[paragraph continues] China, and taught the method of the heart, that you might be enlightened. He brought the Lenga Sutra, exhibiting the true impression of the human mind as it really is, that you might not allow it to become disordered. Therefore that book has but one subject, the instructions of Buddha concerning the mind. The true method is to have no method. Out of the mind there is no Buddha. Out of Buddha there is no mind. Virtue is not to be sought, nor vice to be shunned. Nothing should be looked upon as pure or polluted. To have a sensation of an object is nothing but to become conscious of the mind's own activity. The mind does not know itself, because it is blinded by the sensations." He was asked, by what means excellence in religion should be attained? He replied, "Religion does not consist in the use of means. To use means is fatal to the attainment of the object." Then what, he was again asked, is required to be done in order to religious advancement? "Human nature in itself," he said, "is sufficient for its own wants. All that is needed is to avoid both vice and virtue. He that can do this is a 'religious man' (sieu-tau-jen)."

These extracts indicate that a great change had taken place in the popular teaching of Buddhism. In the first centuries of its history in China, retribution and the future life were most insisted on. But the tenets of Bodhidharma, who aimed to restore what he considered the true doctrine of Buddha, gradually diffused themselves and became the most powerful element in the system. The consequence was a less strong faith in the future life.

I-tsung, who ascended the throne A.D. 860, was devoted to the study of the Buddhist books. Priests were called in to discourse on their religion in the private apartments of his palace, and the monasteries were frequently honoured with the imperial presence. He was memorialised in vain by the Confucian mandarins, who represented that Tauism, speaking as it did of mercy and moderation, and the original religion of China, of which the fundamental principles