CHAPTER XIII

SPIRITUAL CONCEPTIONS IN CHINA AND JAPAN

THOUGH the home of Buddhism was originally in India, it is in Thibet, China and Japan that we must now look to find its hundreds of millions of adherents. This form of religion,—though very pure at its fountain-head, and truly philanthropic in its every original sentiment, as it emanated from that great spiritual teacher with whose illustrious career Sir Edwin Arnold has made the entire English-speaking world familiar,—did not long retain its pristine simplicity, but like many older and younger faiths, it soon became overlaid with superstitious doctrines and ceremonies most of which were reversions to old beliefs and practices rather than newly invented acquisitions.

The three chief varieties of Buddhism, which divide it into Northern, Middle and Southern, represent considerable difference of thought as well as of practice. Northern Buddhism seems more inclined to take on a heroic aspect than does Southern, and this is easily explained when we refer simply to geographical situation, for climate always affects, to some degree, the feelings and the conduct of a people.

China, the mysterious “Celestial Empire,” and yet more mysterious Thibet,—the enclosed and awful country concerning which we hear much that is startling and forbidding,—are two lands of Asia which seem peculiarly out of touch with Western thoughts and habits, but Japan is a friendly neighbor to America and all English-speaking people are disposed to treat the Japanese as brothers, while they look with suspicion upon “John Chinaman,” particularly in the United States, though he is very prominent nearly all over America, particularly as a laundryman and in California as also a cook and general domestic. The Chinaman looks so unlike a European or an American that we are always apt to emphasize the word “foreigner,” and the much more disagreeable term “alien,” whenever we see his costume, watch his manners and listen to his conversation, and most of all when we gaze upon the curious characters which denote his language. Our Japanese neighbors present no such very unusual appearance, because they readily adopt a western dress and manner, and generally adapt themselves, apparently without much difficulty, to the new state of affairs which at once confronts them when they have left their Flowery Kingdom for lands remote across the seas.

That the Chinese have a religion of their own, partly Buddhistic and partly Confucian,—though Confucianism is an ethical and philosophical rather than a distinctively religious system,—is well known to all who gain their confidence or watch their doings. The gaudy “Joss Houses” which constitute one of the popular sights of “Chinatown” in San Francisco and wherever there is a Chinese colony, represent only the crudest and shallowest expressions of the religion of China, precisely as the tawdry pictures and images in Mexican churches exhibit only the most superficial and uninviting aspects of Roman Catholicism. To the Oriental intellect subtle metaphysical abstractions appeal, even though the surface of Oriental life is often tawdry and squalid in the extreme. Cultivated Chinamen, who may often be met in Washington and other American cities, are frequently Confucians and very often they are rational philosophers entirely free from the superstitious beliefs and customs of the ignorant among their compatriots. Wong Chin Foo and several other highly intellectual and cultured Chinamen who have contributed in the English tongue to many periodicals enjoying world-wide circulation and fame, have presented us with doctrines in the name of Confucius which have proved on examination to be fully as noble morally, and as enlightened spiritually, as any which have proceeded from any other sources. But, as Confucianism does not speak very definitely concerning any future life or communion with the spirit-world, it is not easy to gather precisely the views of educated Confucians on these important themes; we may, however, safely conclude that by far the largest proportion of the Mongolian race not only venerate ancestors, but distinctly believe in their constant presence as guiding, protecting and inspiring influences. In the war between Russia and Japan, which ended with the close of the summer of 1905, news came constantly from Japanese officials confirming more and more the fact that the brave Japanese were greatly sustained in their heroic warfare by their unfaltering spiritual faith, and by faith we do not mean mere traditional belief, but confident certainty that spirit-friends were sustaining them in hours of conflict, and giving unmistakable signs of approval when heroic work was done. Warfare is not the highest human occupation,—and we may all sincerely trust and devoutly work as well as pray, that a happy time may speedily come when war will be unknown,—still we cannot dispute the fact that spirit-helpers are often present on battle-fields where they once fought and, so long as they have not outgrown their belief in the justifiability and even necessity for strife to settle disputes and prevent incursions of tyranny and the loss of national integrity, they will undoubtedly continue to afford efficient aid to those who are nerved to more successful combat when buoyed up by the sublime assurance that they are not fighting alone, but in the presence of their heroic ancestors and with their full approval. Some touching incidents have been related to us by friends who have lived in Japan and entered sympathetically into the life and feelings of its people. At eventide the ancestral spirits and those who have recently departed from the physical frame are said to gather in some appointed place and receive offerings from those who admire and venerate them. No festival domestic or national is kept without this ceremony.

