The Western paradise promised to the worshippers of Amida Buddha is, as has been pointed out by Schott in his work on the Buddhism of High Asia and China, inconsistent with the doctrine of Nirvana. It promises immortality instead of annihilation. The great antiquity of this school is evident from the early date of the translation of the Amida Sutra, which came from the hands of Kumarajiva, and of the Wu-liang-sheu-king, dating from the Han dynasty. Its extent of influence is seen in the attachment of the Thibetans and Mongols to the worship of this Buddha, and in the fact that the name of this fictitious personage is more commonly heard in the daily conversation of the Chinese people than that of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni.

The only remaining school is that of T'ien-t'ai, already partially described. In the latter part of the sixth century Hwei-wen, a native of "Northern China" (Pe-ts'i), studied the Chung-lun (Central Shastra), written by the Hindoo called "Conqueror of the Dragon" (Lung-sheng or

[paragraph continues] Lung-shu), the fourteenth patriarch. Convinced of its excellence, he instituted "three sorts of meditation" (san-kwan), viewing the world as (1.) empty, (2.) false, or (3.) central. This he regarded as the limit of religious meditation on the surrounding universe, and therefore called his system Chi-kwan, "Reflection carried to its limiting point." He also founded his doctrine partly on the Fa-hwa-king, and was followed by Hwei-si and Chi-che of T'ien-t'ai, who gave his name to the school.

The following verses translated from the poetry of the Tsing-tu sect will serve to illustrate the doctrine of that school. It is not much of the Buddhist system that easily admits of being put into this form of composition. There is nothing akin to the spirit of poetry in the turgid splendour and wearisome reiteration of the legends that abound in the books of this religion. Chinese versifiers have, however, found some materials more to their taste in the Western heaven of Amida Buddha. If the reader should think the conceptions are poor, they are at least a genuine description, so far as they go, of the heaven of the Northern Buddhists.

"THE WESTERN HEAVEN.