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WISDOM OF THE EAST
BUDDHIST PSALMS
TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE
OF
SHINRAN SHONIN
BY S. YAMABE AND L. ADAMS BECK
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LAUDING THE INFINITE ONE
OF PARADISE
CONCERNING THE GREAT SUTRA
CONCERNING THE SUTRA OF THE MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE LESSER SUTRA
OF THE MANY SUTRAS CONCERNING THE INFINITE ONE
CONCERNING THE WELFARE OF THE PRESENT WORLD
OF THANKSGIVING FOR NAGARJUNA, THE GREAT TEACHER OF INDIA
OF THANKSGIVING FOR VASUBANDH, THE GREAT TEACHER OF INDIA
OF THANKSGIVING FOR DONRAN, THE GREAT TEACHER OF CHINA
CONCERNING UNRIGHTEOUS DEEDS
CONCERNING DOSHAKU-ZENJI
CONCERNING ZENDO-DAISHI
CONCERNING GENSHIN-SOZU
CONCERNING HONEN SHONIN
OF THE THREE PERIODS
CONCERNING BELIEF AND DOUBT
IN PRAISE OF PRINCE SHOTOKU
WHEREIN WITH LAMENTATION I MAKE MY CONFESSION
ADDITIONAL PSALMS
INTRODUCTION
BY L. ADAMS BECK
It is a singular fact that though many of the earlier Buddhist
Scriptures have been translated by competent scholars, comparatively
little attention has been paid to later Buddhist devotional
writings, and this although the developments of Buddhism in China
and Japan give them the deepest interest as reflecting the spiritual
mind of those two great countries. They cannot, however, be
understood without some knowledge of the faith which passed so
entirely into their life that in its growth it lost some of its own
infant traits and took on others, rooted, no doubt, in the
beginnings in India, but expanded and changed as the features of the
child may be forgotten in the face of the man and yet perpetuate the
unbroken succession of heredity. It is especially true that Japan
cannot be understood without some knowledge of the Buddhism of the
Greater Vehicle (as the developed form is called), for it was the
influence that moulded her youth as a nation, that shaped her
aspirations, and was the inspiration of her art, not only in the
written word, but in every art and higher handicraftsmanship that
makes her what she is. Whatever centuries may pass or the future
hold in store for her, Japan can never lose the stamp of Buddhism in
her outer or her spiritual life.
The world knows little as yet of the soul of Mahayana Buddhism,
though much of its outer observance, and for this reason a crucial
injustice has been done in regarding it merely as a degraded form of
the earlier Buddhism--a rank off-shoot of the teachings of the
Gautama Buddha, a system of idolatry and priestly power from which
the austere purity of the earlier faith has passed away.
The truth is that Buddhism, like Christianity, in every country
where it has sowed its seed and reaped its harvest, developed along
the lines indicated by the mind of that people. The Buddhism of
Japan differs from that of Tibet as profoundly as the Christianity
of Abyssinia from that of Scotland--yet both have conserved the
essential principle.
Buddhism was not a dead abstraction, but a living faith, and it
therefore grew and changed with the growth of the mind of man,
enlarging its perception of truth. As in the other great faiths, the
ascent of the Mount of Vision reveals worlds undreamed, and
proclaims what may seem to be new truths, but are only new aspects
of the Eternal. Japanese Buddhists still base their belief on the
utterances of the Buddhas, but they have enlarged their conception
of the truths so taught, and they hold that the new flower and fruit
spring from the roots that were planted in dim ages before the
Gautama Buddha taught in India, and have since rushed hundred-armed
to the sun. Such is the religious history of mankind, and Buddhism
obeys its sequence.
The development of Mahayana Buddhism from the teaching of the
Gautama Buddha has been often compared with that of the Christian
faith from the Jewish, but it may be better compared with the growth
of a sacerdotal system from the simplicities of the Gospel of
St. Mark. That the development should have been on the same lines in
all essential matters of symbol and (in the most important respects)
of doctrine, modified only by Eastern habits of thought and
environment, is a miracle of coincidence which cannot be paralleled
in the world unless it be granted that Christianity filtering along
the great trade routes of an earlier world joined hands with
Buddhism in many unsuspected ways and places. Evidence is
accumulating that this is so, and in a measure at present almost
incredible. And if it be so--if it be true that in spite of racial
distinctions, differences of thought and circumstance, the religious
thought of East and West has so many and so great meeting-points,
the hope of the world in things spiritual may lie in the recognition
of that fact and in a future union now shadowed forth only in symbol
and in a great hope. This, however, is no essay on Buddhism, either
earlier or later, and what I have said is necessary to the
introduction of these Jodo-Wasan, or Psalms of the Pure Land, which
are a part not only of the literature, but also of the daily worship
and spiritual life of Japan. Their history may be briefly told.
