The Religions of Japan Part 19

Shinran thus taught by example, if not formally and by written precept, that marriage was honorable, and that celibacy was an invention of the priests not warranted by primitive Buddhism. Penance, fasting, prescribed diet, pilgrimages, isolation from society whether as hermits or in the cloister, and generally amulets and charms, are all tabooed by this sect. Monasteries imposing life-vows are unknown within its pale.

Family life takes the place of monkish seclusion. Devout prayer, purity, earnestness of life and trust in Buddha himself as the only worker of perfect righteousness, are insisted upon. Morality is taught to be more important than orthodoxy.

In practice, the Shin sect even more than the J[=o]-d[=o], teaches that it is faith in Buddha, which accomplishes the salvation of the believer.

Instead of waiting for death in order to come under the protection of Amida, the faithful soul is at once received into the care of the Boundlessly Compa.s.sionate. In a word, the Shin sect believes in instantaneous conversion and sanctification. Between the Roman and the Reformed soteriology of Christendom, was Melancthonism or the co[=o]perate union of the divine and the human will. So, the old Buddhism prior to Shinran taught a phase of synergism, or the union of faith and works. Shinran, in his "Reformed" Buddhism, taught the simplicity of faith.

So also _in_ regard to the sacred writings, Shinran opposed the San-ron school and the three-grade idea. The scriptures of other sects are in Sanskrit and Chinese, which only the learned are able to read. The special writings of Shinran are in the vernacular. Three of the sutras, also, have been translated into j.a.panese and expressed in the kana script. Singleness of purpose characterised this sect, which was often called Monto, or followers of the gate, in reference to its unity of organization, and the opening of the way to all by Shinran and the doctrine taught by him. Yet, lest the gate might seem too broad, the Shin teachers insist that morality is as important as faith, and indeed the proof of it. The high priests of Shin Shu have ever held a high position and wielded vast influence in the religious development of the people. While the temples of other sects are built in sequestered places among the hills, those of Shin Shu are erected in the heart of cities, on the main streets, and at the centres of population,--the priests using every means within their power to induce the people to come to them. The altars are on an imposing scale of magnificence and gorgeous detail. No Roman Catholic church or cathedral can outshine the splendor of these temples, in which the way to the Western Paradise is made so clear and plain. Another name for the sect is Ikko.

After the death of Shinran, his youngest daughter and one of his grandsons erected a monastery near his tomb in the eastern suburbs of Ki[=o]to, to which the Mikado gave the t.i.tle of Hon-guanji, or Monastery of the Original Vow. This was in allusion to the vow made by Amida, that he would not accept Buddhaship except under the condition that salvation be made attainable for all who should sincerely desire to be born into his kingdom, and signify their desire by invoking his name ten times.[11] It is upon the pa.s.sage in the sutra where this vow is recorded, that the doctrine of the sect is based. Its central idea is that man is to be saved by faith in the mercy of the boundlessly compa.s.sionate Amida, and not by works or vain repet.i.tions. Within our own time, on November 28, 1876, the present reigning Mikado bestowed upon Shinran the posthumous t.i.tle Ken-shin Dai-shi, or Great Teacher of the Revelation of Truth.

The Protestants of j.a.panese Buddhism.

This is the sect which, being called "Reformed" Buddhism[12] and resembling Protestantism in so many points, both large and minute, foreigners think has been borrowed or imitated from European Protestantism.[13] As matter of fact, the foundation principles of Shin-Shu are at least six hundred years old. They are perfectly clear in the writings of the founder,[14] as well as in those of his successor Renni[=o],[15] who wrote the Ofumi or sacred writings, now daily read by the disciples of this denomination. With the characteristic object of reaching the ma.s.ses, they are written, as we have shown, not in the mixed Chinese and j.a.panese characters, but in the common script, or kana, which all the people of both s.e.xes can read. Within the last two decades the Shin educators have been the first to organize their schools of learning on the models of those in Christendom, so that their young men might be trained to resist Shint[=o] or Christianity, or to measure the truth in either. Their new temples also show European influence in architecture and furniture. Liberty of thought and action, and incoercible desire to be free from governmental, traditional, ultra-ecclesiastical, or Shint[=o] influence--in a word, protestantism in its pure sense, is characteristic of the great sect founded by Shinran.

