While the struggle among the sects of China has been
followed by a calm which resembles stagnation, those in Japan are very
active and the reader is referred to the volume of this series on
Japanese Buddhism for further treatment of the subject.
When Buddhism entered China it brought with it a new world. It was new
_practical_ and new spiritually. It brought a knowledge unknown
before regarding the heavenly bodies, regarding nature and regarding
medicine, and a practice vastly above the realm of magical arts. In
addition to these practical benefits, Buddhism proclaimed a new
spiritual universe far more real and extensive than any of which the
Chinese had dreamed, and peopled with spiritual beings having
characteristics entirely novel. In comparison with this new universe or
series of universes which Indian imagination had created, the Chinese
universe was wooden and geometric. Since it was an organized system and
a greater rather than a different one, the Chinese people readily
accepted it and made it their own.
Buddhism not only enlarged the universe and gave the individual a range
of opportunity hitherto unsuspected, but it introduced a scheme of
religious practice, or rather several of them, enabling the individual
devotee to attain a place in this spiritual universe through his own
efforts. These "ways" of salvation were quite in harmony with Chinese
ideas. They resembled what had already been a part of the national
practice and so were readily adopted and adapted by the Chinese.
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