The Religions of Japan Part 13

Did he succeed? Partially.

Buddha hoped also to rise above the superst.i.tions of the common people, but in this he was again only partially successful.[37] "The clouds returned after the rain." The old dead G.o.ds of Brahminism came back under new names and forms. The malarial exhalations of corrupt Brahmanistic philosophy, continually poisoned the atmosphere which Buddha's disciples breathed. Still worse, as his religion transmigrated into other lands, it became itself a history of transformation, until to-day no religion on earth seems to be such a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria. Polytheism is rampant over the greater part of the Buddhist world to-day. In the larger portion of Chinese Asia, pantheism dominates the mind. In modern Babism,--a mixture of Mohammedanism, Christianity and Buddhism,--there are streaks of dualism. If Monotheism has ever dawned on the Buddhist world, it has been in fitful pulses as in auroral flashes, soon to leave darkness darker.

For us is this lesson: Buddhism, brought face to face with the problem of the world's evil and possible improvement, evades it; begs the whole question at the outset; prays: "Deliver us from existence. Save us from life and give us as little as possible of it." Christianity faces the problem and flinches not; orders advance all along the line of endeavor and prays: "Deliver us from evil;" and is ever of good cheer, because Captain and leader says: "I have overcome the world." Go, win it for me.

"I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

CHAPTER VII - RIY[=O]BU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

"All things are nothing but mind."

"The doctrines of Buddhism have no fixed forms."

"There is nothing in things themselves that enables us to distinguish in them either good or evil, right or wrong. It is but man's fancy that weighs their merits and causes him to choose one and reject the other."

"Non-individuality is the general principle of Buddhism."--Outlines of the Mah[=a]y[=a]na.

"It (s.h.i.+nt[=o]) was smothered before reaching maturity, but Buddhism and Confucianism had to disguise and change in order to enter j.a.pan."

"Life has a limited span and naught may avail to extend it. This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings. But yet whenever necessary I will hereafter make my appearance from time to time as a G.o.d, a sage, or a Buddha."--Last words of Shaka the Buddha, in j.a.panese biography.

"It is our opinion that Buddhism cannot long hold its ground, and that Christianity must finally prevail throughout all j.a.pan.... Now, when Buddhism and Christianity are in conflict for the ascendency, this indifference of the j.a.panese people to the difference of sects is a great disadvantage to Buddhism.

That they should wors.h.i.+p Jesus Christ with the same mind as they do _Inari_ or _Mi[=o]jin_ is not at all inconsistent in their estimation or contrary to their custom."--f.u.kuzawa, of T[=o]ki[=o].

"How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be G.o.d, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."--Elijah.

"Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"--Jesus.

"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?"--James.

"What concord hath Christ with Belial?"--Paul.

CHAPTER VII - RIY[=O]BU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

Syncretism in Religion.

Two centuries and a half of Buddhism in j.a.pan, showed the leaders and teachers of the Indian faith that complete victory over the whole nation was yet very far off. The court had indeed been invaded and won. Even the Mikado, the ecclesiastical head of s.h.i.+nt[=o], and the incarnation and vicar of the heavenly G.o.ds, had not only embraced Buddhism, but in many instances had shorn the hair and taken the vows of the monk. Yet the people clung tenaciously to their old traditions, customs and wors.h.i.+p; for their G.o.ds were like themselves and indeed were of themselves, since s.h.i.+nt[=o] is only a transfiguration of j.a.panese life.

In the j.a.panese of those days we can trace the same traits which we behold in the modern son of Nippon, especially his intense patriotism and his warlike tendencies. To convert these people to the peaceful dogmas of Siddartha and to make them good Buddhists, something more than teaching and ritual was necessary. It was indispensable that there should be complete subst.i.tution, all along the ruts and paths of national habit, and especially that the names of the G.o.ds and the festivals should be Buddhaized.

Popular customs are nearly immortal and ineradicable. Though wars may come, dynasties rise and fall, and convulsions in nature take place, yet the people's manners and amus.e.m.e.nts are very slow in changing. If, in the history of Christianity, the European missionaries found it necessary in order to make conquest of our pagan forefathers, to baptize and re-name without radically changing old notions and habits, so did it seem equally indispensable that in j.a.pan there should be some system of reconciliation of the old and the new, some theological revolution, which should either fulfil, absorb, or destroy s.h.i.+nt[=o].