Buddhism passed into Japan from China and Korea about 1320 years
ago, in or about the year A.D. 552. It adapted itself with perfect
comprehension to the ideals of the Japanese people, inculcating
among them the teachings of morality common to the great faiths
with, in addition, the spiritual unction, the passion of love and
sympathy, self-devotion, and compassion, in which Buddhism and
Christianity are alike pre-eminent. The negative side of Buddhism,
with its passionless calm and self-renunciation, is the only one
that has been realised in the West, and the teachings of Mahayana
which have borne fruit and flower, visible to all the world, of
happiness, courtesy, kindliness in the spiritual attitude of a whole
people, have never received the honour which was their due.
For with the Buddhist faith there came the germ of the belief that
the Gautama Buddha in his own grandeur bore witness to One
Greater--the Amitabha or Amida Buddha--that One who in boundless
light abideth, life of the Universe, without colour, without form,
the Lover of man, his Protector and Refuge. He may, He must be
worshipped, for in Him are all the essential attributes of Deity,
and He, the Saviour of mankind, has prepared a pure land of peace
for his servants, beyond the storms of life and death. This belief
eventually crystallised and became a dogma in the faith of the Pure
Land, known in Japan as Jodo Shinshu, a faith held by the majority
of the Japanese people. It is a Belief which has spread also in
Eastern Siberia, many parts of China, Hawaii, and, in fact,
whereever the Japanese race has spread. And the man who stated this
belief for all time was Shinran Shonin, author of the Psalms here
presented.
He was born in the year A.D. 1175 near City-Royal--Kyoto, the
ancient capital of Japan. He was a son of one of the noblest
families, in close connection with the Imperial House, and had it
not been for the passion for truth and the life of the spirit which
consumed him, his history would have been that of the many other
brilliant young men who sank into mere courtiers--"Dwellers above
the Clouds," as the royalties and courtiers of the day were called
among the people. But the clear air above the clouds in which his
spirit spread its wings was not that of City-Royal, and the Way
opened before him as it has opened before many a saint of the
Christian Church, for while still a child he lost both his parents,
and so, meditating on the impermanence of mortal life, and seeing
how the fashion of this world passes away, he abandoned his title
and became a monk in one of the noble monasteries whose successors
still stand glorious among the pine woods above Lake Biwa.
These were not only monasteries, but seats of learning, as in Europe
in the Middle Ages, and here the Doctrines were subjected to
brilliant analysis and logical subtleties which had almost
superseded the living faith. In that cold atmosphere the spirit of
Shiran Shonin could not spread its wings, though for twenty years he
gave his thoughts to its empty glitter. Therefore, at the age of
twenty-nine he cast it all behind him, and in deep humility cast
himself at the feet of the great Teacher Honen, who, in the shades
of Higashiyama, was setting forth the saving power of the Eternal
One who abideth in the Light and in whom is no darkness--the Buddha
of Boundless Light. And in this place and from this man Shinran
received enlightenment.
Life now lay before him as a problem. Unlike as the two men are in
character and methods, his position resembled that of Martin Luther
on quitting the Church of Rome. For the Buddhist monastic rule
requires its members to be homeless, celibate, vegetarian, and here,
like Luther, Shinran joined issue with them. To his mind the
attainment of man lay in the harmonious development of body and
spirit, and in the fulfilment, not the negation of the ordinary
human duties. Accordingly, in his thirty-first year, after deep
consideration, he married the daughter of Prince Kujo Kanezane,
Chief Minister of the Emperor and head of one of the greatest houses
in Japan, and in that happy union he tasted four years of simple
domestic joy, during which a son was born to him. Then the storm
broke.
