IN YOKOHAMA
from "Out of the East"

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A good sight indeed has met us to-day, --- a good daybreak, --- a beautiful rising; --- for we have seen the Perfectly Enlightend, who has crossed the stream. --- HEMAVATASUTTA.

THE JIZÔ-DÔ was not easy to find, being hidden away in a court behind a street of small shops; and the entrance to the court itself --- a very narrow opening between two houses --- being veiled at every puff of wind by the fluttering sign-drapery of a dealer in second-hand clothing.
Because of the heat, the shôji of the little temple had been removed, leaving the sanctuary open to view on three sides, I saw the usual Buddhist furniture --- service-bell, reading-desk, and scarlet lacquered mokugyo, disposed upon the yellow matting. The altar supported a stone Jizô, wearing a bib for the sake of child ghosts; and above the statue, upon a long shelf, were smaller images gilded and painted, --- another Jizô, aureoled from head to feet, a radiant Amida, a sweet-faced Kwannon, and a grewsome figure of the Judge of Souls. Still higher were suspended a confused multitude of votive offerings, including two framed prints taken from American illustrated papers: a view of the Philadelphia Exhibition, and a portrait of Adelaide Neilson in the character of Juliet. In lieu of the usual flower vases before the honzon there were jars of glass bearing the inscription, --- "Reine Claude au jus; conservation garantie. Toussaint Cosnard: Bordeaux." And the box filled with incense-rods bore the legend: "Rich in flavor --- Pinhead Cigarettes." To the innocent folk who gave them, and who could never hope in this world to make costlier gifts, these ex-voto seemed beautiful because strange; and in spite of incongruities it seemed to me that the little temple did really look pretty.
A screen, with weird figures of Arhats creating dragons, masked the further chamber; and the song of an unseen uguisu sweetened the hush of the place. A red cat came from behind the screen to look at us, and retired again, as if to convey a message. Presently appeared an aged nun, who welcomed us and bade us enter; her smoothly shaven head shining like a moon at every reverence. We doffed our footgear, and followed her behind the screen, into a little room that opened upon a garden; and we saw the old priest seated upon a cushion, and writing at a very low table. He laid aside his brush to greet us; and we also took our places on cushions before him. Very pleasant his face was to look upon: all wrinkles written there by the ebb of life spake of that which was good.
The nun brought us tea, and sweetmeats stamped with the Wheel of the Law; the red cat curled itself up beside me; and the priest talked to us. His voice was deep and gentle; there were bronze tones in it, like the rich murmurings which follow each peal of a temple bell. We coaxed him to tell us about himself. He was eighty-eight years of age, and his eyes and ears were still as those of a young man; but he could not walk because of chronic rheumatism. For twenty years he had been occupied in writing a religious history of Japan, to be completed in three hundred volumes; and he had already completed two hundred and thirty. The rest he hoped to write during the coming year. I saw on a small book-shelf behind him the imposing array of neatly bound MSS.
"But the plan upon which he works," said my student interpreter, "is quite wrong. His history will never be published; it is full of impossible stories --- miracles and fairy-tales."
(I thought I should like to read the stories.)
"For one who has reached such an age," I said, "you seem very strong."
"The signs are that I shall live some years longer," replied the old man, "though I wish to live only long enough to finish my history. Then, as I am helpless and cannot move about, I want to die so as to get a new body. I suppose I must have committed some fault in a former life, to be crippled as I am. But I am glad to feel that I am nearing the Shore."
"He means the shore of the Sea of Death and Birth," says my interpreter. "The ship whereby we cross, you know, is the Ship of the Good Law; and the farthest shore is Nehan, --- Nirvana."
"Are all our bodily weaknesses and misfortunes," I asked, "the results of errors committed in other births?"
