The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and JapanNukariya, Kaiten
Religion
The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan
Nukariya, Kaiten
Buddhism -- China; Buddhism -- Japan; China -- Religion; Human beings -- Origin; Japan -- Religion; Zen Buddhism
In the first place, Bowne's conception of the physical organism as
but an instrument for the expression of the inner, personal life,
just as the telegraphic apparatus is the instrument for the
expression of messages, is erroneous, because body is not a mere
instrument of inner personal life, but an essential constituent of
it. Who can deny that one's physical conditions determine one's
character or personality? Who can overlook the fact that one's
bodily conditions positively act upon one's personal life? There is
no physical organism which remains as a mere passive mechanical
instrument of inner life within the world of experience. Moreover,
individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you
may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical
condition, is sheer abstraction. There is no such concrete
personality or individuality within our experience.
In the second place, he conceives the physical organism simply as a
mark or symbol, and inner personal life as the thing marked or
symbolized; so he compares physical forms with paper, types, books,
and libraries, and inner life, with literature. In so doing he
overlooks the essential and inseparable connection between the
physical organism and inner life, because there is no essential
inseparable connection between a mark or symbol and the thing marked
or symbolized. The thing may adopt any other mark or symbol. The
black marks on the white paper, to use his figure, are not essential
to literature. Literature may be expressed by singing, or by speech,
or by a series of pictures. But is there inner life expressed, or
possible to be expressed, in any other form save physical organism?
We must therefore acknowledge that inner life is identical with
physical organism, and that reality is one and the same as appearance.
18. All the Worlds in Ten Directions are Buddha's Holy Land.
We are to resume this problem in the following chapter. Suffice it
to say for the present it is the law of Universal Life that
manifoldness is in unity, and unity is in manifoldness; difference is
in agreement, and agreement in difference; confliction is in harmony,
and harmony in confliction; parts are in the whole, and the whole is
in parts; constancy is in change, and change in constancy; good is in
bad, and bad in good; integration is in disintegration, and
disintegration is in integration; peace is in disturbance, and
disturbance in peace. We can find something celestial among the
earthly. We can notice something glorious in the midst of the base
and degenerated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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