Trouble was stirred up by the orthodox Buddhist Church with evil
reports which reached the ears of the Emperor, and Shinran was sent
into banishment in the lonely and primitive province of Echigo--a
terrible alternative for a man of noble birth and refined
culture. He took it, however, with perfect serenity as a mission to
those untaught and neglected people, and into their darkness he
brought the light of the Father of Lights, and the people flocked to
the warmth and wonder of the new hope, and heard him gladly. The
story is told by a contemporary, whom I have thus rendered:
"In the spring of the third year of the era of Kennin, the age of
Shinran Shonin was twenty-nine. Driven by the desire for seclusion,
he departed to the monastery of Yoshimizu. For as his day was so
remote from the era of the Lord Buddha, and the endurance of man in
the practice of religious austerity was now weakened, he would fain
seek the one broad, straight way that is now made plain before us,
leaving behind him the more devious and difficult roads in which he
had a long time wandered. For so it was that Honen Shonin, the great
teacher of the Doctrine of the Land of Pure Light, had taught him
plainly of the inmost heart of the Faith, raising up in him the firm
foundation of that teaching. Therefore he certainly received at that
time the true meaning of the Divine Promise of universal salvation,
and attained unto the imperishable faith by which alone the ignorant
can enter into Nirvana without condition or price.
"From the province of Echigo Shinran passed onward to that of
Hitachi, and entered into seclusion at Inada, that little village of
the region of Kasama. Very lonely was his dwelling, yet many
disciples sought after him, and though the humble door of the
monastery was closed against them, many nobles and lesser persons
thronged into the village. So his hope of spreading abroad the Holy
Teaching was fulfilled and his desire to bring joy to the people was
satisfied. Thus he declared that the revelation vouchsafed to him in
the Temple of Rokkaku by the Bodhisattwa of Pity was indeed made
manifest."
It is that revelation which speaks in these Psalms--the love,
aspiration, passion for righteousness and humility which are the
heart of all the great religious utterances of the world.
"Alas for me, Shinran, the ignorant exile who sinks into the deeps
of the great ocean of human affections, who toils to climb the high
mountains of worldly prosperity, and is neither glad to be with them
who return no more to illusion, nor takes delight in approaching
more nearly to true enlightenment. O the pity of it! O the shame of
it!"
This cry alternates with the joy of perfect aspiration, and it is
that which keeps these psalms in warm human touch with the
spirituality that is neither of race nor time, but for eternity.
He was sixty-two years of age when he returned from exile to
City-Royal, and though he made it his centre, it was his home no
more. He wandered from place to place, teaching as he went, after
the manner of the Buddhas. At the age of ninety his strength
suddenly failed, and the next day he passed away in perfect peace.
Such were the outward events of his life; his own writings must give
the history of his soul. His teachings to-day are spread far and
wide in the land of his birth, and are an inspiration to millions
within and without its shores. In him was the harmonised spirit of
Buddhism at its highest. Those who can enter into the heart of
Shinran Shonin will have gained understanding of the heart of a
mighty people which is said to be impossible of Western reading, and
yet in its essentials is simple as the heart of a child.
L. ADAMS BECK.
EDITORIAL NOTE
The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite
one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these
books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding
between East and West--the old world of Thought and the new of
Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but
followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident
that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of
Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of
Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another
creed and colour.
L. CRANMER-BYNG. S. A. KAPADIA.
NORTHBROOK SOCIETY, 21 CROMWELL ROAD, KENSINGTON, S.W.
BUDDHIST PSALMS
LAUDING THE INFINITE ONE
1. Since He who is Infinite attained unto the Wisdom Supreme, the
long, long ages of ten Kalpas have rolled away.
The Light of His Dharma-Kaya is in this world eyes to the blind.
2. Seek refuge in the True Illumination! For the light of His Wisdom
is infinite.
In all the worlds there is nothing upon which His light shines not.
3. Take refuge in the Light universal.
As the Light of His deliverance is boundless, he who is within it is
freed from the lie of affirmation or denial.
4. Seek refuge in That which is beyond understanding,
For His glory is all-embracing as the air. It shineth and pierceth
all things, and there is nothing hid from the light thereof.
5. Take refuge in the ultimate Strength, for His pure radiance is
above all things. He who perceiveth this Light is set free from the
fetters of Karma.
6. Seek refuge in the World-Honoured.
Since His glorious radiance is above all He is called the Buddha of
Divine Light. And by Him is the darkness of the three worlds
Enlightened.
7. Excellent is the Light of His Wisdom. Therefore is he called the
Buddha of Clear Shining.
He who is within the Light, being washed from the soil of Karma,
shall attain unto the final deliverance.
8. Take refuge in the Mighty Consoler. Wheresoever His mercy shineth
throughout all the worlds, men rejoice in its gladdening light.
9. The darkness of ignorance perisheth before His light. Therefore
is He hailed as the Buddha of Radiant Wisdom. All the Buddhas and
the threefold choir of sages praise Him.
10. His glory shineth for ever and ever. Therefore is He called the
Buddha of Everlasting Light.