Indeed the Shin sect, which sprang out of the J[=o]-d[=o], maintains that it alone professes the true teaching of H[=o]-nen, and that the J[=o]-d[=o] sect has wandered from the original doctrines of its founder. Whereas the J[=o]-d[=o] or Pure Land sect believes that Amida will come to meet the soul of the believer on its separation from the body, in order to conduct it to Paradise, the Shin or True Sect of the Pure Land believes in immediate salvation and sanctification. It preaches that as soon as a man believes in Amida he is taken by him under him merciful protection. Some might denominate these people the Methodists of Buddhism.

One good point in their Protestantism is their teaching that morality is of equal importance with faith. To them Buddha-hood means the perfection and unlimitedness of wisdom and compa.s.sion. "Therefore," writes one, "knowing the inability of our own power we should believe simply in the vicarious Power of the Original Prayer. If we do so, we are in correspondence with the wisdom of the Buddha and share his great compa.s.sion, just as the water of rivers becomes salt as soon as it enters the sea. For this reason this is called the faith in the Other Power."

To their everlasting honor, also, the Shin believers have probably led all other j.a.panese Buddhists in caring for the Eta, even as they probably excel in preaching the true spiritual democracy of all believers, yes, even of women.[16] "According to the earlier and general view of Buddhism, women are condemned, in virtue of the pollution of their nature, to look forward to rebirth in other forms. By no possibility can they, in their existence as women, reach the higher grades of holiness which lead to Nirvana. According to the Shin Shu system, on the other hand, a believing woman may hope to attain the goal of the Buddhist at the close of her present life."[17] This doctrine seems to be founded on that pa.s.sage in the eleventh chapter of the Saddharma Pundarika, in which the daughter of S[=a]gara, the N[=a]ga-king, loses her s.e.x as female and reappears as a Bodhisattva of male s.e.x.[18]

The Shin sect is the largest in j.a.pan, having more than twice as many temples as any four of the great sects, and five thousand more than the So-d[=o] or sub-sect of J[=o]-d[=o], which is the next largest; or, over nineteen thousand in all. It is also supposed to be one of the richest and most powerful of all the j.a.panese sects. In reality, however, it possesses no fixed property, and is dependent entirely upon the voluntary contributions of its adherents. To-day, it is probably the most active of them all in education, learning and missionary operations in Yezo, China and Korea.

Interesting as is the development of the J[=o]-d[=o] and Shin sects, which became popular largely through their promulgation of dogmas founded on the Western Paradise, we must not forget that both of them preached a new Buddha--not the real figure in history, but an unhistoric and unreal phantom, the creation and dream of the speculator and visionary. Amida, the personification of boundless light, is one of the luxuriant growths of a sickly scholasticism--a hollow abstraction without life or reality. Amidaism is utterly repudiated by many j.a.panese Buddhists, who give no place to his idol on their altars, and reject utterly the teaching as to Paradise and salvation through the merits of another.

Yet these two special developments by natives, though embodying tendencies of the j.a.panese mind, did not reach the limit to which Northern Buddhism was to go in those almost incredible lengths, which prompted Professor Whitney[19] to call it "the high-faluting school,"

and which we have seen in our own time under the cultivation of western admirers.

The Nichiren Sect.

The j.a.panese mind runs to pantheism as naturally as an unpruned grape-vine runs to fibre and leaves.

When Nichiren, the ultra-patriotic and ultra-democratic bonze, saw the light in A.D. 1222, he was destined to bring religion not only down to man, but even down to the beasts and to the mud. He founded the Saddharma-Pundarika sect, now called Nichiren Shu.

