The great preacher, Vagrabodhi, in 720 A.D., came with his disciples to the capital of China, and translated the sacred books, seventy-seven in number. This doctrine is the well-known Yoga-chara, which has been well set forth by Doctor Edkins in his scholarly volume on Chinese Buddhism. As "yoga" becomes in plain English "yoke," and as "mantra" is from the same root as "man" and "mind," we have no difficulty in recognizing the original meaning of these terms; the one in its nobler significance referring to union with Buddha or Gnosis, and the other to the thought taking lofty expression or being debased to hocus-pocus in charm or amulet. Like the history of so many Sanskrit words as now uttered in every-day English speech, the story of the word mantra forms a picture of mental processes and apparently of the degradation of thought, or, as some will doubtless say, of the decay of religion. The term mantra meant first, a thought; then thought expressed; then a Vedic hymn or text; next a spell or charm. Such have been the later associations, in India, China and Japan with the term mantra.
The burden of the philosophy of the Shin-gon, looked at from one point of view, is mysticism, and from another, pantheism. One of the forms of Buddha is the principle of everything. There are ten stages of thought, and there are two parts, "lengthwise" and "crosswise" or exoteric and esoteric. Other doctrines of Buddhism represent the first, or exoteric stage; and those of the Shin-gon or true word, the second, or esoteric. The primordial principle is identical with that of Maha-Vairokana, one of the forms[23] of Buddha. The body, the word and the thought are the three mysteries, which being found in all beings, animate and inanimate, are to be fully understood only by Buddhas, and not by ordinary men.
To show the actual method of intellectual procedure in order to reach Buddha-hood, many categories, tables and diagrams are necessary; but the crowning tenet, most far reaching in its practical influence, is the teaching that it is possible to reach the state of Buddha-hood in this present body.
As discipline for the attainment of excellence along the path marked out in the "Mantra sect," there are three mystic rites: (1) worshipping the Buddha with the hand in certain positions called signs; (2) repeating Dharani, or mystic formulas; (3) contemplation.
Kōbō himself and all those who imitated him, practised fasting in order to clear the spiritual eyesight. The thinking-chairs, so conspicuous in many old monasteries, though warmed at intervals through the ages by the living bodies of men absorbed in contemplation, are rarely much worn by the sitters, because almost absolute cessation of motion characterizes the long and hard thinkers of the Shin-gon philosophers. The idols in the Shin-gon temples represent many a saint and disciple, who, by perseverance in what a critic of Buddhism calls "mind-murder," and the use of mystic finger twistings and magic formulas, has won either the Nirvana or the penultimate stage of the Bodhisattva.
In the sermons and discourses of Shin-gon, the subtle points of an argument are seized and elaborated. These are mystical on the one side, and pantheistic on the other. It is easily seen how Buddha, being in Japanese gods as well as men, and no being without Buddha, the way is made clear for that kind of a marriage between Buddhism and Shintō, in which the two become one, and that one, as to revenue and advantage, Buddhism.
Truth Made Apparent by One's Own Thought.
The Japanese of to-day often speak of these seven religious bodies which we have enumerated and described, as "the old sects," because much of the philosophy, and many of the forms and prayers, are common to all, or, more accurately speaking, are popularly supposed to be; while the priests, being celibates, refrain from saké, flesh and fish, and from all intimate relations with women. Yet, although these sects are considered to be more or less conformable to the canon of the Greater Vehicle, and while the last three certainly introduce many of its characteristic features—one sect teaching that Buddha-hood could be obtained even in the present body of flesh and blood—yet the idea of Paradise had not been exploited or emphasized. This new gospel was to be introduced into Japan by the Jō-dō Shu or Sect of the Pure Land.
Before detailing the features of Jō-dō, we call attention to the fact that in Japan the propagation of the old sects was accompanied by an excessive use of idols, images, pictures, sutras, shastras and all the furniture thought necessary in a Buddhist temple. The course of thought and action in the Orient is in many respects similar to that in the Occident. In western lands, with the ebb and flow of religious sentiment, the iconolater has been followed by the iconoclast, and the overcrowded cathedrals have been purged by the hammer and fire of the Protestant and Puritan. So in Japan we find analogous, though not exactly similar, reactions. The rise and prosperity of the believers in the Zen dogmas, which in their early history used sparingly the eikon, idol and sutra, give some indication of protest against too much use of externals in religion. May we call them the Quakers of Japanese Buddhism? Certainly, theirs was a movement in the direction of simplicity.