CHAPTER XI.

The Salvation of Sentient Beings.

( section section 52-59.)

"Amida," "says the Shinshuist, saves us by the exercise of His two great attributes of Mercy and Wisdom" (hi-chi no ni-toku wo motte warera wo sukuu section 52). [**] He saves the world by Wisdom, when He allows a part of himself to become incarnate in one of the Nirmanakaya or Keshin forms, to become the spiritual teachers of suffering humanity. In this way many of the Buddhas and Saints in the past have laboured with Him, or rather He has laboured in them, and in none more conspicuously than in Sakyamuni, who is the Teacher par excellence of the Buddhist world. He saves by Mercy by virtue of His Incarnation as Hozo Biku, His sufferings, His exaltation, His enthronement in Paradise after He had reconquered, as man, all that He had voluntarily surrendered, as the Supreme Buddha.

Whichever way he chooses, His object is still the same,--to save from sin and its attendant miseries His poor children who are fast "bound in misery and iron," so fast that they cannot get out of their prison-house without some one to help them.

[paragraph continues] Buddhism believes in birth-sin, the guilt of which it does not become less awful to contemplate when it is accepted as the inevitable consequence of previous sins, a guilt contracted from many sources, in the course of a long series of previous lives. It is from this guilt, this Karma, that Amida would save us. If we listen to His voice, and trust in His mercies, we pass from death to life, death loses its hold on us, there is no returning to this vale of sin and misery. If we refuse, there is no vengeance, no unending misery of hell awaiting us. There is rebirth, there may be rebirths, and some of these rebirths may be in Hell. But Hell is not a place of endless sojourn. There is death in Hell, as there is on Earth, as there is in every place but the Heaven where the invisible Dharmakaya sits enthroned. And everywhere may be heard the voice of Amida: and they that hear shall live.

And what is the Voice?

To the Shinshuist it is summed up in the six Chinese characters Namu Amida Butsu (#). This Myogo, or Sacred Name, as it is called, is to the Shinshuist all that the Crucifix is to the Catholic, or the Sacred Monogram I.H.S. It is the Symbolical Embodiment of all that Amida, in fulfilment of His Great Vow, has done for man. Indeed, it is more. It is what the Passover was to the Jews, what the Holy Sacrifice is to the Christian. It is itself the answer to the question, "What mean ye by this Sacrifice?" ( section section 52, 53). Wherever the Myogo is seen written or carved, or wherever (for the Myogo has this advantage