We want no great flight of imagination therefore to follow the traces of development of the present form of Taoism with its occult aspects. The eternity attributed to a True Man in its Laoist sense begot the idea of a deathless man in flesh and blood endowed with all kinds of supernatural powers. This in turn produced the notion that these superhuman beings knew some secret means to preserve their life and could work other wonders. Herbalism, alchemy, geomancy, and other magic arts owe their origin to this fountain-head of primitive superstition.
There is little room for reasonable doubt that in this way Taoism, although the name itself was of later development, has been in its main features the religion of China par excellence from the very dawn of its history. It has from the beginning found a congenial soil in the heart of the Chinese people, who still continue to embrace the cult with great enthusiasm, and in whose helpless credulity the Taoist priests of to-day, borrowing much help from the occult sides of Buddhism and Hinduism, still find an easy prey for their necromantic arts.
Not so with Laoism. One may well wonder how such an uncongenial doctrine ever came to spring from the soil of materialistic China. Some suggest that Lao-tze was a Brahman, and not a Chinese at all. Another explanation of this anomaly is to be found in the attempted division of the whole Chinese civilisation into two geographically distinct groups, the rigid Northern and the more romantic Southern types: Laoism belonging to the latter, while Confucianism belongs to the former. In any case, the resemblance in many respects between the doctrine introduced by Lao-tze and the higher form of Buddhism is very striking. Let me take this opportunity of saying something about the religion of Shâkya-muni, which has occupied our mind and heart for the past fifteen centuries.
But, first of all, let me say that I am not unaware of the absurdity of trying to give you anything like a fair idea of a many-sided and extremely complicated system of human belief such as Buddhism in the short space which is at my disposal. Very far from it. Even a brief summary of its main features would take an able speaker at least a couple of hours. So I humbly confine myself to giving you some hints on the belief, about which most of you, I presume, have already had occasion to hear something, the religion which took its origin among the people who claim their descent from the same Aryan stock to which you yourselves belong. Those who would care to read about it will find an excellent supply of knowledge in two little books called Buddhism and Buddhism in China, written respectively by Dr. Rhys Davids and the late Rev. S. Beal, not to mention the late Sir Monier Williams' standard work. A perusal of the Rev. A. Lloyd's paper read before the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1894, entitled 'Developments of Japanese Buddhism,' is very desirable. There are also two chapters devoted to this doctrine in Lafcadio Hearn's last work, Japan. This enumeration might almost exempt me from making any attempt to describe it myself.
Buddhism has, to begin with, two distinct forms, philosophical and popular, which may practically be taken as two different religions. Philosophical Buddhism—or at least the truest form of it—is a system based upon the recognition of the utter impermanency of the phenomenal world in all its forms and states. It believes in no God or gods whatever as a personal motive power. The only thing eternal is matter, or essence of matter, with the Karma, or Law of cause and effect, dwelling incorporated in it. Through the never-ceasing working of this law innumerable forms of existence develop, which, notwithstanding the appearance of stability they temporarily assume, are, in consequence of the action and reaction of the very law to which they owe their existence, constantly subject to everlasting changes. Constancy is nowhere to be found in this universe of phenomena. It is therefore an act of unspeakable ignorance on the part of human beings, themselves a product of the immutable Karma, to attach a constant value to this dreamy world and allow themselves to lose their mental harmony in the quest of shadowy desires and of their shadowy satisfaction, thus plunging themselves into the boundless sea of misery. True salvation is to be sought in the complete negation of egoism and in the unconditional absorption of ourselves in the fundamental law of the universe. Shâkya-muni was no more than one of a series of teachers whose mission it is to show us how to get rid of our fatal ignorance of this grand truth, an ignorance which is at the root of all the discontent and misery of our selfish existence.
Very different from this is the aspect assumed by the popular form of Buddhism. This is a system built up on the blind worship of personified psychic phenomena, originally meant merely as convenient symbols for their better contemplation, and in the transformation of the human teachers of truth into so many personal gods. This is the reason why Buddhism, so essentially atheistic, has come to be regarded by the ordinary Christian mind as polytheism, or as a degraded form of idolatry.
Now, in all the many sects of Buddhism which have been planted in the soil of Japan since the middle of the seventh century, some of which soon withered, while others took deep root and grew new branches, these two phases have always been recognised and utilised in their proper sphere as means of salvation. For the populace there was the lower Buddhism, while the more elevated classes found satisfaction in the higher form and in an explanation of that True Path which lies hidden beneath the complicated symbolic system.
