Sō moku koku dō shitsu kai jō butsu.
“Grass, trees, countries, the earth itself,—all these shall enter wholly into Buddhahood.”[47]
Literally, “shall become Buddha;” that is, they shall enter into Buddhahood or Nirvana. All that we term matter will be transmuted therefore into Mind,—Mind with the attributes of Infinite Sentiency, Infinite Vision, and Infinite Knowledge. As phenomenon, matter is unreal; but transcendentally it belongs by its ultimate nature to the Sole Reality.
Such a philosophical position is likely to puzzle the average reader. To call matter and mind but two aspects of the Ultimate Reality will not seem irrational to students of Herbert Spencer. But to say that matter is a phenomenon, an illusion, a dream, explains nothing;—as phenomenon it exists, and having a destiny attributed to it, must be considered objectively. Equally unsatisfying is the statement that phenomena are aggregates of Karma. What is the nature of the particles of the aggregate? Or, in plainest language, what is the illusion made of?
Not in the original Buddhist scriptures, and still less in the literature of Buddhist cemeteries, need the reply be sought. Such questions are dealt with in the sastras rather than in the sûtras;—also in various Japanese commentaries upon both. A friend has furnished me with some very curious and unfamiliar Shingon texts containing answers to the enigma.
The Shingon sect, I may observe, is a mystical sect, which especially proclaims the identity of mind and substance, and boldly carries out the doctrine to its furthest logical consequences. Its founder and father Kū-kai, better known as Kōbōdaishi, declared in his book Hizōki that matter is not different in essence from spirit. “As to the doctrine of grass, trees, and things non-sentient becoming Buddhas” he writes, “I say that the refined forms [ultimate nature] of spiritual bodies consist of the Five Great Elements; that Ether[48] consists of the Five Great Elements; and that the refined forms of bodies spiritual, of ether, of plants, of trees, consequently pervade all space. This ether, these plants and trees, are themselves spiritual bodies. To the eye of flesh, plants and trees appear to be gross matter. But to the eye of the Buddha they are composed of minute spiritual entities. Therefore, even without any change in their substance, there can be no error or impropriety in our calling them Buddhas.”
The use of the term “non-sentient” in the foregoing would seem to involve a contradiction; but this is explained away by a dialogue in the book Shi-man-gi:—
Q.—Are not grass and trees sometimes called sentient?
A.—They can be so called.