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It has repudiated the corrupt rites and the degrading superstitions of Hinduism. At the same time its hatred of the Christian faith is most bitter and intense. And there are other alliances, not a few, between the East and the West. In India and Japan the old Buddhism is compounded with American Spiritualism and with modern Evolution, under a new application of the ancient name of Theosophy.
Nor did Buddhism deny the existence of goblins and evil gods: these were identified with the Pretas and the Merakayikas; and the Japanese popular term for goblin, Ma, to-day reminds us of this identification. As for wicked ghosts, they were to be thought of as Pretas only, Gaki, self-doomed by the errors of former lives to the Circle of Perpetual Hunger.
And in spite of the strong opposition to this cult manifested in Indian literature, beginning with the Rig-Veda, and ripening to fruition in the Upanishads, in spite of the rise of Buddhism, with its opposing dictum of renunciation, the 'Life-Cult' asserted its essential vitality against all opposition, and under modified forms represents the 'popular' religion of India to this day.
This is called Shamanism, and is said to have been the religion of the Tartar race before the introduction of Buddhism, and is still the creed of the Siberians; a memory of solitary canoes on moonlit seas and of spicy pine odors mingled with the tonic of moist kelp and salt-sea air. A memory of friends who were altogether charming, of a festival without a flaw.
Thus, once more, and this time not from unworthy motives, attention is directed to this life rather than to the next; and it is this point that is critical for the fate both of the belief in immortality and of religion itself. At this point, religion may, as in the case of Buddhism it actually has done, formally give up and disavow belief in immortality.
When he died they left the U.F. Church and became Episcopalians, then Miss Clarice found that she couldn't believe in vicarious sacrifice and went over to Buddhism. She took me into her bedroom once. There was a thick yellow carpet, and a bed with a tapestry cover, and almost no furniture, except is it impious to call Buddha furniture? a large figure of Buddha with a lamp burning before it.
Soo-ho-to has not been clearly identified. Beal says that later Buddhist writers include it in Udyana. It must have been between the Indus and the Swat. I suppose it was what we now call Swastene. In that country also Buddhism is flourishing. In this way the people of the country became aware of the fact, and on the spot reared a tope, adorned with layers of gold and silver plates.
In this sense, then, the influence of Buddhism and the condition of the Orient may be called "impersonal," but it is the impersonality of a defective religious psychology, and of communalism in the social order. Whether it is right to call this feature of Japan "impersonality," I leave with the reader to judge.
A temple in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic worship of relics is only an appropriation of this form of heathenism. Christian schools and churches are doing much to undermine Buddhism in Ceylon.
The Chinese are emphatically not a religious people, though they are very superstitious. Belief in a God has come down from the remotest ages, but the old simple creed has been so overlaid by Buddhism as not to be discernible at the present day. Buddhism is now the dominant religion of China.
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