"That which we are," the old man answered, "is the consequence of that which we have been. We say in Japan the consequence of mangô and ingô, --- the two classes of actions."
"Evil and good?" I queried.
"Greater and lesser. There are no perfect actions. Every act contains both merit and demerit, just as even the best painting has defects and excellences. But when the sum of good in any action exceeds the sum of evil, just as in a good painting the merits outweigh be faults, then the result is progress. And gradually by such progress will all evil be eliminated."
"But how," l asked, "can the result of actions affect the physical conditions? The child follows the way of his fathers, inherits their strength or their weakness; yet not from them does he receive his soul."
"The chain of causes and effects is not easy to explain in a few words. To understand all you should study the Dai-jô or Greater Vehicle; also the Shô-jô, or Lesser Vehicle. There you will learn that the world itself exists only because of acts, Even as one learning to write, at first writes only with great difficulty, but afterward, becoming skillful, writes without knowledge of any effort, so the tendency of acts continually repeated is to form habit. And such tendencies persist far beyond this life."
"Can any man obtain the power to remember his former births?"
"That is very rare," the old man answered, shaking his head. "To have such memory one should first become a Bosatsu [Bodhissattva]."
"Is it not possible to become a Bosatsu?"
"Not in this age, This is the Period of Corruption. First there was the Period of True Doctrine, when life was long; and after it came the Period of Images, during which men departed from the highest truth; and now the world is degenerate. It is not now possible by good deeds to become a Buddha, because the world is too corrupt and life is too short. But devout persons may attain the Gokuraku [Paradise] by virtue of merit, and by constantly repeating the Nembutsu; and in the Gokuraku, they may be able to practice the true doctrine. For the days are longer there, and life also is very long."
"I have read in our translations of he Sutras," I said, "that by virtue of good deeds men may be reborn in happier and yet happier conditions successively, each time obtaining more perfect faculties, each time surrounded by higher joys. Riches are spoken of, and strength and beauty, and graceful women, and all that people desire in this temporary world. Wherefore I cannot help thinking that the way of progress must continually grow more difficult the further one proceeds. For if these texts be true, the more one succeeds in detaching one's self from the things of the senses, the more powerful become the temptations to return to them. So that the reward of virtue would seem itself to be made an obstacle in the path."
"Not so!" replied the old man. "They, who by self-mastery reach such conditions of temporary happiness, have gained spiritual force also, and some knowledge of truth. Their strength to conquer themselves increases more and more with every triumph, until they reach at last that world of Apparitional Birth, in which the lower forms of temptation have no existence."
The red cat stirred uneasily at a sound of geta, then went to the entrance, followed by the nun, There were some visitors waiting; and the priest begged us to excuse him a little while, that he might attend to their spiritual wants. We made place quickly for them, and they came in, --- poor pleasant folk, who saluted us kindly: a mother bereaved, desiring to have prayers said for the happiness of her little dead boy; a young wife to obtain the pity of the Buddha for her ailing husband; a father and daughter to seek divine help for somebody that had gone very far away. The priest spoke caressingly to all, giving to the mother some little prints of Jizô, giving a paper of blest rice to the wife, and on behalf of the father and daughter, preparing some holy texts. Involuntarily there came to me the idea of all the countless innocent prayers thus being daily made in countless temples; the idea of all the fears and hopes and heartaches of simple love; the idea of all the humble sorrows unheard by any save the gods. The student began to examine the old man's books, and I began to think of the unthinkable.

