saintly; in reality this is our own creation. Let us be free from delusion and sensualism, and things will present themselves in their own true color and form.

The termination of birth and death, pain and pleasure, desire and satisfaction, in short, of all sorts of dualism, does not mean to escape from the world and to lead an ascetic life, nor does it mean to commit suicide and put an end to existence, which is thought the root of all evil. Buddhism understands by the last line of the stanza recited at the beginning of this discourse the purification of the heart from all its selfish desires and defiled sentiments arising from ignorance and prejudice. For the self is no more than an illusory existence, and the separation of "me" from "thee" is fata morgana, and those who believe in their absolute reality are said to be confused. The heart essentially free and pure becomes contaminated as soon as it is caught in the meshes of egoism, and the result is the production of the three venomous desires and the five consuming passions. Of course, it would be madness to deny the relative reality of objects of the senses; no one can refute it. But if we go one step further and declare that their reality is final and ultimate, we logically put ourselves in the most awkward position and morally stand on the most unsteady ground. The irreconcilable egoism which characterizes

the life of the ordinary man is no more than the natural outcome of this fatal realism. To be saved, we must lift the veil of ignorance and come out into the realm of "calm radiance," which is the abode of the enlightened.

The conclusion of the whole affair, then, is: The world is characterized by mutability and impermanence; those who do not rise above worldliness are tossed up and down in the whirlpool of passion. But those who know the constitution of things see the infinite in the finite and the supra-phenomenal in the phenomenal, and are blessed in the midst of sufferings and tribulations.

Footnotes

^111:1 A sermon at the Buddhist Mission of San Francisco, November, 1905.

^111:2 Translated into English:

Transitory, verily, are things,
Subject to law of birth and death;
Things born are doomed to die;
Their termination is bliss.

^119:1 Avarice, hatred, and infatuation.

^119:2 Inordinate desires arising from the five senses.

REPLY TO A CHRISTIAN CRITIC
(LETTER WRITTEN IN 1896 TO DR. JOHN H. BARROWS.)