Many of the Chinese and Japanese practices intended to honor the departed are crude externally, but they are often beautiful when stripped of unnecessary accretions and readily commend themselves to our sympathy and esteem. Even the offering of food and libations to the departed, which is a very ancient and almost universal custom, is not reprehensible in the least when we consider that Oriental philosophers have always taught that all external substances are but veils which hide an incorporeal element. As the physical body is sustained by the grosser part, so is the psychical body fed by the inner substance. This teaching accounts for all the sacrificial offerings made to divinities through all ages and in all countries. It is surely not necessary to slay animals, much less to slaughter human beings, to appease hungry divinities: such barbaric orgies have no place in any refined system of thought or practice; but simple offerings of fruits and flowers to the national heroes, and to friends in general, is a gentle poetic custom which serves to keep always before the mental vision of those who make the offerings the thought of the intimate nearness of the spiritual to the material world.

Japan, especially since the marriage of Sir Edwin Arnold to a Japanese lady and her reception as a welcome guest in the highest British society, has seemed quite near to the cultured elements in the English-speaking world, and though many Japanese now profess a modified form of Christianity and express great readiness to assimilate themselves with western life and thought in general, the native of Japan nearly always retains a large amount of his ancestral faith unless he becomes a confessed agnostic, as some students do, in which case he is apt to pride himself upon his lack of knowledge concerning all spiritual questions, a species of extraordinary intellectual pride which characterizes also the pretentious culture of the west during a certain early period in scientific research among too easily self-satisfied investigators.

To obtain as nearly authentic a statement as possible of the actual religious condition of Japan at the time of this writing we refer our readers to an intensely interesting letter written by the well-known American presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, sent by him from that charming country and published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 18th, 1906.

Little that could be added to what is already generally known would throw any new light upon the faith or practice of the inhabitants of eastern Asia; they are now freely mingling among us and as we become better acquainted with our interesting brown and yellow neighbors we shall assuredly cease to feel any sentiment of estrangement towards them. The splendid and enormous ships which now cross and recross the Pacific waters with amazing speed and regularity have already brought Japan almost to the door of America. From San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver we can go in comfort in a very few weeks into the very heart of eastern Asia, and when we get there we shall find very much to interest us and more than a little to admire, though also much which we may not be able to approve.

The glory of true Spiritualism is that it breaks down barriers and unifies humanity wherever its ennobling teachings are accepted and made the guide of life. We cannot, and we do not, profess to believe that spiritual communion is, or ever has been, the exclusive property of any church or sect; it is the common heritage of the entire human race. Though the Occident rather than the Orient is the head-centre of present-day revelations, this is only because during the revolution of the cycles first one country and then another becomes prepared to be the chief enlightener of the world. In days of old Asia was the source whence spiritual light radiated over the globe; then there came a time when Europe, and finally America, took precedence of all other continents as the head-centre of spiritual enlightenment. Now we see unmistakable signs of the rapidly nearing approach of a truly universal illumination in which all continents will participate. Asia will be revivified, Africa will be no longer dark, Europe will be united and pacified; America will be redeemed from Mammon-worship and set truly free; Australia will become a great new seminary for the bringing forth of a truly eclectic spiritual philosophy.

Such are the signs of these stirring and eventful times. Never again can old superstitions enslave humanity as formerly, for the hour has already struck which has awakened humanity from its lethargy and called it, in stentorian tones, to shake off the lethargy in which it has so long been wrapped. If the modern spiritual movement has done no more it has certainly compelled a searching investigation of the foundations upon which faith in immortality must rest. At this late date to endeavor to prove that there is communion with the spirit-world seems in many centres an altogether superfluous task; but though multitudes are fully assured of life's endless continuity, there are very many yet who still sit in the shadow of doubt and some who dwell in the caverns of positive denial. Let those who know proclaim their knowledge, and let those who as yet know not hold themselves ready to be informed.

The following intensely interesting account of Japanese life and spiritual realization is taken from an article from a brilliant contributor to the Banner of Light, who signs himself Mime Inness; his contribution was published February 24, 1906.

KARMA AND SHINTOISM IN JAPAN

When Admiral Togo, after his successive victories, took occasion to thank, in the most formal way, the spirits of the dead for their assistance in the war in which they had lain down their earthly lives, to most Americans it seemed an act of Eastern barbarism, strangely injected into modern life.

