BUDDHIST FAITH.

BUDDHISM is so deep and comprehensive--and, we might say, even unfathomable--that scholars are sometimes at a loss how and where to begin its measurement. In some respects it appears to be a chaotic mass of superstitions, while in others it is a systematic and thoroughgoing application of an idealistic pantheistic theory. The present discourse does not propose, however, to clear up all these difficulties, but only to give a certain clue with which students of Buddhism may be guided in their exploration. Buddhism, then, will be treated here broadly under two headings, Faith and Discipline.

First, of Buddhist faith, which is summed up in this gatha:

"The Buddha-Body fills the world,
Being immanent universally in all things;
It will make itself manifest wherever and whenever conditions are matured,
Though it never leaves this Seat of Bodhi."

Generally speaking, faith means trusting--trusting in something external to oneself. When religion is defined as a faith, it is considered to imply that there is a being or power which has created this world and presides over it, directing

its course and shaping its destiny; and that religion teaches to trust or believe in this being or power, which is thus proved to be greater and wiser than human beings. Therefore, Christians believe in a God who is a personal reality and who is supposed to exist above and outside of us poor mortals; and some Buddhists believe in Amitabha Buddha, who resides in Pure Land or Western Paradise (Sukhavati); and for this reason religion has come to be identified with a belief in an external object, whatever this be, particularly by Occidental scholars. But Buddhist faith does not belong to this category, for Buddhism rejects the existence of a personal God as he is ordinarily understood by some religionists. What, then, is the faith that keeps Buddhists together?

Briefly, Buddhists believe in three most fundamental facts which are universally observable about us and which cannot be refuted by any amount of argument. They believe first in the sameness of things (samata). By sameness is understood the presence of a unifying principle in all phenomena. However diversified and differentiated may appear those particular existences with which we come in contact in this world of the senses, they universally partake of one nature, of one essence; and it is on account of this presence of a supra-individual reason that life becomes possible, that existence, this phenomenal world, becomes possible,

Secondly, Buddhists believe in the difference between things (nanatva), in their manifoldness, in their particularity, in their. individuality; for it is an undeniable fact that things are all separate and distinct, that each has its own individuality, that each moves according to its own inherent necessity.