Olive Thorne Miller One of the most interesting birds who ever lived in my Bird Room was a blue jay named Jakie. He was full of business from morning till night, scarcely ever a moment still. Poor little fellow! He had been stole... Read more of THE BUSY BLUE JAY at Children Stories.ca

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Buddha Dwelling In The Individual Mind
Enlightened Consciousness in the individual mind acquires for...

Great Men And Nature
All great men, whether they be poets or scientists or religio...

The Examination Of The Notion Of Self
The belief in immortality is based on the strong instinct of ...

Buddha-nature Is The Common Source Of Morals
Furthermore, Buddha-nature or real self, being the seat of lo...

The Next Step In The Mental Training
In the next place we have to strive to be the master of our b...

The Manliness Of The Zen Monk And Of The Samurai
Thirdly, both the Zen monk and the Samurai were distinguished...

Zen In The Dark Age
The latter half of the Ashikaga period was the age of arms an...

Enlightenment Implies An Insight Into The Nature Of Self
We cannot pass over, however, this weighty problem without sa...

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

Introduction Of Zen Into China By Bodhidharma
An epoch-making event took place in the Buddhist history of C...

The Four Alternatives And The Five Categories
There are, according to Zen, the four classes of religious an...

Pessimistic View Of The Ancient Hindus
In addition to this, the new theory of matter has entirely ov...

Idealistic Scepticism Concerning Objective Reality
But extreme Idealism identifies 'to be' with 'to be known,' a...

Man Is Bad-natured According To Siun Tsz
The weaknesses of Mencius's theory are fully exposed by anot...

The Honest Poverty Of The Zen Monk And The Samurai
Secondly, the so-called honest poverty is a characteristic of...

Nature Favours Nothing In Particular
There is another point of view of life, which gave the presen...

The Characteristics Of Do-gen The Founder Of The Japanese So To Sect
In the meantime seekers after a new truth gradually began to ...

Missionary Activity Of The Sixth Patriarch
As we have seen above, the Sixth Patriarch was a great genius...

The Parable Of A Drunkard
Now the question arises, If all human beings are endowed with...

The Awakening Of The Innermost Wisdom
Having set ourselves free from the misconception of Self, nex...

Man Is Neither Good-natured Nor Bad-natured According To Su Shih

The difficulty may be avoided by a theory given by Su Shih and other
scholars influenced by Buddhism, which maintains that man is neither
good-natured nor bad-natured. According to this opinion man is not
moral nor immoral by nature, but unmoral. He is morally a blank. He
is at a crossroad, so to speak, of morality when he is first born.
As he if; blank, he can be dyed black or red. As he is at the
cross-road, he can turn to the right or to the left. He is like
fresh water, which has no flavour, and can be made sweet or bitter by
circumstances. If we are not mistaken, this theory, too, has to
encounter insurmountable difficulties. How could it be possible to
make the unmoral being moral or immoral? We might as well try to get
honey out of sand as to get good or evil out of the blank nature.
There can be no fruit of good or evil where there is no seed of good
or bad nature. Thus we find no satisfactory solution of the problem
at issue in these four theories proposed by the Chinese scholars--the
first theory being incompetent to explain the problem of human
depravity; the second breaking down at the origin of morality; the
third failing to explain the possibility of moral culture; the fourth
being logically self-contradictory.

[FN#164] Su Shih (1042-1101), a great man of letters, practiser of
Zen, noted for his poetical works.

Next: There Is No Mortal Who Is Purely Moral
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