In the histories of religions in Western Asia, Northern Africa and Europe, we are familiar with efforts at syncretism. We have seen how Philo attempted to unite Hebrew righteousness and Greek beauty, and to harmonize Moses and Plato. We know of Euhemerus, who thought he read in the old mythologies not only the outlines of real history, but the hieroglyphics of legend and tradition, truth and revelation.[1] Students of Church history are well aware that this principle of interpretation was followed only too generously by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Chrysostom and others of the Church Fathers. Indeed, it would be hard to find in any of the great religions of the world an utter absence of syncretism, or the union of apparently hostile religious ideas. In the Thousand and One Nights, we have an example in popular literature. We see that the ancient men of India, Persia and pre-Mohammedan Arabia now act and talk as orthodox Mussulmans. In matters pertaining to art and furniture, the statue of Jupiter in Rome serves for St. Peter, and in j.a.pan that of the Virgin and child for the Buddha and his mother.[2]

What, however, chiefly concerns the critic and student of religions is to inquire how far the process has been natural, and the efforts of those who have brought about the union have been honest, and their motives pure. The Bible pages bear witness, that Israelites too often tried to make the same fountain give forth sweet waters and bitter, and to grow thistles and grapes on the same stem, by uniting the cults of Jehovah and the Baalim. King Solomon's enterprises in the same direction are more creditable to him as a politician than as a wors.h.i.+pper.[3] In the history of Christianity one cannot commend the efforts either of the Gnostics or the neo-Platonists, nor always justify the medieval missionaries in their methods. Nor can we accurately describe as successful the ingenuity of Vossius, the Dutch theologian, who, following the scheme of Euhemerus, discovered the Old Testament patriarchs in the disguise of the G.o.ds of Paganism. Nor, even though Germany be the land of learning, can the clear-headed scholar agree with some of her rationalists, who are often busy in the same field of industry, setting forth wild criticism as "science."

The Kami and the Buddhas.

In j.a.pan, to solve the problem of reconciliation between the ancient traditions of the divine ancestors and the dogmas of the Indian cult, it was necessary that some master spirit, profoundly learned in the two Ways, of the Kami and of the Buddhas, should be bold, and also as it seems, crafty and unscrupulous. To convert a line of theocratic emperors, whose authority was derived from their alleged divine origin and sacerdotal character, into patrons and propagandists of Buddhism, and to transform indigenous s.h.i.+nt[=o] G.o.ds into Buddhas elect, or Buddhas to come, or Buddhas in a former state of existence, were tasks that might appall the most prodigious intellect, and even strain the capacities of what one might imagine to be the universal religion for all mankind.

Yet from such a task continental Buddhism had not shrunk before and did not shrink then, nor indeed from it do the insular j.a.panese sects shrink now. Indeed, Buddhism is quite ready to adopt, absorb and swallow up j.a.panese Christianity. With all encompa.s.sing tentacles, and with colossal powers of digestion and a.s.similation, Northern Buddhism had drawn into itself a large part of the Brahmanism out of which it originally sprang,[4] reversing the old myth of Chronos by swallowing its parents. It had gathered in, pretty much all that was in the heavens above and the earth beneath and the waters that were under the earth, in Nepal, Tibet, China, and Korea. Thoroughly exercised and disciplined, it was ready to devour and digest all that the imagination of j.a.pan had conceived.

We must remember that, at the opening of the ninth century, the Buddhism rampant in China and indeed throughout Chinese Asia was the Tantra system of Yoga-chara.[5] This compound of polytheism and pantheism, with its sensuous paradise, its G.o.ddess of mercy and its pantheon of every sort of wors.h.i.+pable beings, was also equipped with a system of philosophy by which Buddhism could be adapted to almost every yearning of human nature in its lowest or its highest form, and by which things apparently contradictory could be reconciled. Furthermore--and this is not the least important thing to consider when the work to be done is for the ordinary man as an individual and for the common people in the ma.s.s--it had also a tremendous apparatus for touching the imagination and captivating the fancy of the unthinking and the uneducated.

For example, consider the equipment of the Buddhist priests of the ninth century in the matter of art alone. s.h.i.+nt[=o] knows next to nothing of art,[6] and indeed one might almost say that it knows little of civilization. It is like ultra-Puritanic Protestantism and Iconoclasm.

