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.

The Japanese of to-day often speak of these seven religious bodies which
we have enumerated and described, as "the old sects," because much of
the philosophy, and many of the forms and prayers, are common to all,
or, more accurately speaking, are popularly supposed to be; while the
priests, being celibates, refrain from sake, flesh and fish, and from
all intimate relations with women. Yet, although these sects are
considered to be more or less conformable to the canon of the Greater
Vehicle, and while the last three certainly introduce many of its
characteristic features--one sect teaching that Buddha-hood could be
obtained even in the present body of flesh and blood--yet the idea of
Paradise had not been exploited or emphasized. This new gospel was to be
introduced into Japan by the J[=o]-d[=o] Shu or Sect of the Pure Land.

Before detailing the features of J[=o]-d[=o], we call attention to the
fact that in Japan the propagation of the old sects was accompanied by
an excessive use of