In Buddhistic literature, and in the intensity of Buddhistic thoughts, there are extraordinary and unrivalled beauties which are emphasized in a remarkable manner, in the sympathetic rendering accorded to them by such exponents as Professor Oldenberg and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn. One must be insensitive to a degree if such writers and interpreters of Buddhism do not succeed in striking a chord of overwhelming harmony throughout the system.
[Chapter II.]
GOD AND THE KOSMOS.
"Differences veil a fundamental unity."—Bruno.
Both Christianity and Buddhism can be set to the same music, the music of the unconditioned. The definition of the Christian God as invisible and eternal, and as that which has not parts, body, or passions, is incontestably an attempt to convert our thoughts to a belief in, and appreciation of, the unconditioned. The entire teaching of Jesus moves in this direction; and this will be recognized at once if we permit ourselves to interpret his symbolic utterances in the right and only logical sense. To be saved—that is, to realize the unconditioned—we must believe in Jesus; namely, in his teaching.
If humanity could assume this attitude of mind—if it could attune its thoughts to what Christian symbolism really means, or ought to mean—then all the magnificent ritual of the Holy Catholic Church, the realistic hymnology, even the shibboleths of the Salvationist, would no longer give rise to the supercilious contempt of the so-called intellectual world, but would everywhere be recognized as the expression of the most exalted philosophy, and consonant with the latest results of psycho-physiological research. "The proud have held me exceedingly in derision, yet have I not shrinked from thy law." Everything that teaches us that the end of all things and the goal of all men is a complete realization of the "unconditioned" is the acceptable word of God.