Buddhism, on the contrary, is the mother of art, and art is her ever-busy child and handmaid. The temples of the Kami were bald and bare. The Kojiki told nothing of life hereafter, and kept silence on a hundred points at which human curiosity is sure to be active, and at which the Yoga system was voluble. Buddhism came with a set of visible symbols which should attract the eye and fire the imagination, and within ethical limits, the pa.s.sions also. It was a mixed and variegated system,--a resultant of many forces.[7] It came with the thought of India, the art-influence of Greece, the philosophy of Persia, the speculations of the Gnostics and, in all probability, with ideas borrowed indirectly from Nestorian or other forms of Christianity; and thus furnished, it entered j.a.pan.

The Mission of Art.

Thus far the insular kingdom had known only the monochrome sketches of the Chinese painters, which could have a meaning for the educated few alone. The composite Tantra dogmas fed the fancy and stimulated the imagination, filling them with pictures of life, past, present and future. "The sketch was replaced by the illumination." Whole schools of artists, imported from China and Korea, multiplied their works and attracted the untrained senses of the people, by filling the temples with a blaze of glory. "This result was sought by a gorgeous but studied play of gold and color, and a lavish richness of mounting and accessories, that appear strangely at variance with the begging bowl and patched garments of primitive Buddhism."[8] The change in the j.a.panese temple was as though the gray clouds had been kissed by the sun and made to laugh rainbows. The country of the Fertile Plain of Sweet Flags was transformed. It suddenly became the land wherein G.o.ds grew not singly but in whole forests. Like the Shulamite, when introduced among the jewelled ladies of Solomon's harem, so stood the boor amid the sheen and gold of the new temples.

"Gold was the one thing essential to the Buddhist altar-piece, and sometimes, when applied on a black ground, was the only material used. In all cases it was employed with an unsparing hand. It appeared in uniform ma.s.ses, as in the body of the Buddha or in the golden lakes of the Western Paradise; in minute diapers upon brocades and clothing, in circlets and undulating rays, to form the glory surrounding the head of Amitaba; in raised bosses and rings upon the armlets or necklets of the Bodhisattvas and Devas, and in a hundred other manners. The pigments chosen to harmonize with this display were necessarily body colors of the most p.r.o.nounced lines, and were untoned by any trace of chiaroscuro. Such materials as these would surely try the average artist, but the Oriental painter knew how to dispose them without risk of crudity or gaudiness, and the precious metal, however lavishly applied, was distributed over the picture with a judgment that would make it difficult to alter or remove any part without detriment to the beauty of the work."[9]

In our day, j.a.panese art has won its own place in the world's temple of beauty. Even those familiar with the master-pieces of Europe do not hesitate to award to the artists of Nippon a meed of praise which, within certain limits, is justly applied to them equally with the masters of the Italian, the Dutch, the Flemish, or the French schools.

It serves our purpose simply to point out that art was a powerful factor in the religious conquest of the j.a.panese for the new doctrines of the Yoga system, which in j.a.pan is called Riy[=o]bu, or Mixed Buddhism.

We say Mixed Buddhism rather than Riy[=o]bu s.h.i.+nt[=o], for s.h.i.+nt[=o] was less corrupted than swallowed up, while Buddhism suffered one more degree of mixture and added one more chapter of decay. It increased in its visible body, while in its mind it became less and less the religion of Buddha and more and more a thing with the old s.h.i.+nt[=o] heart still in it, making a strange growth in the eyes of the continental believers.

To the Northern and Southern was now added an Eastern or j.a.panese Buddhism.

Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the G.o.ds to Buddhadom and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all j.a.panese history and traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha?

K[=o]b[=o] the Wonder Worker.

