Chapter V
RELIGION AND RITES
Western students of Buddhism are wont to say that the religion has for its basis the unreality of everything, and for its goal, non-existence; that it regards man's life on earth as a link in a continuous chain of probations, to the length of which every sin adds something, so that salvation may not be reached until three immeasurable æons have lapsed.
Such is not the Buddhism of Japan. The creed, as first preached to the Japanese, was very simple. It prescribed five negative precepts and ten positive virtues,[1] of which it is enough to say that, were they practised to the letter, a high standard of morality would have been reached. These injunctions the disciple was asked to accept with unreasoning assurance. Shintō furnished no code nor formulated any commandment. Buddhism pursued precisely the opposite plan. It issued a guiding canon of the utmost precision, but it refrained from any exposition of motives. Its method tallied exactly with that prescribed
- ↑ See Appendix, note 40.
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