INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

...give account of his works. The Christian doctrine is the simpler of the two, for it does not require all the elaborate machinery of skhandhas original: "skhandhas"; the five aggregates or components (material form, feelings, perception, mental formations, and consciousness) that make up a person in Buddhist philosophy and mind, ego and non-ego, reincarnation and rebirth; and simplicity is generally a mark of truth. It is also more ennobling, for a person feels no responsibility so long as they are dealing only with an institution and not a person. A person will die for their King, but they will defraud the Customs the government office that collects taxes on imported goods. Responsibility to a personal Judge is a nobler motive than the desire to settle scores with a machine-like law. Buddhism has felt this and has recognized it by the adoption of Amida the Buddha of Infinite Light, central to Pure Land Buddhism. This principle is perhaps well illustrated by the fact that, while a bad Christian is a very contemptible person, a good Christian is the noblest of beings the world has seen, for he lives in constant realization of the Presence of God.

The two religions agree in recognizing the existence of the person after death; and the Resurrection of the Body must be explained as St. Paul did:—

"It is sown a natural body: it is raised a spiritual body."

(12). The end of Buddhism is Nirvana, an absorption into God, in which all personality ceases, and nothing remains except God.*

The end of Christianity is Life Eternal, and all the countless activities that life implies.

But "Life," and not "Cessation," is the natural goal of existence. We envy the man whose life is full of pleasant activities, and not the man whose existence is a Nirvana of unconscious absorption.

Buddhism itself recognizes this. Amidaism is a Buddhist protest against Nirvana; it treats Jōbutsu the attainment of Buddhahood as something active and happy, and the Japanese Buddhist is more attracted by the active joys of the Western Paradise the Pure Land or heaven-like realm where Amida Buddha dwells than by the dreamy delights of a shadowy Nirvana.

"I am come," says Christ, "that they may have life, and..."

* Nichirenism a branch of Japanese Buddhism based on the teachings of the priest Nichiren is the Buddhist exception to this. See Lecture IV.