The Religions of Japan Part 17

It concerns us to notice that the shorter texts were translated into Chinese in the fourth century, and that later, other translations were made--36,000 verses of the fifth text, 45,000 verses of the sixth text, etc. When the doctrine of the sect had been perfected by the fifth patriarch and he lectured on the sutra, rays of white light came from his mouth, and there rained wonderful heavenly flowers. In A.D. 736 a Chinese Vinaya teacher or instructor in Buddhist discipline, named D[=o]-sen, first brought the Kegon scriptures to j.a.pan. Four years later a Korean priest gave lectures on them in the Golden-Bell Hall of the Great Eastern Monastery at Nara. He completed his task of expounding the sixty volumes in three years. Henceforth, lecturing on this sutra became one of the yearly services of the Eastern Great Monastery.

"The Ke-gon sutra is the original book of Buddha's teachings of his whole life. All his teachings therefore sprang from this sutra. If we attribute all the branches to the origin, we may say that there is no teaching of Buddha for his whole life except this sutra."[15] The t.i.tle of the book, when literally translated, is Great-square-wide-Buddha-flower-adornment-teaching--a t.i.tle sufficiently indicative of its rhetoric. The age of hard or bold thinking was giving way to flowery diction, and the Law was to be made easy through fine writing.

The burden of doctrine is the unconditioned or realistic, pantheism.

Nature absolute, or Buddha-tathata, is the essence of all things.

Essence and form were in their origin combined and identical. Fire and water, though phenomenally different, are from the point of view of Buddha-tathata absolutely identical. Matter and thought are one--that is Buddha-tathata. In teaching, especially the young, it must be remembered that the mind resembles a fair page upon which the artist might trace a design, especial care being needed to prevent the impression of evil thoughts, in order to accomplish which one must completely and always direct the mind to Buddha.[16] One notable sentence in the text is, "when one first raises his thoughts toward the perfect knowledge, he at once becomes fully enlightened."

In some parts of the metaphysical discussions of this sect we are reminded of European mediaeval scholasticism, especially of that discussion as to how many angels could dance on the point of a cambric needle without jostling each other. It says, "Even at the point of one grain of dust, of immeasurable and unlimited worlds, there are innumerable Buddhas, who are constantly preaching the Ke-gon ki[=o]

(sutra) throughout the three states of existence, past, present and future, so that the preaching is not at all to be collected.[17]

A New Chinese Sect.

In its formal organization the Ten-dai sect is of Chinese origin. It is named after Tien Tai,[18] a mountain in China about fifty miles south of Ningpo, on which the book which forms the basis of its tenets was composed by Chi-sha, now canonized as a Dai Shi or Great teacher. Its special doctrine of completion and suddenness was, however, transmitted directly from Shaka to Vairokana and thence to Maitreya, so that the apostolical succession of its orthodoxy cannot be questioned.

The metaphysics of this sect are thought to be the most profound of the Greater Vehicle, combining into a system the two opposite ideas of being and not being. The teachers encourage all men, whether quick or slow in understanding, to exercise the principle of "completion" and "suddenness," together with four doctrinal divisions, one or all of which are taught to men according to their ability. The object of the doctrine is to make men get an excellent understanding, practise good discipline and attain to the great fruit of Enlightenment or Buddha-hood.

Out of compa.s.sion, Gautama appeared in the world and preached the truth in several forms, according to the circ.u.mstances of time and place.

There are four doctrinal divisions of "completion," "secrecy,"

"meditation," and "moral precept," which are the means of knowing the principle of "completion." From Gautama, Vairokana and Maitreya the doctrine pa.s.sed through more than twenty Buddhas elect, and arrived in China on the twentieth day of the twelfth month, A.D. 401. The delivery to disciples was secret, and the term used for this esoteric transmission means "handed over within the tower."

