CHINESE.
Buddhist Scriptures: Man never dies. The soul inhabits the body for a time, and leaves it again. The soul is myself : the body is only my dwelling place. Birth is not birth: there is a soul already exist ent when the body comes to it. Death is not death: the soul merely departs, and the body falls. It is because men see only their bodies that they love life and hate death." The writings of Kwang-tae (Book XVIII, 4): Kwang-tze went to Khu, he saw an empty skull, bleached indeed, but still retaining its shape. Tapping it with his horse-switch, he asked it, saying, 'Did you, Sir, in your greed of life, fail in the lessons of reason and come to this? Or did you do so, in the service of a perishing state, by the punishment of the axe? Or was it through your evil conduct, reflect ing disgrace on your parents, and on your wife and children? Or was it through your hard endurances of cold and hunger? Or was it that you had completed your term of life? ) °Having given expression to these questions, he took up the skull and made a pillow of it when he went to sleep. At midnight the skull appeared to him in a. dream, and said, 'What
you said to 'me was after the fashion of an orator. All your words were about the entangle ments of men in this life-time. There are none of those things after death. Would you like to hear me, Sir, tell you about death?) should,) said Kwang-tze, and the skull resumed: 'In death there are not (the distinctions of) ruler above and minister below. There are none of the phenomena of the four seasons. Tran quil and at ease, our years are those of heaven and earth. No king in his court has greater enjoyment than we Kwang-tze did not believe it, and said, I could get the Ruler of our Destiny to restore your body to life with its bones and flesh and skin, and to give you back your father and mother, your wife and children, and all your village acquaintances, would you wish me to do so?) The skull stared fixedly at him, knitted its brows, and said, 'How should I cast away the enjoyment of my royal court and undertake again the toils of life among mankind?) 2