CHINA: JAPAN LAMAIS3I.
Buddhismacceptswithout questioning the doc trine of transmigration, which lies at the root of so much that is strange in the Eastern character. For a particular account of this important doc trine or notion. which seems ingrained in the constitution of Eastern minds. and without a knowledge of which no phase of thought or feel ing among them can be understood, the reader is referred to METExiesvcnosts; while the peculiar cosmogony or system of the universe with which it is associated, and which is substantially the same among Hindus and Buddhists. will be described under INnik. It is sufficient here to say that, according to Buddhist belief, when a man dies he is immediately born again, or appears in a new shape: and that shape may. according to his merit or demerit, be any of the innumerable orders of being that compose the Buddhist universe—from a clod to a divinity. If his demerit would not he sufficiently punished by a degraded earthly existence—in the form, for instance, of a woman or a slave, of a perse cuted or a disgusting animal—he will be born in some one of the 136 Buddhist hells, situated in the interior of the earth. These places of pun ishment have a regular gradation in the inten sity of the suffering and in the length of time the sufferers live, the least term of life being 10,000,000 of years, the longer terms being al most beyond the powers of even Indian notation to express. A meritorious life, on the other hand, secures the next birth either in an exalted and happy position on earth, or as a blessed spirit, or even divinity, in one of the many heav ens, in which the least duration of life is about ten billions of years. But however long the life, whether of misery or of bliss, it has an end, and at its close the individual must he horn again, and may again he either happy or miserable— either a god or, it may he. the vilest inanimate object.• The Buddha himself, before his last birth as Sakyamuni, had gone through every conceivable form of existence on the earth, in the air, and in the water, in hell and in heaven, and had filled every condition in human life. When he attained the perfect knowledge of the he was able to recall all these exist ences; and a great part of the Buddhist legend ary literature is taken up in narrating his ex ploits when he lived as an elephant, as a bird, as a stag. and so forth.
The Buddhist conception of the way in which the quality of actions—which is expressed in Sanskrit by the word karma, including both merit and de merit—determines the future condition of all sentient beings, is peculiar. They do not con ceive any god or gods as being pleased or dis pleased by the actions. and as assigning the actors their future condition by way of punish ment or of reward. The very idea of a god, as creating or in any way ruling the world, is ut terly absent in the Buddhist system. God is not so much as denied; he is simply not known. Contrary to the opinion once confidently and generally held, that a nation of atheists never existed, it is no longer to be disputed that the numerous Buddhist nations are essentially athe ist; for they know no beings with greater super natural,power than any man is supposed capable of attaining to by virtue. austerity, and science.
The future condition of the Buddhist, then, is not assigned him by the Ruler of the Universe; the 'karma' of his actions determines it by a sort of virtue inherent in the nature of things— by the blind and miconsehms (-oneatenation of cause and effect.. But the laws by which conse quences are regulated seem dark, and even capricious. A had action may lie dormant, as it were, for many existences; the taint, however. is there, and it will some time or other break out. A Buddhist is thus never at a loss to ac count for any calamity that may befall himself or others.
Another basis of Buddhism is the assumption that human existence is on the whole miserable, and a curse rather than a blessing. Au enervat ing climate and political conditions may have aided in producing the feeling common to Brah man and Buddhist that life is evil. But the root of the matter is philosophical. Life is a whole; nature is a whole; to he born is to become sepa rate or individualized from the whole. Individ uality implies limitation; limitation implies er ror; error implies ignorance, Hence birth is an evil because it is inseparable from ignorance, and it is only the removal of ignorance which can lead to the suppression of desire, while only the suppression of desire can lead to peace. The little value that llindus set upon their lives is manifested in many ways. The punishment of death, again, has little or no terror for them, and is even sometimes coveted as an honor.
In the eyes, then. of Sakyamuni and his fol lowers, sentient existence was hopelessly miser able. :\lisery was not a mere taint in it, the removal of which would make it happy—misery was its very essence. Death was no escape from this inevitable lot, for, according to the doctrine of transmigration, death was only a passage into some other form of existence equally doomed. Even the heaven and the state of god head, which form part of the cycle of changes in this system, were not final; and this thought poisoned what happiness they might be capable of yielding. Brahman philosophers had sought escape from this endless cycle of unsatisfying changes by making the individual soul be ab sorbed in the universal spirit t Brahman) ; Gan tama had the same object in view—viz., exemp tion from being born again; but he had not the smite means of reaching it. He recognized no soul, and his philosophy was utterly atheistic, Gautama sees no escape but in what he calls Nirvana, literally 'extinction,' 'blowing out..' of desire; but most Orientalists are agreed that in the Buddhist scriptures generally it is equiva lent to annihilation. Even in those schools which attempt to draw a distinction, the distinc tion is of the most evanescent kind. See NIR