How could a great naval captain like Togo be so superstitious, so ignorant?

It is, however, not strange that one reared, as is every

Japanese, in the Shinto philosophy, should take occasion, as a thank offering, to recognize one of the most prevalent of Japanese ideas.

The Japanese is reared not only upon the doctrine of Shinto, which is peculiar to his people, but the Buddhistic doctrines of preëxistence and Karma enter equally into the make-up of his religious life. We in the West have but an indistinct idea of preëxistence. Theosophists maintain the doctrine, but ordinary Christians, especially those reared in Calvinism, have spent all their religious lives in an effort to save their own individual souls from a hereafter which is represented to be so horrible that escape from it is the one "consummation devoutly to be wished."

But Oriental philosophy takes care of all this sort of thing in an entirely different way, a way which is almost inexplicable to the self-seeking Occidental.

"In the first place," says the Jap, "my own soul is not a single thing. It is a term of reproach to me when one tells me derisively, 'I can see that you have but one soul.' My soul cannot exist for an eternity hereafter unless it has already existed for an eternity before this life.

"Eternity is an endless thing. Nothing can be endless if it have a beginning. The Occidental talks of a life in the future which has no end. Then it can have had no beginning; for an endless thing with one end is endless. I must, therefore, have existed from all eternity if I am to live to all eternity.

"Therefore, I know that my soul, in its preëxistent states, has passed through many earth-lives, has had all the experiences which those preëxisting lives imply. It is not, cannot be a single thing, one soul. It is a composite of all the experiences of all past ages through which it has lived. In me to-day exist consciously the souls of all my kindred by heredity, and no small part of those other lives with which I have lived and by contact have partaken of. Hence, my ancestors, being those to whom I owe, not my existence alone, but all those attributes which make my soul what it is, are certainly worthy of my highest regard and worship.

“Not only this” (and here comes in the Spiritualistic idea), “but these ancestors, as is natural, take in me and my living, the deepest interest. They surround my daily pathway, seeking in every way they can to enhance for me the good and to ward off the bad. What is more natural for the parent who dies than to maintain his interest in his child? You western Christians believe in a heaven to which a dying father goes and shuts from his knowledge everything in which, two minutes before he breathed his last, he was most deeply concerned; or if you believe that he still has knowledge of the lives of his children, he is yet powerless to affect those lives for good or ill. This is still worse than total ignorance. For what is more devilish, what could be a greater hell, than to be compelled to sit supinely by and see the tortures of a child and be powerless to aid? We know better than this. When we die and slough off the flesh, we do not change. We still love, and love implies aid. We still hover near and help bear the burden or share the joy of our children, making it greater by the sharing.

“So, while we worship our ancestors, we know they are worthy of worship. Do you Occidentals still wish an angry God to punish sin? He does punish it, not as one angry, but as one who is just. Sin is not like the naughtiness of a child, to be punished by a slipper. It is a breaking of God's laws, which breaking always bears its own consequences. If I violate the law of gravitation and walk off the roof of the house, I fall, not as a punishment for violating the law, but because a violation of the law entails its own consequences.

“So if I do wrong, I suffer. No pardon, no repentance avails to wash away the sin. It entails its own punishment, leaves its own scar. Thereby I am taught not to sin.

“ But the consequence of my violation of God's law is that the scar remains. I may not work out my own redemption, until death has seized me. The consequences of that wrong go on just the same, and when next my undying soul seeks physical embodiment, the stain of my sin is still on it, the law is still operative and justice still demands of me the working out of my own redemption. The ‘sins of the father are visited upon the children’ is true, not as a punishment, but as a simple, just working-out of the rule of the law. This is Karma. Evil in my life I know is just, not for what I have done in this embodiment, but for what I did in another body. Joy is mine, not always for my own merits, but for the good I did when here before. Is not this justice? Is not this right? Does not this explain why life is as it is? Is not this a good and sufficient reason for my ancestor worship?”

This is why the Japanese see so little that is attractive in Christianity. This is why they are Spiritualists. This is why Shintoism and Buddhism are to them the living forces that they are.

This is why this life, seeming such a trifling part of the real life, is with so little hesitation thrown away by a Japanese in battling for a good cause.

If Western civilization could take a leaf from the book of the little men of the islands, creeds might suffer, but the real life of Christ would be more purely lived and then indeed would “death be swallowed up in victory,” being no longer the “King of Terrors.”

Such, in brief outline, is a fair sample of Japanese spiritual conceptions.