[1] "The aggregate actions of all sentient beings give birth to the varieties of mountains, rivers, countries, etc. ... Their eyes, nostrils, ears, tongues, bodies,—as well as their gardens, woods, farms, residences, servants, and maids,—men imagine to be their own possessions; but they are, in truth, only results produced by innumerable actions."
—KURODA, Outlines of the Mahâyana.
"Grass, trees, earth,—all these shall become Buddha."
—CHŪ-IN-KYŌ."
"Even swords and things of metal are manifestations of spirit: within them exist all virtues (or 'power') in their fullest development and perfection."—HIZŌ-HŌ-YAKU.
"When called sentient or non-sentient, matter is Law-Body (or 'spiritual body')."—CHISHŌ-HISHŌ.
"The Apparent Doctrine treats of the four great elements [earth, fire, water, air] as non-sentient. But in the Hidden Doctrine these are said to be the Sammya-Shin (Samya-Kaya), or Body-Accordant of the Nyōrai (Tathâgata)."—SOKU-SHIN-JŌ-BUTSU-GI.
"When every phase of our mind shall be in accord with the mind of Buddha, ... then there will not be even one particle of dust that does not enter into Buddhahood."—ENGAKU-SHŌ.
The Karma-Ego we call Self is mind and is body;—both perpetually decay; both are perpetually renewed. From the unknown beginning, this double—phenomenon, objective and subjective, has been alternately dissolved and integrated: each integration is a birth; each dissolution a death. There is no other birth or death but the birth and death of Karma in some form or condition. But at each rebirth the reintegration is never the reintegration of the identical phenomenon, but of another to which it gives rise,—as growth begets growth, as motion produces motion. So that the phantom-self changes not only as to form and condition, but as to actual personality with every reëmbodiment. There is one Reality; but there is no permanent individual, no constant personality: there is only phantom-self, and phantom succeeds to phantom, as undulation to undulation, over the ghostly Sea of Birth and Death. And even as the storming of a sea is a motion of undulation, not of translation,—even as it is the form of the wave only, not the wave itself, that travels,—so in the passing of lives there is only the rising and the vanishing of forms,—forms mental, forms material. The fathomless Reality does not pass. "All forms," it is written in the Kongō-hannya-haramitsu-Kyō,[2] "are unreal: he who rises above all forms is the Buddha." But what can remain to rise above all forms after the total disintegration of body and the final dissolution of mind?
[2] Vagra-pragnâ-pâramita-Sutra.