teaching that it is possible to reach the state of Buddha-hood in this
present body.

As discipline for the attainment of excellence along the path marked out
in the "Mantra sect," there are three mystic rites: (1) worshipping the
Buddha with the hand in certain positions called signs; (2) repeating
Dharani, or mystic formulas; (3) contemplation.

K[=o]b[=o] himself and all those who imitated him, practised fasting in
order to clear the spiritual eyesight. The thinking-chairs, so
conspicuous in many old monasteries, though warmed at intervals through
the ages by the living bodies of men absorbed in contemplation, are
rarely much worn by the sitters, because almost absolute cessation of
motion characterizes the long and hard thinkers of the Shin-gon
philosophers. The idols in the Shin-gon temples represent many a saint
and disciple, who, by perseverance in what a critic of Buddhism calls
"mind-murder," and the use of mystic finger twistings and magic
formulas, has won either the Nirvana or the penultimate stage of the
Bodhisattva.

In the sermons and discourses of Shin-gon, the subtle points of an
argument are seized and elaborated. These are mystical on the one side,
and pantheistic on the other. It is easily seen how Buddha, being in
Japanese gods as well as men, and no being without Buddha, the way is
made clear for that kind of a marriage between Buddhism and Shint[=o],
in which the two become one, and that one, as to revenue and advantage,
Buddhism.


Truth Made Apparent by One's Own Thought.