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Samurai

Zazen Or The Sitting In Meditation
Habit comes out of practice, and forms character by degrees, ...

Change As Seen By Zen
Zen, like Hinayanism, does not deny the doctrine of Transienc...

Zen Is Not Nihilistic
Zen judged from ancient Zen masters' aphorisms may seem, at t...

Nature And Her Lesson
Nature offers us nectar and ambrosia every day, and everywher...

Idealistic Scepticism Concerning Religion And Morality
Similarly, it is the case with religion and morality. If we ...

Retribution In The Past The Present And The Future Life
Then a question suggests itself: If there be no soul that su...

The Law Of Balance
Nature governs the world with her law of balance. She puts t...

Buddha Is Unnamable
Give a definite name to Deity, He would be no more than what ...

The Ten Pictures Of The Cowherd
[FN#275] The pictures were drawn by Kwoh Ngan (Kaku-an), a...

All The Worlds In Ten Directions Are Buddha's Holy Land
We are to resume this problem in the following chapter. Suff...

The Progress And Hope Of Life
How many myriads of years have passed since the germs of life...

Universal Life Is Universal Spirit
These considerations naturally lead us to see that Universal ...

The Breathing Exercise Of The Yogi
Breathing exercise is one of the practices of Yoga, and somew...

Life And Change
A peculiar phase of life is change which appears in the form ...

The Spiritual Attainment Of The Sixth Patriarch
Some time before his death (in 675 A.D.) the Fifth Patriarch ...

The Creative Force Of Nature And Humanity
The innate tendency of self-preservation, which manifests its...

No Need Of The Scriptural Authority For Zen
Some Occidental scholars erroneously identify Buddhism with t...

The Fifth And The Sixth Patriarchs
Tao Sin transmitted the Law to Hung Jan (Ko-nin), who being e...

The Eternal Life As Taught By Professor Munsterberg
Some philosophical pessimists undervalue life simply because ...

An Illusion Concerning Appearance And Reality
To get Enlightened we must next dispel an illusion respecting...

Idealism Is A Potent Medicine For Self-created Mental Disease

In so far as Buddhist idealism refers to the world of sense, in so
far as it does not assume that to to be known is identical with to
be, in so far as it does not assert that the phenomenal universe is a
dream and a vision, we may admit it as true. On the one hand, it
serves us as a purifier of our hearts polluted with materialistic
desires, and uplifts us above the plain of sensualism; on the other
hand, it destroys superstitions which as a rule arise from ignorance
and want of the idealistic conception of things.
It is a lamentable fact that every country is full of such
superstitions people as described by one of the New Thought writers:
'Tens of thousands of women in this country believe that if two
people look in a mirror at the same time, or if one thanks the other
for a pin, or if one gives a knife or a sharp instrument to a friend,
it will break up friendship. If a young lady is presented with a
thimble, she will be an old maid. Some people think that after
leaving a house it is unlucky to go back after any article which has
been forgotten, and, if one is obliged to do so, one should sit down
in a chair before going out again; that if a broom touches a person
while someone is sweeping, bad luck will follow; and that it is
unlucky to change one's place at a table. A man took an opal to a
New York jeweller and asked him to buy it. He said that it had
brought him nothing but bad luck, that since it had come into his
possession he had failed in business, that there bad been much
sickness in his family, and all sorts of misfortune had befallen him.
He refused to keep the cursed thing any longer. The jeweller
examined the stone, and found that it was not an opal after all, but
an imitation.'

Idealism is a most potent medicine for these self-created mental
diseases. It will successfully drive away devils and spirits that
frequent ignorant minds, just as Jesus did in the old days. Zen
makes use of moral idealism to extirpate, root and branch, all such
idle dreams and phantasmagoria of illusion and opens the way to
Enlightenment.

Next: Idealistic Scepticism Concerning Objective Reality
Previous: Zen And Idealism

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