In A.D. 805, two j.a.panese pilgrims went to China, and received orthodox training. With twenty others, they brought the Ten-dai doctrines into j.a.pan. During this century, other j.a.panese disciples of the same sect crossed the seas to study at Mount Tien Tai. On coming back to j.a.pan they propagated the various shades of doctrine, so that this main sect has many branches. It was chiefly through these pilgrims from the West that the Sanskrit letters, writing and literature were imported. In our day, evidences of Sanskrit learning, long since neglected and forgotten, are seen chiefly in the graveyards and in charms and amulets.

Although the philosophical doctrines of Ten-dai are much the same as those of the Ke-gon sect, being based on pantheistic realism, and teaching that the Buddha-tathata or Nature absolute is the essence of all things, yet the Ten-dai school has striking and peculiar features of its own. Instead of taking some particular book or books in the canon, shastra, or sutra, selection or collection, as a basis, the Chinese monk Chi-sha first mastered, and then digested the whole canon. Then selecting certain doctrines for emphasis he supported them by a wide range of quotation, professing to give the gist of the pure teachings of Gautama rather than those of his disciples. In practice, however, the Saddharma Pundarika is the book most honored by this sect; the other sutras being employed mainly as commentary. Furthermore, this sect makes as strenuous a claim for the true apostolical succession from the Founder, as do the other sects.

The teachers of Ten-dai doctrine must fully estimate character and ability in their pupils, and so apportion instruction. In this respect and in not a few others, they are like the disciples of Loyola, and have properly been called the Jesuits of Buddhism. They are ascetics, and teach that spiritual insight is possible only through prolonged thought.

Their purpose is to recognize the Buddha, in all the forms he has a.s.sumed in order to save mankind. Nevertheless, the highest truths are incomprehensible except to those who have already attained to Buddha-hood.[19] In contrast to the Nichirenites, who give an emotional and ultra-concrete interpretation and expression to the great sutra, Hokke Ki[=o], the Ten-dai teachers are excessively philosophical and intellectual.

In its history the Ten-dai sect has followed out its logic. Being realistic in pantheism, it reverences not only Gautama the historic Buddha, but also, large numbers of the Hindu deities, the group of idols called Jiz[=o], the G.o.d Fudo, and Kuannon the G.o.d or G.o.ddess of mercy, under his or her protean forms. In its early history this sect welcomed to its pantheon the Shint[=o] G.o.ds, who, according to the scheme of Riy[=o]bu Shint[=o], were declared to be avatars or manifestations of Buddha. The three sub-sects still differ in their worship of the avatars selected as supreme deities, but their philosophy enables them to sweep in the Buddhas of every age and clime, name and nation. Many other personifications are found honored in the Ten-dai temples. At the gateways may usually be seen the colossal painted and hideous images of the two Devas or kings (Ni-O). These worthies are none other than Indra and Brahma of the old Vedic mythology.

s.p.a.ce and time--which seem never to fail the Buddhists in their literature--would fail us to describe this sect in full, or to show in detail its teachings, wherein are wonderful resemblances to European ideas and facts--in philosophy, to Hegel and Spinoza find in history, to Jesuitism. Nor can we stay to point out the many instances in which, invading the domain of politics, the Ten-dai abbots with their armies of monks, having made their monasteries military a.r.s.enals and issuing forth clad in armor as infantry and cavalry, have turned the scale of battle or dictated policies to emperors. Like the Praetorian guard of Rome or the clerical militia in Spain, these men of keen intellect have left their marks deep upon the social and political history of the country in which they dwelt. They have understood thoroughly the art of practising religion for the sake of revenue. To secure their ends, priests have made partnerships with other sects; in order to hold Shint[=o] shrines, they have married to secure heirs and make office hereditary; and finally in the Purification of 1870, when the Riy[=o]bu system was blown to the winds by the j.a.panese Government, not a few priests of this sect became laymen, in order to keep both office and emolument in the purified Shint[=o] shrines.

The Sect of the True Word.

