As soon as a
reformed China has earned for herself--by the reform of her legal codes
and judicial procedure--the right to demand the total abolition of
foreign consular jurisdiction within Chinese territory, missionaries
will cease to be a thorn in the flesh of Chinese officialdom. They may
obtain fewer converts, but they will at least have the satisfaction of
knowing that such converts as they may then gain will not be actuated
by the desire to secure foreign protection against the laws of their
own country; whereas the official classes will no longer have cause to
regard missionaries as a political danger. There is no doubt that many
of the outbreaks of fanatical hatred against foreigners are directly
or indirectly traceable to the missionary question.[49] In spite of
this fact it will be generally conceded that, like most Orientals, the
Chinese are, in purely religious matters, inclined to be extremely
tolerant: far more so, needless to say, than Western peoples usually
are. History proves that the Chinese people are not hostile to foreign
religious doctrines as such, but only when foreign religions tend to
introduce disintegrating forces into the social fabric. Similarly the
official classes are not inimical to foreign religions as such, but
only when foreign religions threaten the stability of the political
fabric and the independence of the State. These dangers will no longer
operate when foreign missionary enterprise absolutely ceases to have
even the semblance of a connection with international politics, and
foreign missionaries become in all respects amenable to the courts of
the country in which they live and work.
[Sidenote: RELIGION IN CHINA]
Whether the change will tend to spread the doctrines of Christianity in
China with greater rapidity, or will, on the other hand, bring about
its ultimate extinction, is a question regarding which it would be rash
to prophesy. Given fair field and no favour it might well seem that the
disorganised forces of a corrupt Buddhism would be ill fitted to cope
with such strenuous and well-equipped adversaries as the Churches of
Christendom: yet perhaps it is more likely that the ultimate victory
will rest with neither. The clashing of forces that must assuredly
result from the weakening of the hold of Confucianism on the educated
classes and the introduction of new political and social ideals may
lead to an intellectual upheaval tending to the destruction of all
religion. Even to-day, the only vigorous element in the heterogeneous
religious systems of China consists in that expansion of the ideal
of filial piety which takes the form of the cult of ancestors: a
cult which has done so much in the past to preserve, consolidate and
multiply the Chinese people and make them peaceful, law-abiding and
home-loving, and which has nevertheless been condemned as idolatrous
by the two great branches of the Christian faith. It was this rock
of Chinese orthodoxy that shattered the power of the Church of Rome
in China, and that rock is still a danger and an obstruction in the
troubled waters through which glide the frail barks of the Christian
missions. On the whole, it seems improbable that the dogmas, at least,
of any of the Christian Churches will ever find general acceptance on
Chinese soil. The moral and spiritual regeneration of China is more
likely to be brought about by the growth of a neo-Confucianism frankly
accepting such adaptations as the social and political conditions of
modern times may render necessary; and if this is insufficient to
satisfy the spiritual aspirations of the people, there may arise a
reformed Buddhism drawing its inspiration either from the simple faith
of Burma, Siam, and Ceylon, or--far more probably--from one of the
complex systems (near in kinship to those of China but with a vitality
of their own) that have evolved themselves upon the soil of Japan.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] 蛾眉.
[24] 天真皇人.
[25] 黃帝.
[26] 隨時易名.
[27] 寶掌.
[28] 千歲和尚.
[29] This name (蒲) is not to be confused with the P'u (普) of P'u Hsien.
The sound is the same but the Chinese characters are different.
[30] The word P'u, which means Universal, is also the first character
in the name of P'u Hsien.
[31] See Note 1 (p. 411).
[32] 普賢.
[33] He must not be confused with the Adi-Buddha or primordial deity of
Red Lamaism, though the name is the same.
[34] 華嚴經. See especially _chüan_, 7-10.
[35] 龍樹 (_Lung Shu_) in Chinese.
[36] See _Dhammapada_, chap. xxiii. _S.B.E._ vol. x. p. 78.