Born at Kominato, near the mouth of Yedo Bay, he became a neophite in the Shin-gon sect at the age of twelve, and was admitted into the priesthood when but fifteen years old. Then he adopted his name, which means Sun-lotus, because, according to a typical dream very common in Korea and j.a.pan, his mother thought that she had conceived by the sun entering her body. Through a miracle, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the whole Buddhist canon, in the course of which he met with words, which he converted into that formula which is constantly in the mouth of the members of the Nichiren sect, Namu-my[=o]-ho-ren-ge-ky[=o]--"O, the Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law."[20] His history, full of amazing activity and of romantic adventure, is surrounded by a perfect sunrise splendor, or, shall we say, sunset gorgeousness, of mythology and fable. The scenes of his life are mostly laid in the region of the modern T[=o]ki[=o], and to the cultivated traveller, its story lends fascinating charms to the landscape in the region of Yedo Bay. Nichiren was a fiery patriot, and ultra-democratic in his sympathies. He was a radical believer in "j.a.pan for the j.a.panese." He was an ecclesiastical _Soshi_. He felt that the developments of Buddhism already made, were not sufficiently comprehensive, or fully suited to the common people.

So, in A.D. 1282, he founded a new sect which gradually included within its pantheon all possible Buddhas, and canonized pretty nearly all the saints, righteous men and favorite heroes known to Dai Nippon. Nichiren first made j.a.pan the centre of the universe, and then brought religion down to the lowest. He considered that the period in which he lived was the latter day of the law, and that all creatures ought to share in the merit of Buddha-hood. Only the original Buddha is the real moon in the sky, but all Buddhas of the subordinate states are like the images of the moon, reflected upon the waters. All these different Buddhas, be they G.o.ds or men, beasts, birds or snakes, are to be honored. Indeed, they are both honored and worshipped in the Nichiren pantheon. Besides the historic Buddha, this sect, which is the most idolatrous of all, admits as objects of its reverence such personages as Nichiren, the founder; Kato Kiyomasa, the general who led the army of invasion in Korea and was the persecutor of the Christians; and Shichimen--a word which means seven points of the compa.s.s or seven faces. This Shichimen is the being that appeared to Nichiren as a beautiful woman, but disappeared from his sight in the form of a snake, twenty feet long, covered with golden scales and armed with iron teeth. It is now deified under the name meaning the Great G.o.d of the Seven Faces, and is identified with the Hindoo deity Siva.

Another idol usually seen in the Nichiren temples is Mioken. Under this name the pole star is worshipped, usually in the form of a Buddha with a wheel of a Buddha elect. Standing on a tortoise, with a sword in his right hand, and with the left hand half open--a gesture which symbolizes the male and female principles in the physical world, and the intelligence and the law in the spiritual world--Mioken is a striking figure. Indeed, the list of glorified animals reminds us somewhat of the ancient beast-worship of Egypt. In the Nichiren hierology, it is as though the symbolical figures in the Book of Revelation had been deified and worshipped. It is evident that all the creatures in that Buddhist chamber of imagery, the Hokke Ki[=o], that could possibly be made into G.o.ds have received apotheosis. The very book itself is also worshipped, for the Nichirenites are extreme believers in verbal inspiration, and pay divine honors to each jot and t.i.ttle of the sutra, which to them is a G.o.d. They adore also the triad of the three precious ones, the Buddha, the Rule or Discipline, and the Organization; or, Being, Law, and Church. The hideous idol, Fudo, "Eleven-faced," "Horse-headed,"

"Thousand-handed," or girt in a robe of fiery flame, is believed by Buddhists to represent Avalokitesvara; but, in recent times he has been recognized, detected and recaptured by the Shint[=o]ists as Kotohira.

The G.o.ddess Kishi, and that miscellaneous a.s.sortment or group known as the Seven Patrons of Happiness, which form a sort of encyclopaedia or museum of curiosities derived from the cults of India, China and j.a.pan, are also components of the amazing menagerie and pantheon of this sect, in which scholasticism run mad, and emotional kindness to animals become maudlin, join hands.

The Ultra-realism of Northern Buddhism.