Life --- life as unity, uncreated, without beginning, --- of which we know the luminous shadows only; --- life forever striving against death, and always conquered yet always surviving --- what is it? --- why is it? A myriad times the universe is dissipated, --- a myriad times again evolved; and the same life vanishes with every vanishing, only to reappear in another cycling. The Cosmos becomes a nebula, the nebula a Cosmos: eternally the swarms of suns and worlds are born; eternally they die, But after each tremendous integration the flaming spheres cool down and ripen into life; and the life ripens into Thought. The ghost in each one of us must have passed through the burning of a million suns, --- must survive the awful vanishing of countless future universes. May not Memory somehow and somewhere also survive? Are we sure that in ways and forms unknowable it does not? As infinite vision, --- remembrance of the Future in the Past? Perhaps in the Night-without-end, as in deeps of Nirvana, dreams of all that has ever been, of all that can ever be, are being perpetually dreamed.

The parishioners uttered their thanks, made their little offerings to Jizô, and retired, saluting us as they went. We resumed our former places beside the little writing-table, and the old man said: ---
"It is the priest, perhaps, who among all men best knows what sorrow is in the world. I have heard that in the countries of the West there is also much suffering, although the Western nations are so rich."
"Yes," I made answer; "and I think that in Western countries there is more unhappiness than in Japan. For the rich there are larger pleasures, but for the poor greater pains. Our life is much more difficult to live; and, perhaps for that reason, our thoughts are more troubled by the mystery of the world."
The Priest seemed interested, but said nothing. With the interpreter's help, I continued: ---
"There are three great questions by which the minds of many men in the Western countries are perpetually tormented. These questions we call `the Whence, the Whither, and the Why,' meaning, Whence Life? Whither does it go? Why does it exist and suffer? Our highest Western Science declares them riddles impossible to solve, yet confesses at the same time that the heart of man can find no peace till they are solved. All religious have attempted explanations; and all their explanations are different. I have searched Buddhist books for answers to these questions, and I found answers which seemed tome better than any others. Still, they did not satisfy me, being incomplete. From your own lips I hope to obtain some answers to the first and the third questions at least. I do not ask for proof or for arguments of any kind: I ask only to know doctrine. Was the beginning of all things in universal Mind?"
To this question I really expected no definite answer, having, in the Sutra called Sabbâsava, read about "those things which ought not to be considered," and about the Six Absurd Notions, and the words of the rebuke to such as debate within themselves: "This is a being: whence did it come? whither will it go?" But the answer came, measured and musical, like a chant: ---
"All things considered as individual have come into being, through forms innumerable of development and reproduction, out of the universal Mind. Potentially within that mind they had existed from eternity. But between that we call Mind and that we call Substance there is no difference of essence. What we name Substance is only the sum of our own sensations and perceptions; and these themselves are but phenomena of Mind. Of Substance-in-itself we have not any knowledge. We know nothing beyond the phases of our mind, and these phases are wrought in it by outer influence or power, to which we give the name Substance. But Substance and Mind in themselves are only two phases of one infinite Entity."
"There are Western teachers also," I said, "who teach a like doctrine; and the most profound researches of our modern science seem to demonstrate that what we term Matter has no absolute existence. But concerning that infinite Entity of which you speak, is there any Buddhist teaching as to when and how It first produced those two forms which in name we still distinguish as Mind and Substance?"
"Buddhism," the old priest answered,
"does not teach, as other religions do, that things have been produced by creation. The one and only Reality is the universal Mind, called in Japanese Shinnyo, --- the Reality-in-its-very-self, infinite and eternal. Now this infinite Mind within Itself beheld Its own sentiency. And, even as one who in hallucination assumes apparitions to be actualities, so the universal Entity took for external existences that which It beheld only within Itself. We can this illusion Mu-myo, signifying `without radiance,' or `void of illumination.' "
"The word has been translated by some Western scholars," I observed, "as `Ignorance.' "
"So I have been told. But the idea conveyed by the word we use is not the idea expressed by the term `ignorance.' It is rather the idea of enlightenment misdirected, or of illusion."
"And what has been taught," I asked, "concerning the time of that illusion?"
"The time of the primal illusion is said to be Mu-shi, `beyond beginning,' in the incalculable past. From Shinnyo emanated the first distinction of the Self and the Not-Self, whence have arisen all individual existences, whether of Spirit or of Substance, and all those passions and desires, likewise, which influence the conditions of being through countless births. Thus the universe is the emanation of the infinite Entity; yet it cannot be said that we are the creations of that Entity. The original Self of each of us is the universal Mind; and within each of us the universal Self exists, together with the effects of the primal illusion. And this state of the original Self enwrapped in the results of illusion, we call Nyôrai-zô, or the Womb of the Buddha. The end for which we should all strive is simply our return to the infinite Original Self, which is the essence of Buddha."
"There is another subject of doubt," I said, "about which I much desire to know the teaching of Buddhism. Our Western science declares that the visible universe has been evolved and dissolved successively innumerable times during the infinite past, and must also vanish and reappear through countless cycles in the infinite future. In our translations of the ancient Indian philosophy, and of the sacred texts of the Buddhists, the same thing is declared. But is it not also taught that there shall come at last for all things a time of ultimate vanishing and of perpetual rest?"
He answered: "The Shô-jô indeed teaches that the universe has appeared and disappeared over and over again, times beyond reckoning in the past, and that it must continue to be alternately dissolved and reformed through unimaginable eternities to come. But we are also taught that all things shall enter finally and forever, into the state of Nehan,"
An irreverent yet irrepressible fancy suddenly arose within me. I cauld not help thinking of Absolute Rest as expressed by the scientific formula of two hundred and seventy-four degrees (centigrade) below zero, or 461°.2 Fahrenheit. But I only said: ---
"For the Western mind it is difficult to think of absolute rest as a condition of bliss. Does the Buddhist idea of Nehan include the idea of infinite stillness, of universal immobility?"
"No," replied the priest. "Nehan is the condition of Absolute Self-sufficiency, the state of all-knowing, all-perceiving. We do not suppose it a state of total inaction, but the supreme condition of freedom from all restraint. It is true that we cannot imagine a bodiless condition of perception or knowledge; because all our ideas and sensations belong to the condition of the body. But we believe that Nehan is the state of infinite vision and infinite wisdom and infinite spiritual peace."

