Notes to the Appendix
1 This and the following are translations from some Mahâyâna texts in the Buddhist Tripitaka, which were rendered into the Chinese language at various times from Sanskrit mostly through the co-operation of the Hindu missionaries and Chinese scholars. A detailed analysis of these texts is most urgently needed, as they contain many informations of great importance not only concerning the history of Buddhism in India but also concerning early Hindu culture generally. A rather incomplete idea as to their contents and material and general character will be attained by the perusal of Rev. Nanjo’s Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka, Oxford, 1883.
Mahâyâna-mûlajâta-hṛdayabhûmi-dhyâna Sûtra, (Nanjo, no. 955,) fas. iii. (return)
2 The Avatamsaka, fas. xiv., p. 73. (return)
3 The Avatamsaka, (Buddhabhadra’s translation), fas. xiv, p. 72. (return)
4 To conceive the Tathâgata as a personal being who appeared on earth for a certain limited time and then eternally disappeared is not Mahâyânistic. He reveals himself constantly and of his own will in this world of particulars. (return)
5 Sarvadharma-pravṛtti-nirdeça Sûtra (Nanjo, no. 1012). (return)
6 Mahâyâna-mûlajâta-hrdavabhûmi-dhyâna Sûtra (Nanjo 955), fas. iii, p. 75. (return)
7 The three rings are: 1. the giver, 2. the receiver, and 3. the thing given, material or immaterial. (return)
8 Precepts. The three sets are: 1. one relating to good behavior, 2. to the accumulation of merit, and 3. to lovingkindness toward all beings. (return)
9 The mental (subjective), physical (objective), and oral. (return)
10 The intellectual and the affective. (return)
11 Sarvadharma-pravṛtti-nirdeça Sûtra. (return)
12 Literally, “when greed is neither born nor dead.” This means, to live in the world as not living in it. This subjective divine innocence is thought by Buddhists the essence of the religious life. The consciousness of one’s worth, or self-conceit, is a great obstacle in the path of perfect virtue. As in the case of mechanical work or physical exercise, we attain perfect skillfulness only when the work is involuntarily done, i.e., without any conscious effort on the part of the performer; so in our moral and spiritual life we attain the height of virtuousness or saintliness when we identify ourselves with the reason of our being. This is Laotze’s doctrine of non-action or non-resistance, and also the teaching of the Bhagavadgîta. As remarked elsewhere, when a man reaches this stage of religious life, he ceases to be human, but divine, in the sense that he transcends the world of good and evil and eternally abides in the realm of the beautiful. (return)
13 This is a very radical statement and is enough to frighten timid moralists and “God-fearing” pietists. Therefore, it is said that “Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” But think not that this is expounding antinomianism. (return)
14 This and all the following are taken from the Kâṣyapa-Parivarta (Nanjo, 805). (return)
15 This gâthâ may not be very intelligible to our readers. The sense is: Whatever is done by a Buddha or Bodhisattva does not come from logical calculation or deliberate premeditation, but immediately from his inmost heart, which, in most natural and freest manner, responds to the needs of the suffering. This response is altogether free from all human elaboration, for the Buddha shows no painful and struggling efforts in so doing. Everything he does is like the work of nature herself. His life is above the narrow sphere of human morality which is marked with a desperate struggle between good and evil. His is in the realm of the divinely beautiful. (return)
16 “Having no selfhood” (svabhâva), means that things have no independent existence, no self-nature which will eternally preserve their thingish identity. This theory has been explained in the chapter dealing with the doctrine of non-atman. To state summarily, darkness and light are conditioned by each other; apart from darkness there is no light, and conversely, without light darkness has no meaning. Even so with enlightenment and ignorance: one independent of the other, they have no existence, they cannot be conceived. They are like imaginary flowers in the air projected there by a confused subjectivity. They are nothing but our ideal fabrication. To cling to God only, forgetting that we are living in the world below, in the world of relativity, is just as much one-sided as to lose ourselves in the whirlpool of earthly pleasures without the thought of God. Life, however, is not antithetic, but synthetic. Truth is never one-sided, it is always in the middle. Therefore, seek enlightenment in ignorance and truth in error. A dualistic interpretation of the world and life is not approved by Buddhists. Compare the sentiment expressed herein with Emerson’s poem as elsewhere quoted, in which these lines occur: “But in the mud and scum of things, There always, always, something sings.” (return)
17 The Kâṣyapaharivarta Sûtra (Nanjo, 805.). (return)
18 The sense is: The Bodhisattva never desires a complete absorption in the Absolute, in which no individual existences are distinguishable. He always leaves the “Will to live” unhurt, as it were, so that he could come in this world of particulars ever and anon. What he has destroyed is the egoistic assertion of the Will, for the aim of Buddhism is not to remove the eternal principle of life, but to manifest it in its true significance. The wishes of the Bodhisattva, therefore, are never egocentric; he knows that transmigration and rebirth are painful, but as it is by rebirth alone that he could mingle himself in the world of sin and save the suffering creatures therein, he never shuns the misery of life. His work of revelation is constant and eternal. (return)
19 The Mahâyâna-mûlajâti-hrdayabhûmi-dhyâna Sûtra, fas. IV. (return)
20 The two prejudices or obstacles that lie in our way to enlightenment are: 1 that which arises from intellectual shortsightedness; 2. that which arises from impurity of heart. (return)
21 Sûtra on Mahâkâṣyapa’s Question Concerning the Absolute. (return)
22 Suvarna-Prabhâ Sûtra. (return)
23 Suvarna-Prabhâ Sûtra, Chap. 26 (return)
24 Padmapani Sûtra, Fas. 8. (return)
25 The Avatamsaka Sutra. (return)
26 This means that the heart of the Bodhisattva which is pure and eternal in its essential nature has nothing added externally to it by studying the Dharma; for the Dharma is nothing else than the expression of his own heart. (return)
27 The Avatamsaka, fas. IX, p. 48. This pantheistic thought of the One-All is generally considered to be Buddhistic; but the truth is that every genuine religious sentiment inevitably leads us to this final conviction. Even in the so-called transcendental monotheistic Christianity, we find the pantheistic thought boldly proclaimed and put in contrast to the idea of “our Father which art in Heaven.” For instance, read the following passage from Thomas à Kempis: “He to whom all things are one, he who reduceth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy a quiet mind, and remain at peace in God.” (Chap. III.) The passage in the Gospel of John declaring that “the Father is in me and I in him,” when logically carried out, comes to echo the same sentiment entertained by Buddhists, who recognise a manifestation of the Dharmakâya in all beings, animate as well as inanimate. The Christianity of to-day is that of Paul as expounded in his letters, but the future one will advance a few steps more and will be that of John. (return)