Like most of the other j.a.panese sects, the Nichirenites claim that their principles are contained in the Hok-ke-ki[=o], which is considered the consummate white flower of Buddhist doctrine and literature. This is the j.a.panese name for that famous sutra, the Saddharma Pundarika, so often mentioned in these chapters but a thousand-fold more so in j.a.panese literature. The Ten-dai and the Nichiren sects are allied, in that both lay supreme emphasis upon this sutra; but the former interprets it with an intellectual, and the latter with an emotional emphasis.

Philosophically, the two bodies have much in common. Outwardly they are very far apart. One has but to read their favorite scripture, to see the norm upon which the gorgeous art of j.a.pan has been developed. Probably no single book in the voluminous canon of the Greater Vehicle gives one so masterful a key to j.a.panese Buddhism. Its pages are crowded with sensuous descriptions of all that is attractive to both the reason and the understanding. Its descriptions of Paradise are those which would suit also the realistic Mussulman. Its rhetoric and visions seem to be those of some oriental De Quincey, who, out of the dreams of an opium-eater, has made the law-book of a religion. Translated into matter-of-fact Chinese, none better than Nichiren knew how to present its realism to his people.

In its ethical standards, which are two, this sect, like most others, prescribes one course of life for the monk, which is difficult, and another for the laity, which is easy. The central dogma is that every part of the universe, including not only G.o.ds and men, but animals, plants and the very mud itself, is capable, by successive transmigrations, of attaining to Buddhaship. In one sense, Nichirenism is the transfiguration of atheistic evolution. In its teachings there are also two forms: the one, largely in symbol, is intended to attract followers; the other, the pure truth, is employed to convert the obstinately ignorant, against their wills. As in the history of the papal organization in Europe, a materialistic interpretation has been given to the canons of dogma and discipline.

Contrary to the doctrine of those sects which teach the attainment of salvation solely through the aid of Amida, or Another, the Nichirenites insist that it is necessary for man to work out his own salvation, by observing the law, by self-examination, by reflecting on the blessings vouchsafed to the members of this elect and orthodox sect and by constant prayer. They consider themselves as in the only true church, and their succession to the priesthood, the only valid one. The strict Nichiren churchmen will not have the Shint[=o] G.o.ds in their household shrines, nor will they intermarry among the sects. The Nichirenites are also very fond of controversy, and their language in speaking of other creeds and sects is not that characteristic of the gentle Buddha. The people of this sect are much given to the belief in demoniacal possession, and a considerable part of the duty and revenue-yielding business of the Nichiren priests consists in exorcising the foxes, badgers and other demons, which have possessed subjects who are generally women at certain stages of illness or convalescence. The phenomena and pathology of these disorders seem to be allied to those of hysteria and hypnotism.

This popular sect also makes greatest use of charms, spells and amulets, lays great store on pilgrimages, and is very fond of noise-making instruments whether prayer-books or the wooden bells or drums which are prominent features in their temples and revival meetings. In one sense it is the Salvation Army of Buddhism, being especially powerful in what strikes the eye and ear. The Nichirenites have been well called the Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects.

Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the lowest of the h.e.l.ls is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for the priests of all other sects." When the Parliament of Religions was called in Chicago, the successors of Nichiren, with their characteristic high-church modesty, promptly sent letters to America, warning the world against all other j.a.panese Buddhists, and denouncing especially those coming to speak in the Parliament, as misrepresenting the true doctrines of Buddha.

Doctrinal Culmination.

When the work of Nichiren had been completed, and his realistic pantheism had been able to include within its great receiver and processes of Buddha-making, everything from G.o.ds to mud, the circle of doctrine was complete. K[=o]b[=o]'s leaven had now every possible lump in which to do its work. All grades of men in j.a.pan, from the most devout and intellectual to the most ranting and fanatical, could choose their sect. Yet it may be that Buddhism in Nichiren's day was in danger of stagnation and formalism, and needed the revival which this fiery bonze gave it; for, undoubtedly, along with zeal even to bigotry, came fresh life and power to the religion. This invigoration was followed by the mighty missionary labors of the last half of the thirteenth century, which carried Buddhism out to the northern frontier and into Yezo.