It is probable that the conquest and obliteration of Shint[=o] might have been accomplished by some priest or priests of the Ten-dai sect, had such a genius as K[=o]b[=o] been found in its household; but this great achievement was reserved for the man who introduced into j.a.pan the Shin-gon Shu, or Sect of the True Word. The term _gon_ is the equivalent of Mantra,[20] a Sanskrit term meaning word, but in later use referring to the mystic salutations addressed to the Buddhist G.o.ds. "The doctrine of this sect is a great secret law. It teaches us that we can attain to the state of the 'Great Enlightened,' that is the state of 'Buddha,'

while in the present physical body, which was born of our parents (and which consists of six elements,[21] Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Ether, and Knowledge), if we follow the three great secret laws, regarding Body, Speech, and Thought."[22]

The history of the transmission of the doctrine from the greatest of the spirit-bodied Buddhas to the historic founder, Vagrabodhi, is carefully given. The latter was a man very learned in regard to many doctrines of Buddhism and other religious, and was especially well acquainted with the deepest meaning of the doctrine of this sect, which he taught in India for a considerable time. The doctrine is recorded in several sutras, yet the essential point is nothing but the Mandala, or circle of the two parts, or, in j.a.panese, Riy[=o]bu.

The great preacher, Vagrabodhi, in 720 A.D., came with his disciples to the capital of China, and translated the sacred books, seventy-seven in number. This doctrine is the well-known Yoga-chara, which has been well set forth by Doctor Edkins in his scholarly volume on Chinese Buddhism.

As "yoga" becomes in plain English "yoke," and as "mantra" is from the same root as "man" and "mind," we have no difficulty in recognizing the original meaning of these terms; the one in its n.o.bler significance referring to union with Buddha or Gnosis, and the other to the thought taking lofty expression or being debased to hocus-pocus in charm or amulet. Like the history of so many Sanskrit words as now uttered in every-day English speech, the story of the word mantra forms a picture of mental processes and apparently of the degradation of thought, or, as some will doubtless say, of the decay of religion. The term mantra meant first, a thought; then thought expressed; then a Vedic hymn or text; next a spell or charm. Such have been the later a.s.sociations, in India, China and j.a.pan with the term mantra.

The burden of the philosophy of the Shin-gon, looked at from one point of view, is mysticism, and from another, pantheism. One of the forms of Buddha is the principle of everything. There are ten stages of thought, and there are two parts, "lengthwise" and "crosswise" or exoteric and esoteric. Other doctrines of Buddhism represent the first, or exoteric stage; and those of the Shin-gon or true word, the second, or esoteric.

The primordial principle is identical with that of Maha-Vairokana, one of the forms[23] of Buddha. The body, the word and the thought are the three mysteries, which being found in all beings, animate and inanimate, are to be fully understood only by Buddhas, and not by ordinary men.

To show the actual method of intellectual procedure in order to reach Buddha-hood, many categories, tables and diagrams are necessary; but the crowning tenet, most far reaching in its practical influence, is the teaching that it is possible to reach the state of Buddha-hood in this present body.

As discipline for the attainment of excellence along the path marked out in the "Mantra sect," there are three mystic rites: (1) worshipping the Buddha with the hand in certain positions called signs; (2) repeating Dharani, or mystic formulas; (3) contemplation.

K[=o]b[=o] himself and all those who imitated him, practised fasting in order to clear the spiritual eyesight. The thinking-chairs, so conspicuous in many old monasteries, though warmed at intervals through the ages by the living bodies of men absorbed in contemplation, are rarely much worn by the sitters, because almost absolute cessation of motion characterizes the long and hard thinkers of the Shin-gon philosophers. The idols in the Shin-gon temples represent many a saint and disciple, who, by perseverance in what a critic of Buddhism calls "mind-murder," and the use of mystic finger twistings and magic formulas, has won either the Nirvana or the penultimate stage of the Bodhisattva.

In the sermons and discourses of Shin-gon, the subtle points of an argument are seized and elaborated. These are mystical on the one side, and pantheistic on the other. It is easily seen how Buddha, being in j.a.panese G.o.ds as well as men, and no being without Buddha, the way is made clear for that kind of a marriage between Buddhism and Shint[=o], in which the two become one, and that one, as to revenue and advantage, Buddhism.

