Now they are merry together; but under their boat is Jigoku.1 Blow quickly, thou river-wind- blow a typhoon for my sake! Vainly, to make him stay, I said that the crows were night The bell of the dawn peals doom the bell that cannot lie. This my desire: To kill the crows of three thousand worlds, And then to repose in peace with the owner of my heart! 3 I have cited this last only as a curiosity. For it has a strange history, and is not what it seems- although the apparent motive was certainly suggested by some song like the one immediately preceding it. It is a song of loyalty, and was composed by Kido of Chōshu, one of the leaders in that great movement which brought about the downfall of the Shogunate, the restoration of the Imperial power, the reconstruction of Japanese society, and the introduction and adoption of Western civilization. Kido, Saigō, and "Jigoku" is the Buddhist name for various hells (Sansc. narakas). The allusion here is to the proverb, “Funa-ita ichi-mai shita wa Jigoku": "Under (the thickness of] a single boat-plank is hell" - referring to the perils of the sea. This song is a satire on jealousy; and the boat spoken of is probably a roofed pleasure-boat, such as excursions are made into the sound of music. 'Tsuki-yo-garasu, literally, "moon-night crows." Crows usually announce the dawn by their cawing; but sometimes on moonlight nights they caw at all hours from sunset to sunrise. The bell referred to is the bell of some Buddhist temple: the aké-no-kane, or “dawn-bell," being, in all parts of Japan, sounded from every Buddhist tera. There is a pun in the original; the expression “tsukenai," "cannot tell [a lie]," might also be interpreted phonetically as 'cannot strike [a bell]." • San-zen sékai no Ōkubo are rightly termed the three heroes of the restoration. While preparing his plans at Kyoto, in company with his friend Saigo, Kido composed and sang this song as an intimation of his real sentiments. By the phrase, "ravens of the three thousand worlds," he designated the Tokugawa partisans; by the word "nushi" (lord, or heart's-master) he signified the Emperor; and by the term "soiné" (reposing together) he referred to the hoped-for condition of direct responsibility to the Throne, without further intervention of Shōgun and daimyō. It was not the first example in Japanese history of the us of popular song as a medium for the utterance of opinions which, expressed in plainer language, would have invited assassination. While I was writing the preceding note upon Kido's song, the Buddhist phrase, "Sanzen sékai" (twice occurring, as the reader will have observed, in the present collection), suggested a few reflections with which this paper may fitly conclude. I remember that when I first attempted, years ago, to learn the outlines of Buddhist philosophy, one fact which particularly impressed me was the vastness of the Buddhist concept of the universe. Buddhism, as I read it, had not offered itself to humanity as a saving creed for one inhabited world, but as the religion of "innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kôtis1 of worlds." And the modern scientific rev 1 1 kôti = 10,000,000. elation of stellar evolution and dissolution then seemed to me, and still seems, like a prodigious confirmation of certain Buddhist theories of cosmical law. The man of science to-day cannot ignore the enormous suggestions of the new story that the heavens are telling. He finds himself compelled to regard the development of what we call mind as a general phase or incident in the ripening of planetary life throughout the universe. He is obliged to consider the relation of our own petty sphere to the great swarming of suns and systems as no more than the relation of a single noctiluca to the phosphorescence of a sea. By its creed the Oriental intellect has been better prepared than the Occidental to accept this tremendous revelation, not as a wisdom that increaseth sorrow, but as a wisdom to quicken faith. And I cannot but think that out of the certain future union of Western knowledge with Eastern thought there must eventually proceed a Neo-Buddhism inheriting all the strength of Science, yet spiritually able to recompense the seeker after truth with the recompense foretold in the twelfth chapter of the Sutra of the Diamond-Cutter. Taking the text as it stands in despite of commentators what more could be unselfishly desired from any spiritual teaching than the reward promised in that - "They shall be endowed with the Highest verse Wonder"? IX A STUDY IN SYNTHETIC BUDDHISM I It is not possible, O Subhûti, that this treatise of the Law should be heard by beings of little faith - by those who believe in Self, in beings, in living beings, and in persons. The Diamond-Cutter THERE still widely prevails in Europe and America the idea that Nirvana signifies, to Buddhist minds, neither more nor less than absolute nothingness complete annihilation. This idea is erroneous. But it is erroneous only because it contains half of a truth. This half of a truth has no value or interest, or even intelligibility, unless joined with the other half. And of the other half no suspicion yet exists in the average Western mind. Nirvana, indeed, signifies an extinction. But if by this extinction of individual being we understand soul-death, our conception of Nirvana is wrong. Or if we take Nirvana to mean such reabsorption of the finite into the infinite as that predicted by Indian pantheism, again our idea is foreign to Buddhism. Nevertheless, if we declare that Nirvana means the extinction of individual sensation, emotion, thought the final disintegration of conscious personality the annihilation of everything that can be included under the term "I" - then we rightly express one side of the Buddhist teaching. The apparent contradiction of the foregoing statements is due only to our Occidental notion of Self. Self to us signifies feelings, ideas, memory, volition; and it can scarcely occur to any person not familiar with German idealism even to imagine that consciousness might not be Self. The Buddhist, on the contrary, declares all that we call Self to be false. He defines the Ego as a mere temporary aggregate of sensations, impulses, ideas, created by the physical and mental experiences of the race all related to the perishable body, and all doomed to dissolve with it. What to Western reasoning seems the most indubitable of realities, Buddhist reasoning pronounces the greatest of all illusions, and even the source of all sorrow and sin. The mind, the thoughts, and all the senses are subject to the law of life and death. With knowledge of Self and the laws of birth and death, there is no grasping, and no sense-perception. Knowing one's self and knowing how the senses act, there is no room for the idea of "I," or the ground for framing it. The thought of "Self" gives rise to all sorrows binding the world as with fetters; but having found there is no "I" that can be bound, then all these bonds are severed.1 The above text suggests very plainly that the consciousness is not the Real Self, and that the mind dies with the body. Any reader unfamiliar with Buddhist thought may well ask, “What, then, is the meaning of the doctrine of Karma, the doctrine of moral progression, the doctrine of the consequence 1 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King. |