Out of the East (20 page)

A good sight indeed has met us to-day,—a good daybreak,—a beautiful rising;—for we have seen the Perfectly Enlightened, who has crossed the stream.—
Hemavatasutta.

T
HE
Jiz
ō
-D
ō
was not easy to find, being hidden away in a court behind a street of small shops; and the entrance to the court itself—a very narrow opening between two houses—being veiled at every puff of wind by the fluttering sign-drapery of a dealer in second-hand clothing.

Because of the heat, the shoji of the little temple had been removed, leaving the sanctuary open to view on three sides. I saw the usual Buddhist furniture—service-bell, reading-desk, and scarlet lacquered mokugyo, disposed upon the yellow matting. The altar supported a stone Jiz
ō
, wearing a bib for the sake of child ghosts; and above the statue, upon a long shelf, were smaller images gilded and painted,—another Jiz
ō
, aureoled from head to Feet, a radiant Amida, a sweet-faced Kwannon, and a grewsome figure of the Judge of Souls. Still higher were suspended a confused multitude of votive offerings, including two framed prints taken from American illustrated papers: a view of the Philadelphia Exhibition, and a portrait of Adelaide Neilson in the character of Juliet. In lieu of the usual flower vases before the honzon there were jars of glass bearing the inscription,—"
Heine Claude au jus ; conservation garantie. Toussaint Cosnard: Bordeaux."
And the box filled with incense-rods bore the legend : "
Rich in flavor—Pinhead Cigarettes"
To the innocent folk who gave them, and who could never hope in this world to make costlier gifts, these
exvoto
seemed beautiful because strange; and in spite of incongruities it seemed to me that the little temple did really look pretty.

A screen, with weird figures of Arhats creating dragons, masked the further chamber ; and the song of an unseen uguisu sweetened the hush of the place. A red cat came from behind the screen to look at us, and retired again, as if to convey a message. Presently appeared an aged nun, who welcomed us and bade us enter; her smoothly shaven head shining like a moon at every reverence. We doffed our footgear, and followed her behind the screen, into a little room that opened upon a garden ; and we saw the old priest seated upon a cushion, and writing at a very low table. He laid aside his brush to greet us; and we also took our places on cushions before him. Very pleasant his face was to look upon: all wrinkles written there by the ebb of life spake of that which was good.

The nun brought us tea, and sweetmeats stamped with the Wheel of the Law; the red cat curled itself up beside me; and the priest talked to us. His voice was deep and gentle; there were bronze tones in it, like the rich murmurings which follow each peal of a temple bell. We coaxed him to tell us about himself. He was eighty-eight years of age, and his eyes and ears were still as those of a young man; but he could not walk because of chronic rheumatism. For twenty years he had been occupied in writing a religious history of Japan, to be completed in three hundred volumes ; and he had already completed two hundred and thirty. The rest he hoped to write during the coming year. I saw on a small book-shelf behind him the imposing array of neatly bound MSS.

"But the plan upon which he works," said my student interpreter, "is quite wrong. His history will never be published; it is full of impossible stories—miracles and fairytales."

(I thought I should like to read the stories.)

"For one who has reached such an age," I said, "you seem very strong."

"The signs are that I shall live some years longer," replied the old man, "though I wish to live only long enough to finish my history. Then, as I am helpless and cannot move about, I want to die so as to get a new body. I suppose I must have committed some fault in a former life, to be crippled as I am. But I am glad to Feel that I am nearing the Shore."

"He means the shore of the Sea of Death and Birth," says my interpreter. "The ship whereby we cross, you know, is the Ship of the Good Law; and the farthest shore is Nehan,—Nirvana."

"Are all our bodily weaknesses and misfortunes," I asked, "the results of errors committed in other births?"

"That which we are," the old man answered, "is the consequence of that which we have been. We say in Japan the consequence of mang
ō
and ingo,—the two classes of actions."

"Evil and good?" I queried.

"Greater and lesser. There are no perfect actions. Every act contains both merit and demerit, just as even the best painting has defects and excellences. But when the sum of good in any action exceeds the sum of evil, just as in a good painting the merits outweigh the faults, then the result is progress. And gradually by such progress will all evil be eliminated."

"But how," I asked, "can the result of actions affect the physical conditions? The child follows the way of his fathers, inherits their strength or their weakness ; yet not from them does he receive his soul."

"The chain of causes and effects is not easy to explain in a Few words. To understand all you should study the Dai-jo or Greater Vehicle; also the Sh
ō
-j
ō
, or Lesser Vehicle. There you will learn that the world itself exists only because of acts. Even as one learning to write, at first writes only with great difficulty, but afterward, becoming skillful, writes without knowledge of any effort, so the tendency of acts continually repeated is to form habit. And such tendencies persist far beyond this life."

"Can any man obtain the power to remember his former births?"

"That is very rare," the old man answered, shaking his head. "To have such memory one should first become a Bosatsu
[Bodhissattva]."

"Is it not possible to become a Bosatsu?"

"Not in this age. This is the Period of Corruption. First there was the Period of True Doctrine, when life was long; and after it came the Period of Images, during which men departed from the highest truth; and now the world is degenerate. It is not now possible by good deeds to become a Buddha, because the world is too corrupt and life is too short. But devout persons may attain the Gokuraku [Paradise] by virtue of merit, and by constantly repeating the Nembutsu; and in the Gokuraku, they may be able to practice the true doctrine. For the days are longer there, and life also is very long."