Truth Made Apparent by One's Own Thought.

The j.a.panese of to-day often speak of these seven religious bodies which we have enumerated and described, as "the old sects," because much of the philosophy, and many of the forms and prayers, are common to all, or, more accurately speaking, are popularly supposed to be; while the priests, being celibates, refrain from sake, flesh and fish, and from all intimate relations with women. Yet, although these sects are considered to be more or less conformable to the canon of the Greater Vehicle, and while the last three certainly introduce many of its characteristic features--one sect teaching that Buddha-hood could be obtained even in the present body of flesh and blood--yet the idea of Paradise had not been exploited or emphasized. This new gospel was to be introduced into j.a.pan by the J[=o]-d[=o] Shu or Sect of the Pure Land.

Before detailing the features of J[=o]-d[=o], we call attention to the fact that in j.a.pan the propagation of the old sects was accompanied by an excessive use of idols, images, pictures, sutras, shastras and all the furniture thought necessary in a Buddhist temple. The course of thought and action in the Orient is in many respects similar to that in the Occident. In western lands, with the ebb and flow of religious sentiment, the iconolater has been followed by the iconoclast, and the overcrowded cathedrals have been purged by the hammer and fire of the Protestant and Puritan. So in j.a.pan we find a.n.a.logous, though not exactly similar, reactions. The rise and prosperity of the believers in the Zen dogmas, which in their early history used sparingly the eikon, idol and sutra, give some indication of protest against too much use of externals in religion. May we call them the Quakers of j.a.panese Buddhism? Certainly, theirs was a movement in the direction of simplicity.

The introduction of the Zen, or contemplative sect, did, in a sense, both precede and follow that of Shingon. The word Zen is a shortened form of the term Zenna, which is a transliteration into Chinese of the Sanskrit word Dhyana, or contemplation. It teaches that the truth is not in tradition or in books, but in one's self. Emphasis is laid on introspection rather than on language. "Look carefully within and there you will find the Buddha," is its chief tenet. In the Zen monasteries, the chair of contemplation is, or ought to be, always in use.

The Zen Shu movement may be said to have arisen out of a reaction against the multiplication of idols. It indicated a return to simpler forms of worship and conduct. Let us inquire how this was.

It may be said that Buddhism, especially Northern Buddhism, is a vast, complicated system. It has a literature and a sacred canon which one can think of only in connection with long trains of camels to carry, or freight trains to transport, or ships a good deal bigger than the Mayflower to import. Its mult.i.tudinous rules and systems of discipline appall the spirit and weary the flesh even to enumerate them; so that, from one point of view, the making of new sects is a necessity. These are labor-saving inventions. They are attempts to reduce the great bulk of scriptures to manageable proportions. They seek to find, as it were, the mother-liquor of the great ocean, so as to express the truth in a crystal. Hence the endeavors to simplify, to condense; here, by a selection of sutras, rather than the whole collection; there, by emphasis on a single feature and a determination to put the whole thing in a form which can be grasped, either by the elect few or by the people at large.

The Zen sect did this in a more rational way than that set forth as orthodox by later priestcraft, which taught that to the believer who simply turned round the revolving library containing the canon, the merit of having read it all would be imputed. The rin-z[=o][24] found near the large temples,--the cunning invention of a Chinese priest in the sixth century,--soon became popular in j.a.pan. The great wooden book-case turning on a pivot contains 6,771 volumes, that being the number of canonical volumes enumerated in China and j.a.pan.

The Zen sect teaches that, besides all the doctrines of the Greater and the Lesser Vehicles, whether hidden or apparent, there is one distinct line of transmission of a secret doctrine which is not subject to any utterance at all. According to their tenet of contemplation, one is to see directly the key to the thought of Buddha by his own thought, thus freeing himself from the mult.i.tude of different doctrines--the number of which is said to be eighty-four thousand. In fact, Zen Shu or "Dhyana sect" teaches the short method of making truth apparent by one's own thought, apart from the writings.