[37] See Note 2 (p. 412).
[38] The Pali word is _Kamma_, which, like the Sanskrit, simply means
"doing; action; work; labour; business." See Childers' Pali Dictionary,
_s.v. Kammam_. Mr A. E. Taylor, in his admirable work _The Elements of
Metaphysics_, describes the Buddhist karma as "the system of purposes
and interests" to which a man's "natural deeds give expression."
[39] Cf. Virgil, _Æneid_, vi. 719-721:
"O pater, anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandumst
Sublimes animas iterumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora? Quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido?"
The whole passage from 703 to 751 is of great interest to those who
like to trace Buddhistic thought in non-Buddhistic literature. Lines
66-68 of the Third Georgic are equally striking in this respect:
"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit, subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
Et labor et durae rapit inclementia mortis."
It was just such reflections as this that filled the heart of the
Sakya prince with pity and love for mankind. _Sunt lacrimae rerum et
mentem mortalium tangunt_, the beautiful utterance of "the chastest
and royalest" of poets, expresses the feeling that prompted the Great
Renunciation and gave to the world a Buddha.
[40] See Note 3 (p. 412).
[41] The Chinese 八聖道分.
[42] See Note 4 (p. 413).
[43] The Mahâ-Parinibbâna Suttanta, translated by Rhys Davids (_Sacred
Books of the East_, vol. xi. p. 38).
[44] Avalokiteçvara is the Chinese Kuan Yin, generally represented in
China (where temples to this divinity are exceedingly numerous) as a
female, and known to Europeans as the "Goddess of Mercy." The change of
sex is due to an identification of this Bodhisattva with a legendary
Chinese princess, who devoted herself to saving human lives, especially
from the dangers of the sea. She has thus become in a special sense the
guardian deity of sailors; but she is also worshipped by women as the
goddess who grants male offspring. Mahâsthâma is the Chinese Ta Shih
Chih, the Bodhisattva of Great Strength. Eitel, in his _Handbook of
Chinese Buddhism_, says that this Bodhisattva is perhaps the same as
Maudgalyâyana; but this is a mistake, as is quite clear from the fact
that, in certain sutras, such as the Amitâyur-Dhyāna Sutra, they figure
as separate personalities.
[45] The Japanese Amida.
[46] "The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Samgha": _i.e._ the Buddha, the
law and doctrine of the Buddha, and the Church or Community of Brethren
established by the Buddha.
[47] The Smaller Sukhâvatî Vyûha, translated by Max Müller (_Sacred
Books of the East_, vol. xlix.).
[48] See Note 5 (p. 414).
[49] Any one who is not hopelessly narrow-minded can thoroughly
sympathise with the missionary position. The missionaries as a body are
men of religious enthusiasm. They believe they have been summoned by
their Master to preach to non-Christians a faith which they believe to
be the only true faith; and some of them believe that an acceptance of
this faith is "necessary to salvation." From their point of view, all
missionary work is entirely justified; and from any point of view the
work the Christian missions have done in alleviating sickness and pain
in China is wholly admirable. As regards the purely religious aspect of
the question, I am glad to refrain from expressing a personal opinion.
It is a subject which requires to be handled with extraordinary
delicacy, for many people are unable to discuss it dispassionately, and
it gives rise to endless arguments which from the nature of the case
are and must be utterly devoid of persuasive power. Now that Religion,
as distinct from any systematised Creed, has taken its place among the
recognised subjects of philosophical investigation (and psychological
also, as in Professor James's brilliant book, _The Varieties of
Religious Experience_), we may expect to hear missionary work discussed
(at least by educated persons) with less bitterness and strong language
than has sometimes disgraced the controversialists on both sides. A
short and incomplete but very interesting discussion of the missionary
question from an obviously impartial point of view may be found in
Professor Knight's _Varia_, pp. 31-35. (John Murray: 1901.)