"I have read in our translations of the Sutras," I said, "that by virtue of good deeds men may be reborn in happier and yet happier conditions successively, each time obtaining more perfect faculties, each time surrounded by higher joys. Riches are spoken of, and strength and beauty, and graceful women, and all that people desire in this temporary world. Wherefore I cannot help thinking that the way of progress must continually grow more difficult the further one proceeds. For if these texts be true, the more one succeeds in detaching one's self from the things of the senses, the more powerful become the temptations to return to them. So that the reward of virtue would seem itself to be made an obstacle in the path."

"Not so!" replied the old man. "They, who by self-mastery reach such conditions of temporary happiness, have gained spiritual force also, and some knowledge of truth. Their strength to conquer themselves increases more and more with every triumph, until they reach at last that world of Apparitional Birth, in which the lower forms of temptation have no existence."

The red cat stirred uneasily at a sound of geta, then went to the entrance, followed by the nun. There were some visitors waiting; and the priest begged us to excuse him a little while, that he might attend to their spiritual wants. We made place quickly for them, and they came in,—poor pleasant folk, who saluted us kindly: a mother bereaved, desiring to have prayers said for the happiness of her little dead boy; a young wife to obtain the pity of the Buddha for her ailing husband ; a father and daughter to seek divine help for somebody that had gone very far away. The priest spoke caressingly to all, giving to the mother some little prints of Jiz
ō
, giving a paper of blest rice to the wife, and on behalf of the father and daughter, preparing some holy texts. Involuntarily there came to me the idea of all the countless innocent prayers thus being daily made in countless temples; the idea of all the Fears and hopes and heartaches of simple love; the idea of all the humble sorrows unheard by any save the gods. The student began to examine the old man's books, and I began to think of the unthinkable.

Life—life as unity, uncreated, without beginning,—of which we know the luminous shadows only;—life forever striving against death, and always conquered yet always surviving—what is it?—why is it? A myriad times the universe is dissipated,—a myriad times again evolved; and the same life vanishes with every vanishing, only to reappear in another cycling. The Cosmos becomes a nebula, the nebula a Cosmos: eternally the swarms of suns and worlds are born; eternally they die. But after each tremendous integration the flaming spheres cool down and ripen into life; and the life ripens into Thought. The ghost in each one of us must have passed through the burning of a million suns,—must survive the awful vanishing of countless future universes. May not Memory somehow and somewhere also survive? Are we sure that in ways and forms unknowable it does not? as infinite vision,—remembrance of the Future in the Past? Perhaps in the Night-without-end, as in deeps of Nirvana, dreams of all that has ever been, of all that can ever be, are being perpetually dreamed.

The parishioners uttered their thanks, made their little offerings to Jiz
ō
, and retired, saluting us as they went. We resumed our former places beside the little writing-table, and the old man said:—

"It is the priest, perhaps, who among all men best knows what sorrow is in the world. I have heard that in the countries of the West there is also much suffering, although the Western nations are so rich."

"Yes," I made answer; "and I think that in Western countries there is more unhappiness than in Japan. For the rich there are larger pleasures, but for the poor greater pains. Our life is much more difficult to live; and, perhaps for that reason, our thoughts are more troubled by the mystery of the world."

The priest seemed interested, but said nothing. With the interpreter's help, I continued :—

"There are three great questions by which the minds of many men in the Western countries are perpetually tormented. These questions we call 'the Whence, the Whither, and the Why,' meaning, Whence life? Whither does it go? Why does it exist and suffer? Our highest Western Science declares them riddles impossible to solve, yet confesses at the same time that the heart of man can find no peace till they are solved. All religions have attempted explanations; and all their explanations are different. I have searched Buddhist books for answers to these questions, and I found answers which seemed to me better than any others. Still, they did not satisfy me, being incomplete. From your own lips I hope to obtain some answers to the first and the third questions at least. I do not ask for proof or for arguments of any kind: I ask only to know doctrine. Was the beginning of all things in universal Mind?"

To this question I really expected no definite answer, having, in the Sutra called Sabb
â
-sava, read about "those things which ought not to be considered," and about the Six Absurd Notions, and the words of the rebuke to such as debate within themselves: "
This is a being: whence did it come? whither will it go?
" But the answer came, measured and musical, like a chant:—

"All things considered as individual have come into being, through forms innumerable of development and reproduction, out of the universal Mind. Potentially within that mind they had existed from eternity. But between that we call Mind and that we call Substance there is no difference of essence. What we name Substance is only the sum of our own sensations and perceptions; and these themselves are but phenomena of Mind. Of Substance-in-itself we have not any knowledge. We know nothing beyond the phases of our mind, and these phases are wrought in it by outer influence or power, to which we give the name Substance. But Substance and Mind in themselves are only two phases of one infinite Entity."

"There are Western teachers also," I said, "who teach a like doctrine; and the most profound researches of our modern science seem to demonstrate that what we term Matter has no absolute existence. But concerning that infinite Entity of which you speak, is there any Buddhist teaching as to when and how It first produced those two forms which in name we still distinguish as Mind and Substance?"

"Buddhism," the old priest answered, "does not teach, as other religions do, that things have been produced by creation. The one and only Reality is the universal Mind, called in Japanese Shinnyo,
¹
—the Reality-in-its-very-self, infinite and eternal. Now this infinite Mind within Itself beheld Its own sentiency. And, even as one who in hallucination assumes apparitions to be actualities, so the universal Entity took for external existences that which It beheld only within Itself. We call this illusion Mu-My
ō
,
²
signifying 'without radiance,' or 'void of illumination."

"The word has been translated by some Western scholars," I observed, "as 'Ignorance.' "

"So I have been told. But the idea conveyed by the word we use is not the idea expressed by the term 'ignorance.' It is rather the idea of enlightenment misdirected, or of illusion."