Gleanings in Buddha-fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East

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B. Tauchnitz, 1910 - Americans - 286 pages

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Page 257 - Natural knowledge tends more and more to the conclusion that "all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth" are the transitory forms of parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road of evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths of sun and planet and satellite; through all varieties of matter; through infinite diversities of life and thought; possibly, through modes of being of which we neither have a conception, nor are competent to form any, back to the indefinable...
Page 251 - We may look upon each individual as something not wholly detached from its parent source, — as a wave that has been lifted and shaped by normal conditions in an unknown, illimitable ocean. There is decidedly a solidarity as well as a separateness in all human, and probably in all lives whatsoever ; and this consideration goes far, as I think, to establish an opinion that the constitution of the living Universe is a pure theism, and that its form of activity is what...
Page 96 - Islam ; and souls mediaeval, loving cloister shadow and incense and glimmer of tapers and the awful altitude of Gothic glooms. Cooperation among all these is not to be thought of : always there is trouble. — revolt, confusion, civil war. The majority detest this state of things ; multitudes would gladly emigrate. And the wiser minority feel that they need never hope for better conditions until after the total demolition of the existing social structure.
Page 29 - Tada! — quick — very quick! . . . Light me a torch." Taimatsu, or pine-torches, are kept in many coast dwellings for use on stormy nights, and also for use at certain Shinto festivals. The child kindled a torch at once; and the old man hurried with it to the fields, where hundreds of rice-stacks, representing most of his invested capital, stood awaiting transportation. Approaching those nearest the verge of the slope, he began to apply the torch to them — hurrying from one to another as quickly...
Page 24 - Now concerning Hamaguchi. From immemorial time the shores of Japan have been swept, at irregular intervals of centuries, by enormous tidal waves — tidal waves caused by earthquakes or by submarine volcanic action. These awful sudden risings of the sea are called by the Japanese tsunami. The last one occurred on the evening of June 17, 1896, when a wave nearly two hundred miles long struck the northeastern provinces of Miyagi, Iwat£, and Aomori, wrecking scores of towns and villages, ruining whole...
Page 210 - ... 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...
Page 251 - It also suggests that they may contribute, more or less unconsciously, to the manifestation of a far higher life than our own, somewhat as — I do not propose to push the metaphor too far — the individual cells of one of the more complex animals contribute to the manifestation of its higher order of personality.
Page 11 - So shaped and so tinted, the isolated country yashiro may seem less like a work of joinery than a feature of the scenery, — a rural form related to nature as closely as rocks and trees, — a something that came into existence only as a manifestation of Ohotsuchi-noKami, the Earth-god, the primeval divinity of the land. Why certain architectural forms produce in the beholder a feeling of weirdness is a question about which I should like to theorize some day: at present I shall venture only to say...
Page 96 - my mind to me a kingdom is" — not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America; and the nominal government, supposed to be rational, declares that an eternity of such anarchy is not desirable. I have souls wanting to soar in air, and souls wanting to swim in water (sea-water, I think), and souls wanting to live in woods or on mountain tops. I have souls longing for the tumult of great cities, and souls longing to dwell in tropical...
Page 134 - Saris' account is as follows: "We found Ozaca to be a very great towne, as great as London within the walls, with many faire timber bridges of a great height, seruing to passe ouer a river there as wide as the Thames at London.

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