Most excellent is the virtue of this light, for he who perceiveth it
is born into Paradise without dissolution of being.
11. The glory of the Infinite is boundless, therefore is He known as
the Buddha of Light Past Comprehension.
All the Buddhas glorify the majesty of His holiness that leadeth all
the earth into His Kingdom.
12. His clear shining transcendeth all revelation, nor can human
speech utter it. Therefore is He named the Buddha of Light
Unspeakable.
All the Buddhas glorify the glory of the Infinite One who is Buddha
through His promise of Light immeasurable.
13. Take refuge in Him who is Holiest of Holy. Sun and moon are
lost in the ocean of His splendour. Therefore is He named that
Infinite in whose radiance Sun and Moon are darkened. Before whose
Divine Power even that Buddha made flesh in India himself faltereth
in ascribing praise to the Majesty of His true glory.
14. Far beyond human numbering are the wise in the high assemblage
of the Infinite One. Therefore let him who would be born into the
Land of Purity seek refuge in the Great Congregation.
15. In Paradise are the Mighty unnumbered, Bodhisattvas ranked in
that hierarchy nearest to the Perfect Enlightenment. Thence are they
made flesh upon earth according to the way of salvation that all
having life might be saved.
16. Take refuge in the ocean-deep Soul Universal.
For the sake of all dwelling in the Ten Regions hath He kept the
fullness of all the Teachings, in His divine and mighty promises.
17. He who is Infinite never resteth, for together with the
Bodhisattvas of Compassion and Pure Reason He laboureth, that the
souls of them that duly receive Him may have salvation, enlightening
them with the light of His mercy.
18. When he who is born into the land of Pure Peace returneth again
into this sinful world, even like unto that Buddha made flesh in
India, he wearieth not in seeking the welfare of all men.
19. Seek refuge in the World-Honoured, for His Divine Power is
Almighty and beyond man's measure, being made perfect in
inconceivable Holiness.
20. The Sravakas, the Bodhisattvas, the Heavenly Beings and Souls in
Paradise, they in whom wisdom is made equal unto beauty, declare
their attributes in order, according to their former birth.
21. Seek refuge in Him in whom all strengths are equal.
Nought is there to compare with the excellent beauty of the Souls in
Paradise, for their being is infinite as space, and far are they
above celestials and mortal man.
22. Whoso would be born into Paradise shall in this life be made one
with those men that return no more unto birth and death.
In that Pure Land is none who hath stood among doubting men, and
none also who hath trusted in his own deeds for Salvation. To this
do all the Buddhas witness.
23. If all having life in the Ten Regions hear this Holiest Name of
Him that is Infinite, and attain unto the true faith, they shall
obtain joy and gladness.
24. For when a man with joy accepteth the sacred vow of Him that is
infinite who saith, "I will not attain unto perfect Enlightenment
unless in Me shall all the world be made whole," at that very time
he shall assuredly be born into Paradise.
25. Seek refuge in the Almighty Spirit.
By the divine might of His promise, by the Infinite One was Paradise
created; yea, and the Souls of men that dwell therein. And there is
nought that may compare with them.
26. Seek refuge in the unutterable Wisdom.
Of His Land of Peace the half cannot be told. Even the word of the
Buddha himself could not utter it.
27. Myriads of happy souls were born, are born and shall be born
into that Land of Purity, not from this world alone, but from the
hidden worlds also, and the Ten Regions.
28. So soon as man heareth the holy name of the Infinite One and
with great gladness praiseth him, he shall attain to the reward of
the holy Treasury of Merit.
29. Go forward, O Valiant Souls, seeking the Law though all the
worlds fall into flame and ruin, for ye shall have passed beyond
birth and death!
30. The innumerable Buddhas praise the triumphant divinity of the
Bringer of Light. To Him do gather the myriad Bodhisattvas,
unnumbered as the Sands of Ganges in worship from the Eastern world.
31. As from the East, so gather also to the Infinite One the
Bodhisattvas from the Nine Regions of the worlds.
With Sacred Psalms the Gautama Buddha himself laudeth the boundless
glory of the Infinite One.
32. Seek refuge in the World-Honoured.
To Him do the myriad Buddhas of the ten Regions bring homage with
songs and praises, that they may sow the seeds of merit.
33. Bring homage to the Hall of Great Teaching and to the living Bo
tree that is in Paradise! Yet this land, glorious with the Holy
Tree, radiant with the Hall of Great Teaching that shineth with the
Seven Jewels, where innumerable souls hastening from all the ends of
the Earth shall be born, is but the temporal Paradise.
