For, indeed, the fourth Nirvana is that state of truth in which supreme salvation is not distinct from sorrowful transmigration, and for these blessed beings this is Nirvana; that, possessing the fullness of wisdom, they cannot desire to delay in transmigration, nor do they reënter Nirvana, because they feel the extreme of compassion for other beings.
For, in the Buddhist doctrine, compassion is the first of all virtues, and leads and is the essence of the five cardinal virtues, which are—note the sequence—pity, justice, urbanity, sincerity, and wise behavior. To the Buddhist, the pitiless are the ungodly. Hence the teaching of kindliness to all living beings, which is one of the "pure precepts" of the "greater vehicle," and through which all beings can obtain salvation.
For the happiness, which is the aim of Buddhism, is not limited to the individual, but is to be useful, to be of profit, to all mankind—a happiness which can only be moral, but which must act on the body as intimately as the soul is united with it.
These are the aspirations of higher Buddhism—its supreme end, to achieve the happiness of this life and of the future one—of the individual and of humanity, but differently, according to times and circumstances and human powers. In its full ideal here below civil and religious society would be the same; the continual rest of Nirvana becoming finally inseparable from our transmigrations—our passions living together with complete wisdom, and our further existence not demanding, then, another world. And if civilization shall have finally perfected the world of mind and the world of matter, we shall have here below Nirvana, and we shall dwell in it as Buddhas.
[SKETCHING.—THE FLUTES OF IYÉYASŬ]
August 24.
In the afternoon I go through the little road toward the west, whose walls are spotted with mosses and creepers, and where the gutters are filled with clear, noisy torrents, echoing in answer to the general sound of waters. Rarely do I meet any one—perhaps some trousered peasant girls, drowsily leading pack-horses; or naked peasants, with muscles of yellow bronze, carrying brushwood on their backs. The sun is at its hottest. Above the beat of the waters rises the perpetual strident, interminable cry of the locusts, like the shrill voice of mourners in this abode of tombs—the voice of dust and aridity. I turn a corner of high wall and tall trees and enter, through a dilapidated gateway and up some high steps in the wall, an open space, whose unknown borders are concealed behind the enormous trunks of cryptomeria. For weeks carpenters have been slowly repairing a temple building in this court, the big beams and planks of freshly-cut wood perfuming the place with the smell of cedar. In the grass and on the broken pavement lie moldering fragments of the older work, still with a waxy covering of the red lacquer which holds together the dark, dusty fibers.
A little bell-tower, lacquered red, stands near the other entrance, to which I pass. That one has its wall and high fence all lacquered red, and a gateway also red and spotted with yellow and gray mosses. Down its big steps I go, seeing just before me, through the gigantic trees and their gray and red trunks, the face of the tall pagoda, which flanks one side of the court before Iyéyasŭ, and whose other side turns toward the avenue of Iyémitsŭ. The road upon which I come is the avenue of Iyéyasŭ. Three different slopes lead within it to the paved court, where stands the high Torii of stone, through which one goes by the middle path to the high steps and the wall, the boundary of the temple. Two great banks, blocked with great dressed stones, separate the three paths—the central path being cut into wide steps which lead up to the Torii. On each of these masses of earth and masonry grow great cryptomeria trees, each of their trunks almost filling, from side to side, the entire width of the surface. They are planted irregularly. As the further ends of the banks are less high from the ground, I climb up, and sit to sketch against one of the ragged and splintered trunks. For all these late afternoons but one all has been the same. Far above me, through the needle branches of bright or shadowy green, large white clouds roll and spread in a brilliant, blotty, wet, blue sky. The court is framed in dark green, all above dazzling in light. The great Torii stands in the half shade—the edge of its upper stone shining as if gilded with yellow moss, and stains of black and white and rusty red contrasting with the delicate gilded inscriptions incised on the lower part of the two supporting columns.