Of the sects which have exercised great influence on Japanese mentality, the following are specially to be mentioned: the Tendai, the Shingon, the Zen, the Hokke, and the Jodo, with its offspring the Ikkô sect. Each of these chose its own means of reaching enlightenment from among those indicated by Shâkya-muni, but did not on that account entirely reject the means of salvation preferred by the others. Some give long lists of categories and antitheses, and seek to define the truth with a more than Aristotelian precision of detail, while others think it advisable to realise it by dint of faith alone. But among these means of salvation the practice advocated by the Zen sect is worthy of special consideration in this place, as it has exercised great influence in the formation of the Japanese spirit. Zen means 'abstraction,' standing for the Sanskrit Dhyâna. It is one of the six means of arriving at Nirvâna, namely, (1) charity; (2) morality; (3) patience; (4) energy; (5) contemplation; and (6) wisdom. This practice, which dates from a time anterior to Shâkya himself, consists of an 'abstract contemplation,' intended to destroy all attachment to existence in thought and wish. From the earliest time Buddhists taught four different degrees of abstract contemplation by which the mind frees itself from all subjective and objective trammels, until it reaches a state of absolute indifference or self-annihilation of thought, perception, and will.[15]
You might perhaps wonder how a method so utterly unpractical and speculative as that of trying to arrive at final enlightenment by pure contemplation could ever have taken root in Japan, among a people who, generally speaking, have never troubled themselves much about things apart from their actual and immediate use. An explanation of this is not far to seek. Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai school, the branch of the Contemplative sect first established on our soil, came back to Japan from his second visit to China in 1192 A.D.[16] This was the time when the short-lived rule of the Minamoto clan (1186-1219) was nearing the end of its real supremacy. Only fifteen years before that the world had seen the downfall of another mighty clan. The battle of Dannoura put an end to the Heike ascendancy after an incessant series of desperate battles extending over a century, giving our soldier-like qualities enough occasion for an excellent schooling. The whole country during this period had been under the raging sway of Mars, who swept with his fiery breath the blossoms of human prosperity, and the people high and low were obliged to recognise the folly of clinging to shadowy desires and to learn the urgent necessity for facing every emergency with something akin to indifference. To pass from glowing life into the cold grasp of death with a smile, to meet the hardest decrees of fate with the resolute calm of stoic fortitude, was the quality demanded of every man and woman in that stormy age. In the meanwhile, different military clans had been forming themselves in different parts of Japan and preparing to wage an endless series of furious battles against one another. In half a century too came the one solitary invasion of our whole history when a foreign power dared to threaten us with destruction. The mighty Kublei, grandson of the great Genghis Khan, haughty with his resistless army, whose devastating intrepidity taught even Europe to tremble at the mention of his name, despatched an embassy to the Japanese court to demand the subjection of the country. The message was referred to Kamakura, then the seat of the Hôjô regency, and was of course indignantly dismissed. Enraged at this, Kublei equipped a large number of vessels with the choicest soldiers China could furnish. The invading force was successful at first, and committed massacres in Iki and Tsushima, islands lying between Corea and Japan. The position was menacing; even the steel nerves of the trained Samurai felt that strange thrill a patriot knows. Shinto priests and Buddhist monks were equally busy at their prayers. A new embassy came from the threatening Mongol leader. The imperious ambassadors were taken to Kamakura, to be put to death as an unmistakable sign of contemptuous refusal. A tremendous Chinese fleet gathered in the boisterous bay of Genkai in the summer of 1281. At last the evening came with the ominous glow on the horizon that foretells an approaching storm. It was the plan of the conquering army victoriously to land the next morning on the holy soil of Kyûshû. But during this critical night a fearful typhoon, known to this day as the 'Divine Storm,' arose, breaking the jet-black sky with its tremendous roar of thunder and bathing the glittering armour of our soldiers guarding the coastline in white flashes of dazzling light. The very heaven and earth shook before the mighty anger of nature. The result was that the dawn of the next morning saw the whole fleet of the proud Yuan, that had darkened the water for miles, swept completely away into the bottomless sea of Genkai, to the great relief of the horror-stricken populace, and to the unspeakable disappointment of our determined soldiers. Out of the hundred thousand warriors who manned the invading ships, only three are recorded to have survived the destruction to tell the dismal tale to their crestfallen great Khan!
Then after a short interval of a score of peaceful years, Japan was plunged again into another series of internal disturbances, from which she can hardly be said to have emerged until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when order and rest were brought back by the able hand of Tokugawa Iyeyasu. During all these troublous days, the original Contemplative sect, paralleled soon after its establishment in Japan by a new school called Sôtô, as it was again supplemented by another, the Ôbaku school, five centuries afterwards, found ample material to propagate its special method of enlightenment. This sect, which drew its patrons from the ruling classes of Japan, was unanimously looked up to as best calculated to impart the secret power of perfect self-control and undisturbable peace of mind. It must be remembered that the ultimate riddance in the Buddhist sense, the entrance into cold Nirvâna, was not what our practical mind wanted to realise. It was the stoic indifference, enabling man to meet after a moment's thought, or almost instinctively, any hardships that human life might impose, that had brought about its otherwise strange popularity.