What will then become of our innate desire after immortality? This is the question which will naturally come to you after you have followed me so far. To this I will answer: Seek that which is above birth and death, identify yourselves with it, and in that measure in which your identification is complete you will acquire immortality, and your religious sentiment will be thoroughly satisfied. Buddhism does not seek enlightenment in egoism, does not realize Nirvana in the assertion of selfishness. Have your self-will removed and put in its place the divine will. "Not my will, but thy will," as Christians say, is that which is immortal in us, as well as that which constitutes the reason of our individual existences. As long as you have your selfish desires, impure motives, ignorant impulses, your immortality will never be gained. To be egoistic and to be immortal is to make "a" equal to "not-a," or to mix water with oil, as a Japanese saying goes; they exclude each other, and the result is unspeakable tribulation of spirit.

The problem of immortality has never troubled Buddhists, to speak frankly. When we were first asked about it, we did not know exactly how to grapple with it, for Buddhists are used to look at the matter from a totally different point of view. Their first effort is to comprehend the

whole, leaving the details behind. They first want to grasp that which is changeless, is above the transiency of phenomenality. When this is accomplished, they find that they themselves are part and parcel of that imperishable something. Though mortal as individual, particular beings, they are a manifestation of the Great All, and as such they will most assuredly survive all forms of change and transformation. They have then nothing to trouble themselves concerning soul or no-soul and much less with its immortality. All that they have to do is to come to a clear consciousness of the reason of the universe and to make its realization in them as perfect as they can. Whether they live or not after the expiration of their physical lives does not concern them at all. Let "thy will be done," and everything else will run its own course, and are we not relieved of the useless, wasteful worry and anxiety?

If, in spite of all this, you feel somehow inconsolable on account of nothing concrete surviving after you but cold ashes and crumbling bones, I would give you the immortality of work (karma) instead of the immortality of the soul. Or we might say that what you wish to understand by the soul does not exist in the ego-entity but in the work you do, in the sentiment you feel, in the thought you think, and if all these are in accordance with "thy will" which disposes, they will be what is left after you, that is to say,