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" In China the same fact is conveyed in the words of Chi-Kai, a famous priest, a founder of the Tian Tai school. " The two powers. Wisdom and Sentiment (meditation) are as the two wheels of a chariot, or the two wings of a bird — both necessary in order to arrive at per- fection." And again, " A Sravaka by meditation alone can never behold (or apprehend) the Divine Nature, nor can the wisdom of the greatest Bodhisatwa, by itself, cause him to arrive at Perfection ; but he who is thoroughly versed in Prajiia (wisdom), and also deeply exercised in the practice of severe meditation, he shall arrive at Nirvana."^ It is well known that the Buddhists go to an extreme in this particular ; they sometimes devote themselves to the prac- tice of Dhyana or meditation in such a manner as to produce 1 Compare the remark of Bayle — " the end to which Plotinus directed hid thoughts was to unite himself to the Great God ; he attained it by the unitive method of the Quietists." — Critical Diet., art. PJotinus. Now the unitive method spoken of is precisely that of the Buddhists — " wou yih uim," "not one single ruliection" — i.e., shut out all active thought, and by a passive absorption the soul is rapt into the Divine essence. 2 Baring Gould, 367. ■> Shiu-clii-kwan, Preface. SCRIPTURES FROM THE CHINESE. 151 mental imbecility, or we might term it perhaps mental paralysis : they use various methods in the practice of it to secure, as they think, the desired effect, just as the Quietists in the fourteenth century used similar methods to produce the same result. " The hesychasts or Quietists of Mount Atlios, we are told, in accordance with the prescription of their early Teachers, said there was a Divine light hid in the soul, and they seated themselves daily in some retired corner and fixed their eyes steadfastly for a considerable time upon the middle of their belly or navel, and in that situation they boasted that a sort of Divine light beamed foi'th upon them from the mind itself, which diffused through their souls wonderful delight,^ and on this account they were called Ofi(f)a\oylrvx^oc."'^ So Chi-Kai,^ in the section of his work on meditation, lays down the following rules : — '' At the time of entering Dhyana {i. e., meditation) the body ought to be properly at rest: the first thing is to arrange the legs; then the clothes must be properly adjusted ; next the hands must be placed in an easy position ; the spine upright ; the head straight ; the nose exactly plumb with the navel, neither awry nor higher or lower." And again, " The first requirement for the attainment of Samadhi is to bind the influences of the heart by confining one's attention to some fixed point, as the middle of the navel, not permitting any suggestion to divert the attention from that one thing. Hence the Scripture says — " Bind the attention (heart) so that it can- not escape, as one binds an ape with a chain." Again, we are told *^that the first principle of the Quietists was that the soul must make no reflections, and make use of the will by an internal recollection and a contemplation ^ Compare the remark of Bigandet (p. 446, Legend of the Burmese Buddha), "the third stage of meditation is that of Piti, or a sort of mental delectation ; the fourth is Suka, or perfect and permanent plea- sure and inward delight." - Mosheim, cap. v, part ii, century xiv. ^ Chi Kai in the " Shiu Chi-Kwan," part ii. 152 A CATENA OF BUDDHIST whicli they call acquired."' Agaiu, "The Quietists by their doctrine exclude all reflectiou."- Again/ "The contem- plative soul views God by a light which is the Divine essence, and even the soul is that Divine light itself. The soul ceases to be in the existence which in its own Nature properly belonged to it. It is changed, trans- formed, swallowed up in the Di\nne Being, and flows into the ideal Being,^ which it had in the Divine Being from all eternity." These quotations might be multipHed, if necessary; but the conclusion we may already draw, is, that the " meditation" of the Buddhist, the aim of which was to exclude all active thought, was to a great extent identical with that of the Quietists. This, then, is the aspect of Buddhism regarded as a Religious Belief. Before concluding these remarks there are two observa- tions yet to be made. First, with respect to the possibility of there being any religious element, strictly so called, in a system which is declared to be Atheistic.^ Doubtless the true definition of Religion, both as to the meaning of the word, and also with respect to the principle, character, and privilege it represents, is " the binding of the soul to God by Love." But is the word always so used ? Is it not fre- quently confined to the narrow sense of " attachment to a system, or to a church or creed ?" In these latter senses the term may strictly be applied to Buddhism. And even with respect to the highest meaning of the word — " the binding of the soul to God" — although Buddhism is con- fessedly ignorant of the existence of a Supreme Personal God, it by no means follows that it is an " atheistic system"; it does not deny the existence of "Lords many and Gods 1 Bernard Picquart, vol. i, 275. - lb. ^ John Rusbrok, quoted as above. ' Compare the Dhannakaya of the Buddhists. * " The idea of a Supreme Being is nowhere mentioned by Buddha : in the course of his religious disputations with the Brahmaus he combats the notions cf a God, coolly establishing the most crude AtheisTu" (Bigandet, p. 2, n). Perhaps if the Bishop had said "he combated their notions of a God," it would have been nearer the fact of the case. SCRIPTURES FROM THE CHINESE. 153 many/' but what it affirms is, that the mind can never be satisfied with any idea of " God" that includes in it im- permanency or defect of any sort, and that " personaHty" is a defect/ for it individualises the subject of it, and that which is " individual' cannot be universal, and therefore cannot be God. Buddhism, in fact, declares itself ignorant of any mode of personal existence compatible with the idea of spiritual perfection, and so far it is ignorant of God, But still, there are strange approaches made to the truth. There is something, at any rate, existing, which is independent of accidents or conditions ; and, whatever that is, to it the Buddhist looks as the ultimate condition of all Being. However imperfect this apprehension of Truth may be, we repeat, it is an approach to the Truth. But it is also said that the Buddhist can have no real hope or aim in life or in death, as his utmost expectation here- after is extinction or annihilation. If this were so, the system would be indeed a hideous one.^ But it appears that the idea of ''annihilation" as the equivalent of Nirvana must be confined (if at all) to one period only in the history of the system, and that period one during which scholastic refine- ment sought to explain or define that which is, in its very nature, incapable of definition, viz., the condition of the In- finite ; for, all along. Buddhism assumes that the same con- dition awaits the " emancipated soul" as is enjoyed by the Supreme Mind; and hence the constant reference to the state of the soul that has " gone across" (paramita) to that shore where there is no " birth or death." This state, because it admits of no positive definition, is described "via remotionis,"^ i. e., by stripping from it every conceivable ' 1 am here speaking of Primitive Buddhism. In the hist develoiJ- nicnt of the system, " PersonaHty" is declared to be one of the charac- teristics of Nirvfina. Vide the Pariuirvana Sutra, imssim. 2 " C'est la un systeme hideux j'eu couvieus; mais c'est vm syst^me parfaitemeut consequent. II n'y a pas trace de Tidee de Dieu dans le Buddhisme entier, ni au debut, ni au terme." Le Bouddha et sa Religion^ p. iv. ^ Diouysius the Areopagite, and from him all the schoolmen, assign 154 A CATENA OP BUDDHIST imperfection, and the process is carried to such an extent, by the subtle logic of the schools, that at length nothing is left for the mind to lay hold of; and this is the annihila- tion spoken of. But in the earliest and latest schools there is a different complexion given to the idea of Nirvana.