34. In awful reverence seek refuge in the purity of Him that
welcometh. For by His Divine Promise was this glorious land, great
beyond human measurement, made to be.
35. Seek refuge in the wisdom inconceivable. For the perfection of
His Virtue--that Virtue availing for all the world, and the perfect
way by which He willeth that man shall take refuge in Him, are past
all human speech or thought.
36. Take refuge in the wisdom that is most truly infinite. For He is
faithful, having promised in His Divine Might, and on his perfect
clear promise that cannot be shaken is the merciful way of salvation
builded.
OF PARADISE
37. Seek refuge in the heavenly harmony.
For the jewel groves and gem trees of Paradise give forth a sweet
and most excellent melody in pure and ordered unison.
38. Seek refuge in the Divine Promise, the Treasury of Merit,
For the seven jewel trees are fragrant in Paradise where the
flowers, the fruits, the branches and the leaves thereof
Cast back their radiance the one to the other.
39. Bring homage to the perfect Righteousness.
As the pure wind blows over the trees glorious with jewels,
It draweth from them a noble music with five-fold strains of
harmony.
40. In all the world is no place hidden from the glory shed by
hundreds of myriad rays from the heart of every flower of Paradise.
41. Like unto a golden mountain reflecting the myriad rays of these
heavenly blossoms, so is the form of the Infinite One.
42. From His Sacred Body, as from a well-spring, floweth this light
over the Ten Regions of the world.
By His Sacred teaching He leadeth all having life into the way of
light.
43. Seek refuge in the Treasury of Righteousness.
For in Paradise is that holy lake, with its waters of eightfold
Virtue, all-glorious with the seven jewels. And all this is the
inconceivable handiwork of Purity.
44. Seek refuge in the All-Honoured.
For when sorrow and sighing are fled away, the Holy Land shall
rejoice with joy and singing. Therefore is it called Paradise.
45. The Buddhas of the Three Ages and the Ten Regions, they in whom
the Dual Wisdom is perfect and their illumination entire, lead all
the worlds marvellously into the way of Salvation, the Truth being
their Vehicle.
46. He that seeketh refuge in the Kingdom of the Infinite One is a
citizen of the Kingdom of every Buddha.
Let him that is set free, with single heart give praises unto One
Buddha, for in so doing he praiseth all.
47. The faithful believer at that moment when he rejoiceth in the
sound of the name of the Infinite One hath revealed unto his very
eyes the Buddha of Light.
48. Let him that hath faith praise the Virtue of the Divine Wisdom.
Let him strive to declare it unto all men that he may offer his
thankfulness for the grace of the Buddha.
CONCERNING THE GREAT SUTRA
49. The Venerable Ananda, rising from his seat, and looking upwards
to the World-Honoured Gautama Buddha, his eyes being opened,
marvelled greatly, seeing the glory of his Lord so transfigured.
50. The Venerable Ananda asked the Cause of that glory, for the
Lord, shining in the Light that was hitherto unseen of the world,
taught openly, for the first time, that Truth for which He came into
the world.
51. In the meditation of the Great Calm the Buddha whose countenance
is glorious, commendeth the most excellent wisdom of Ananda for that
he asked the way of knowledge, desiring to be instructed.
52. That Buddha that was made flesh in India was in this world
manifested that he might preach the Divine Promise of Him who is
Infinite.
Hard is it to see the hidden blossom of the myriad-century-blooming
Lotus, so hard also is it for a man's understanding to receive the
message of that Blessed One.
53. Ten Kalpas of Ages have rolled away since He who is Infinite
attained unto the Wisdom, yet before the myriads of the Kalpas He
_was_.
54. He who is of the Light Ineffable, Holiest Refuge of men,
ordaining that His saving grace should be made manifest, duly
considered all the worlds of the Ten Regions, under the guidance of
the holy Buddha of Loka-is-Vara-Raja.
55. Purity, Rejoicing, Wisdom, these three are the Supernal Essence
of the light of the Infinite One that enlighteneth all things,
communicating good to all the worlds of the Ten Regions.
56. Teaching all that have life in the Ten Regions, that they might,
with sincerity, faith, and hope, be born again into Paradise, He set
forth that promise infinite and divine--the true seed of birth
within the Kingdom of Truth.
57. Whoso attaineth unto the True Faith is in unity with them that
return no more to birth and death, for having thus attained, they
pass onward into Nirvana, their lives being ended.