Has not philosophy announced that she is spiritual?  Has not religion proclaimed that she is good?  At all events, she is the mother of all beings.  She lives in all things and they live in her.  All that she possesses is theirs, and all that they want she supplies.  Her life is the same vitality that stirs all sentient beings.  Chwang Tsz[FN#188] (So-shi) is right when he says:  “Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together, and all things and I are one.”  And again:  “If all things be regarded with love, Heaven and Earth are one with me.”  Sang Chao (So-jo) also says:  “Heaven and Earth are of the same root as we.  All things in the world are of one substance with Me."[FN#189]

[FN#188] Chwang Tsz, vol. i., p. 20.

[FN#189] This is a favourite subject of discussion by Zenists.

6.  Real Self.

If there be no individual soul either in mind or body, where does personality lie?  What is Real Self?  How does it differ from soul?  Self is living entity, not immutable like soul, but mutable and ever-changing life, which is body when observed by senses, and which is mind when experienced by introspection.  It is not an entity lying behind mind and body, but life existent as the union of body and mind.  It existed in our forefathers in the past, is existing in the present, and will exist in the future generations.  It also discloses itself to some measure in vegetables and animals, and shadows itself forth in inorganic nature.  It is Cosmic life and Cosmic spirit, and at the same time individual life and individual spirit.  It is one and the same life which embraces men and nature.  It is the self-existent, creative, universal principle that moves on from eternity to eternity.  As such it is called Mind or Self by Zenists.  Pan Shan (Ban-zan) says:  “The moon of mind comprehends all the universe in its light.”  A man asked Chang Sha (Cho-sha):  “How can you turn the phenomenal universe into Self ?” “How can you turn Self into the phenomenal universe?” returned the master.

When we get the insight into this Self, we are able to have the open sesame to the mysteries of the universe, because to know the nature of a drop of water is to know the nature of the river, the lake, and the ocean—­nay, even of vapour, mist, and cloud; in other words, to get an insight into individual life is the key to the secret of Universal Life.  We must not confine Self within the poor little person called body.  That is the root of the poorest and most miserable egoism.  We should expand that egoism into family-egoism, then into nation-egoism, then into race-egoism, then into human-egoism, then into living-being-egoism, and lastly into universe-egoism, which is not egoism at all.  Thus we deny the immortality of soul as conceived by common sense, but assume immortality of the Great Soul, which animates, vitalizes, and spiritualizes all sentient beings.  It is Hinayana Buddhism that first denied the existence of atman or Self so emphatically inculcated in the Upanisads, and paved the way for the general conception of Universal Self, with the eulogies of which almost every page of Mahayana books is filled.