Although, from time to time minor sects were formed either limiting or developing further the principles of the larger parent sects, and although, even as late as the seventeenth century, a new subsect, the Oba-ku of Zen Shu, was imported from China, yet no further doctrinal developments of importance took place; not even in presence of or after sixteenth century Christianity and seventeenth century Confucianism.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries form the golden age of j.a.panese Buddhism.

In the sixteenth century, the feudal system had split into fragments and the normal state of the country was that of civil war. Sect was arrayed against sect, and the Shin bonzes, especially, formed a great military body in fortified monasteries.

In the first half of the sixteenth century, came the tremendous onslaught of Portuguese Christianity. Then followed the militarism and b.l.o.o.d.y persecutions of n.o.bunaga.

In clashing with the new Confucianism of the seventeenth century, Buddhism utterly weakened as an intellectual power. Though through the favor of the Yodo sh[=o]guns it recovered lands and wealth, girded itself anew as the spy, persecutor and professed extirpator of Christianity, and maintained its popularity with the common people, it was, during the eighteenth century, among the educated j.a.panese, as good as dead. Modern Confucianism and the revival of Chinese learning, resulted in eighteenth century scepticism and in nineteenth century agnosticism.

The New Buddhism.

In our day and time, j.a.panese Buddhism, in the presence of aggressive Christianity, is out of harmony with the times, and the needs of forty-one millions of awakened and inquiring people; and there are deep searchings of heart. Politically disestablished and its landed possessions sequestrated by the government, it has had, since 1868, a history, first of depression and then of temporary revival. Now, amid much mechanical and external activity, the employment of the press, the organization of charity, of summer schools of "theology," and of young men's and other a.s.sociations copied from the Christians, it is endeavoring to keep New j.a.pan within its pale and to dictate the future.

It seeks to utilize the old bottles for the new vintage.

There is, however, a movement discernible which may be called the New Buddhism, and has not only new wine but new wineskins. It is democratic, optimistic, empirical or practical; it welcomes women and children; it is hospitable to science and every form of truth. It is catholic in spirit and has little if any of the venom of the old Buddhist controvertists. It is represented by earnest writers who look to natural and spiritual means, rather than to external and mechanical methods. As a whole, we may say that j.a.panese Buddhism is still strong to-day in its grip upon the people. Though unquestionably moribund, its death will be delayed. Despite its apparent interest in, and harmony with, contemporaneous statements of science, it does not hold the men of thought, or those who long for the spiritual purification and moral elevation of j.a.pan.

Are the j.a.panese eager for reform? Do they possess that quality of emotion in which a tormenting sense of sin, and a burning desire for self-surrender to holiness, are ever manifest?

Frankly and modestly, we give our opinion. We think not. The average j.a.panese man has not come to that self-consciousness, that searching of heart, that self-seeing of sin in the light of a Holy G.o.d's countenance which the gospel compels. Yet this is exactly what the j.a.panese need.

Only Christ's gospel can give it.

The average man of culture in Dai Nippon has to-day no religion. He is waiting for one. What shall be the issue, in the contest between a faith that knows no personal G.o.d, no Creator, no atonement, no gospel of salvation from sin, and the gospel which bids man seek and know the great First Cause, as Father and Friend, and proclaims that this Infinite Friend seeks man to bless him, to bestow upon him pardon and holiness and to give him earthly happiness and endless life? Between one religion which teaches personality in G.o.d and in man, and another which offers only a quagmire of impersonality wherein a personal G.o.d and an individual soul exist only as the jack-lights of the marsh, mere phosph.o.r.escent gleams of decay, who can fail to choose? Of the two faiths, which shall be victor?

CHAPTER X - j.a.pANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT

"The heart of my country, the power of my country, the Light of my country, is Buddhism."--Yatsubuchi, of j.a.pan.

"Buddhism was the teacher under whose instruction the j.a.panese nation grew up."--Chamberlain.

"Buddhism was the civilizer. It came with the freshness of religious zeal, and religious zeal was a novelty. It come as the bearer of civilization and enlightenment."