61. Verily the teaching of the Tathagata of the Dharma Kaya (the Spiritual Body) has been handed down without change and without break; through the long chain of our patriarchs the lamp of light has been handed down to us.

Footnotes

^243:1 There is an English translation published in 1909, in a volume on Kobo Daishi entitled "Namudaishi." But it was made by some Japanese who knew but little English, and had no English friend to correct his translation. It requires some knowledge of "English as she is spoke" to understand it.

^244:1 I.e. June 15, A.D. 774.

^244:2 Mount Shashin is in the Island of Shikoku. The word means "throwing away the body "; and the place "the Mountain of Self-oblation." The idea of religious suicide or self-immolation is one of the saddest features of mediaeval Buddhism. It always gives me the idea of a diabolical perversion of Rom. xii. 1.

^244:3 I.e. the Shi Tenno. Originally Hindu deities, they have been pressed by the Mahayana into the service of Buddhism.

^244:4 Akas'agarba, a well-known Bodhisattva.

^245:1 Gonzo must have been a monk of the Vinaya sect. See above chapter on Dharmagupta. To have a religious teacher seems to be a necessity in Buddhism. I have seen it stated that without a teacher one cannot be saved, because the Way is the effect, the teacher is the Cause, and therefore, however much of the Way a man has acquired, if it is done without a teacher it is an effect without a cause, i.e. nothing.

^245:2 Notice how quaintly the practical Japanese mind mixes up the material with the spiritual.

^245:3 The legend is that in answer to earnest prayers for guidance he was told in a dream to look for a certain book in the Temple of Kumadera. He looked, and the book which he found was the "Vairoc'ana Sutra," brought to China from Southern India by way of the sea, and containing that Shingon doctrine which has such marvellous resemblances to the Egyptian speculations.

^245:4 The ambassador on this occasion was Fujiwara no Ason. The embassy took tribute to China.

^246:1 Ac'arya is an Indian word unknown to the earliest periods of the Mahayana. Its use denotes a long association of Brahmans and Buddhists.

^246:2 The Mandara is in one sense the pleroma, i.e. the sum-total of the divine personalities that go to make up the Godhead. The word is also used (and here, according to the Japanese commentary) to denote a magic ring or circle, used in sorcery. We must never forget the great part that sorcery plays in the Shingon, just as it did in the Egyptian Gnosticism, and its kindred Cabbala.