This sect, with its excellence in morality and benevolence, proved
itself a beautifier of human life, of society and of the earth itself.
Its work was an irenicon. It occupied itself exclusively with the higher
ethics, the higher meditations and the higher knowledge. Interdicting
what was evil and prescribing what was good, its precepts varied in
number and rigor according to the status of the disciple, lay or
clerical. It is by the observance of the _sila_, or grades of moral
perfection, that one becomes a Buddha. Besides making so powerful a
conquest at the southern capital, this sect was the one which centuries
afterward built the first Buddhist temple in Yedo. Being ordinary human
mortals, however, both monk and layman occasionally illustrated the
difference between profession and practice.
These three schools or sects, Ku-sha, J[=o]-jitsu, and Ris-shu, may be
grouped under the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, with more or less
affiliation with Southern Buddhism; the others now to be described were
wholly of the Northern division.
The Hoss[=o]-shu, or the Dharma-lakshana sect, as described by the Rev.
Dai-ryo Takashi of the Shin-gon sect, is the school which studies the
nature of Dharmas or things. The three worlds of desire, form and
formlessness, consist in thought only; and there is nothing outside
thought.
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