The Philo and Euhemerus of j.a.pan was the priest Kukai, who was born in the province of Sanuki, in the year 774. He is better known by his posthumous t.i.tle K[=o]b[=o] Dais.h.i.+, or the Great Teacher who promulgates the Law. By this name we shall call him. About his birth, life and death, have multiplied the usual swaddling bands of j.a.panese legend and tradition,[10] and to his tomb at the temple on Mount K[=o]-ya, the Campo Santo of j.a.panese Buddhism, still gather innumerable pilgrims. The "hall of ten thousand lamps," each flame emblematic of the Wisdom that saves, is not, indeed, in these days lighted annually as of old; but the vulgar yet believe that the great master still lives in his mausoleum, in a state of profoundly silent meditation. Into the hall of bones near by, covering a deep pit, the teeth and "Adam's apple" of the cremated bodies of believers are thrown by their relatives, though the pit is cleared out every three years. The devotees believe that by thus disposing of the teeth and "Adam's apple," they obtain the same spiritual privileges as if they were actually entombed there, that is, of being born again into the heaven of the Bodhisattva or the Pure Land of Absolute Bliss, by virtue of the mystic formulas repeated by the great master in his lifetime.

Let us sketch the life of K[=o]b[=o],

First named Toto-mono, or Treasure, by his parents, who sent him to Ki[=o]t[=o] to be educated for the priesthood, the youth spent four years in the study of the Chinese cla.s.sics. Dissatisfied with the teachings of Confucius, he became a disciple of a famous Buddhist priest, named Iwabuchi (Rock-edge or throne). Soon taking upon himself the vows of the monk, he was first named Kukai, meaning "s.p.a.ce and sea,"

or heaven and earth.[11] He overcame the dragons that a.s.saulted him, by prayers, by spitting at them the rays of the evening star which had flown from heaven into his mouth and by repeating the mystic formulas called Dharani.[12] Annoyed by hobgoblins with whom he was obliged to converse, he got rid of them by surrounding himself with a consecrated imaginary enclosure into which they were unable to enter against his will.

We mention these legends only to call the attention to the fact that they are but copies of those already accepted in China at that time, and are the logical and natural fruit of the Tantra school at which we have glanced. In 804, K[=o]b[=o] was appointed to visit the Middle Kingdom as a government student. By means of his clever pen and calligraphic skill he won his way into the Chinese capital. He became the favored disciple of a priest who taught him the mystic doctrines of the Yoga. Having acquired the whole of the system, and equipped himself with a large library of Buddhist doctrinal works and still more with every sort of ecclesiastical furniture and religious goods, he returned to j.a.pan.

Mult.i.tudes of wonders are reported about K[=o]b[=o], all of which show the growth of the Tantra school. It is certain that his erudition was immense, and that he was probably the most learned man of j.a.pan in that age, and possibly of any other age. Besides being a j.a.panese Ezra in multiplying writings, he is credited with the invention of the hira-gana, or running script, and if correctly so, he deserves on this account alone an immortal honor equal to that of Cadmus or Sequoia. The kana[13] is a syllabary of forty-seven letters, which by diacritical marks, may be increased to seventy. The kata-kana is the square or print form, the hira-kana is the round or "gra.s.s" character for writing.

Though not as valuable as a true phonetic alphabet, such as the Koreans and the Cherokees possess, the _i-ro-ha_, or kana script, even though a syllabary and not an alphabet, was a wonderful aid to popular writing and instruction.

Evidently the idea of the i-ro-ha, or j.a.panese ABC, was derived from the Sanskrit alphabet, or, what some modern Anglo-Indian has called the Deva-Nagari or the G.o.d-alphabet. There is no evidence, however, to show that K[=o]b[=o] did more than arrange in order forty-seven of the easiest Chinese signs then used, in such a manner that they conveyed in a few lines of doggerel the sense of a pa.s.sage from a sutra in which the mortality of man and the emptiness of all things are taught, and the doctrine of Nirvana is suggested.[14] Hokusai, the artist, in a sketch which embodies the popular idea of this bonze's immense industry, represents him copying the shastras and sutras. K[=o]b[=o] is on a seat before a large upright sheet of paper. He holds a brush-pen in his mouth, and one in each of his hands and feet, all moving at once.[15]

Favorite portions of the Buddhist scriptures were indeed so rapidly multiplied in j.a.pan in the ninth century, as to suggest the idea, that, even in this early age, block printing had been imported from China, whence also afterward, in all probability, it was exported into Europe before the days of Gutenberg and Coster.[16] The popular imagination, however, was more easily moved on seeing five brushes kept at work and all at once by the muscles in the fingers, toes and mouth of one man.

Yet, had his life lasted six hundred years instead of sixty, he could hardly have graven all the images, scaled all the mountain peaks, confounded all the sceptics, wrought all the miracles and performed all the other feats with which he is popularly credited.[17]