The story of the transmission of the true Zen doctrine is this:

"When the blessed Shaka was at the a.s.sembly on Vulture's Peak, there came the heavenly king, who offered the Buddha a golden-colored flower and asked him to preach the law. The Blessed One simply took the flower and held it in his hand, but said no word. No one in the whole a.s.sembly could tell what he meant. The venerable Mahahasyapa alone smiled. Than the Blessed One said to him, 'I have the wonderful thought of Nirvana, the eye of the Right Law, which I shall now give to you.'[25] Thus was ushered in the doctrine of thought transmitted by thought."

After twenty-eight patriarchs had taught the doctrine of contemplation, the last came into China in A.D. 520, and tried to teach the Emperor the secret key of Buddha's thought. This missionary Bodhidharma was the third son of a king of the Kashis, in Southern India, and the historic original of the tobacconist's shop-sign in j.a.pan, who is known as Daruma. The imperial Chinaman was not yet able to understand the secret key of Buddha's thought. So the Hindu missionary went to the monastery on Mount Su, where in meditation, he sat down cross-legged with his face to a wall, for nine years, by which time, says the legend, his legs had rotted off and he looked like a snow-image. During that period, people did not know him, and called him simply the Wall-gazing Brahmana.

Afterward he had a number of disciples, but they had different views that are called the transmissions of the skin, flesh, or bone of the teacher. Only one of them got the whole body of his teachings. Two great sects were formed: the Northern, which was undivided, and the Southern, which branched off into five houses and seven schools. The Northern Sect was introduced into j.a.pan by a Chinese priest in 729 A.D., while the Southern was not brought over until the twelfth century. In both it is taught that perfect tranquillity of body and mind is essential to salvation. The doctrine is the most sublime one, of thought transmitted by thought being entirely independent of any letters or words. Another name for them is, "The Sect whose Mind a.s.similates with Buddha," direct from whom it claims to have received its articles of faith.

Too often this idea of Buddhaship, consisting of absolute freedom from matter and thought, means practically mind-murder, and the emptiness of idle reverie.

Contrasting modern reality with their ancient ideal, it must be confessed that in practice there is not a little letter worship and a good deal of pedantry; for, in all the teachings of abstract principles by the different sects, there are endless puns or plays upon words in the renderings of Chinese characters. This arises from that ant.i.thesis of extreme poverty in sounds with amazing luxuriance in written expression, which characterizes both the Chinese and j.a.panese languages.

In the temples we find that the later deities introduced into the Buddhist pantheon are here also welcome, and that the triads or groups of three precious ones, the "Buddhist trinity," so-called,[26] are surrounded by G.o.ds of Chinese or j.a.panese origin. The Zen sect, according to its professions and early history, ought to be indifferent to worldly honors and emoluments, and indeed many of its devotees are.

Its history, however, shows how poorly mortals live up to their principles and practise what they preach. Furthermore, these professors of peace and of the joys of the inner life in the S[=o]-t[=o] or sub-sect have made the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth years of Meiji, or A.D. 1893 and 1894, famous and themselves infamous by their long-continued and scandalous intestine quarrels. Of the three sub-sects, those called Rin-zai and S[=o]-t[=o], take their names from Chinese monks of the ninth century; while the third, O-baku, founded in j.a.pan in the seventeenth century, is one of the latest importations of Chinese Buddhistic thought in the Land of the Rising Sun.

j.a.panese authors usually cla.s.sify the first six denominations at which we have glanced, some of which are phases of thought rather than organizations, as "the ancient sects." Ten-dai and Shin-gon are "the medieval sects." The remaining four, of which we shall now treat, and which are more particularly j.a.panese in spirit and development, are "the modern sects."

CHAPTER IX - THE BUDDHISM OF THE j.a.pANESE

"A drop of spray cast by the infinite I hung an instant there, and threw my ray To make the rainbow. A microcosm I Reflecting all. Then back I fell again, And though I perished not, I was no more."-- The Pantheist's Epitaph.

"Buddhism is essentially a religion of compromise."