The red cat leaped upon the priest's knees, and there curled itself into a posture of lazy comfort. The old man caressed it; and my companion observed, with a little laugh: ---
"See how fat it is! Perhaps it may have performed some good deeds in a previous life."
"Do the conditions of animals," I asked, "also depend upon merit and demerit in previous existences?"
The priest answered me seriously: ---
"All conditions of being depend upon conditions preëxisting, and Life is One. To be born into the world of men is fortunate; there we have some enlightenment, and chances of gaining merit. But the state of an animal is a state of obscurity of mind, deserving our pity and benevolence. No animal can be considered truly fortunate; yet even in the life of animals there are countless differences of condition."
A little silence followed, --- softly broken by the purring of the cat. I looked at the picture of Adelaide Neilson, just visible above the top of the screen; and I thought of Juliet, and wondered what the priest would say about Shakespeare's wondrous story of passion and sorrow, were I able to relate it worthily in Japanese. Then suddenly, like an answer to that wonder, came a memory of the two hundred and fifteenth verse of the Dhammapada: "From love comes grief; from grief comes fear: one who is free from love knows neither grief nor fear."
"Does Buddhism," I asked, "teach that all sexual love ought to be suppressed? Is such love of necessity a hindrance to enlightenment? I know that Buddhist priests, excepting those of the Shin-shû, are forbidden to marry; but I do not know what is the teaching concerning celibacy and marriage among the laity."
"Marriage may be either a hindrance or a help on the Path," the old man said, "according to conditions. All depends upon conditions. If the love of wife and child should cause a man to become too much attached to the temporary advantages of this unhappy world, then such love would be a hindrance. But, on the contrary, if the love of wife and child should enable a man to live more purely and more unselfishly than he could do in a state of celibacy, then marriage would be a very great help to him in the Perfect Way. Many are the dangers of marriage for the wise; but for those of little understanding the dangers of celibacy are greater. And even the illusion of passion may sometimes lead noble natures to the higher knowledge. There is a story of this. Dai-Mokukenren, whom the people call Mokuren, was a disciple of Shaka. He was a very comely man; and a girl became enamored of him. As he belonged already to the Order, she despaired of being ever able to have him for her husband; and she grieved in secret. But at last she found courage to go to the Lord Buddha, and to speak all her heart to him. Even while she was speaking, he cast a deep sleep upon her; and she dreamed she was the happy wife of Mokuren. Years of contentment seemed to pass in her dream; and after them years of joy and sorrow mingled; and suddenly her husband was taken away from her by death. Then she knew such sorrow that she wondered how she could live; and she awoke in that pain, and saw the Buddha smile. And he said to her: `Little Sister, thou hast seen. Choose now as thon wilt, --- either to be the bride of Mokuren, or to seek the higher Way upon which he has entered.' Then she cut off her hair, and became a nun, and in aftertime attained to the condition of one never to be reborn."

For a moment it seemed to me that the story did not show how love's illusion could lead to self-conquest; that the girl's conversion was only the direct result of painful knowledge forced upon her, not a conseqnence of her love. But presently I reflected that the vision accorded her could have produced no high result in a selfish or unworthy soul. I thought of disadvantages unspeakable which the possession of foreknowledge might involve in the present order of life; and felt it was a blessed thing for most of us that the future shaped itself behind a veil. Then I dreamed that the power to lift that veil might be evolved or won, just so soon as such a faculty should be of real benefit to men, but not before; and I asked: ---
"Can the power to see the Future be obtained through enlightenment?"
The priest answered: ---
"Yes. When we reach that state of enlightenment in which we obtain the Roku-Jindzû, or Six Mysterious Faculties, then we can see the Future as well as the Past. Such power comes at the same time as the power of remembering former births. But to attain to that condition of knowledge, in the present age of the world, is very difficult."

My companion made me a stealthy sign that it was time to say good-by. We had stayed rather long --- even by the measure of Japanese etiquette, which is generous to a fault in these matters. I thanked the master of the temple for his kindness in replying to my fantastic questions, and ventured to add: ---
"There are a hundred other things about which I should like to ask you, but to-day I have taken too much of your time. May I come again?"
"It will make me very happy," he said. "Be pleased to come again as soon as you desire. I hope you will not fail to ask about all things which are still obscure to you. It is by earnest inquiry that truth may be known and illusions dispelled. Nay, come often --- that I may speak to you of the Shô-jô. And these I pray you to accept."
He gave me two little packages. One contained white sand --- sand from the holy temple of Zenkôji, whither all good souls make pilgrimage after death. The other contained a very small white stone, said to be a shari, or relic of the body of a Buddha.

I hoped to visit the kind old man many times again. But a school contract took me out of the city and over the mountains; and I saw him no more.