Wisdom of the East

Wisdom of the East

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Buddhist Psalms
by Shinran Shonin Trans. S. Yamabe and L. Adams Beck
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Title: Buddhist Psalms
Author: Shinran Shonin Trans. S. Yamabe and L. Adams Beck
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7015] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 23,
2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUDDHIST
PSALMS ***

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WISDOM OF THE EAST
BUDDHIST PSALMS
TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE
OF
SHINRAN SHONIN
BY S. YAMABE AND L. ADAMS BECK

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LAUDING THE INFINITE ONE
OF PARADISE
CONCERNING THE GREAT SUTRA
CONCERNING THE SUTRA OF THE MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE LESSER SUTRA
OF THE MANY SUTRAS CONCERNING THE INFINITE ONE
CONCERNING THE WELFARE OF THE PRESENT WORLD
OF THANKSGIVING FOR NAGARJUNA, THE GREAT TEACHER
OF INDIA
OF THANKSGIVING FOR VASUBANDH, THE GREAT TEACHER
OF INDIA
OF THANKSGIVING FOR DONRAN, THE GREAT TEACHER OF
CHINA
CONCERNING UNRIGHTEOUS DEEDS
CONCERNING DOSHAKU-ZENJI

CONCERNING ZENDO-DAISHI
CONCERNING GENSHIN-SOZU
CONCERNING HONEN SHONIN
OF THE THREE PERIODS
CONCERNING BELIEF AND DOUBT
IN PRAISE OF PRINCE SHOTOKU
WHEREIN WITH LAMENTATION I MAKE MY CONFESSION
ADDITIONAL PSALMS

INTRODUCTION
BY L. ADAMS BECK
It is a singular fact that though many of the earlier Buddhist Scriptures
have been translated by competent scholars, comparatively little
attention has been paid to later Buddhist devotional writings, and this
although the developments of Buddhism in China and Japan give them
the deepest interest as reflecting the spiritual mind of those two great
countries. They cannot, however, be understood without some
knowledge of the faith which passed so entirely into their life that in its
growth it lost some of its own infant traits and took on others, rooted,
no doubt, in the beginnings in India, but expanded and changed as the
features of the child may be forgotten in the face of the man and yet
perpetuate the unbroken succession of heredity. It is especially true that
Japan cannot be understood without some knowledge of the Buddhism
of the Greater Vehicle (as the developed form is called), for it was the
influence that moulded her youth as a nation, that shaped her
aspirations, and was the inspiration of her art, not only in the written
word, but in every art and higher handicraftsmanship that makes her
what she is. Whatever centuries may pass or the future hold in store for
her, Japan can never lose the stamp of Buddhism in her outer or her
spiritual life.
The world knows little as yet of the soul of Mahayana Buddhism,
though much of its outer observance, and for this reason a crucial
injustice has been done in regarding it merely as a degraded form of the
earlier Buddhism--a rank off-shoot of the teachings of the Gautama
Buddha, a system of idolatry and priestly power from which the austere
purity of the earlier faith has passed away.
The truth is that Buddhism, like Christianity, in every country where it

has sowed its seed and reaped its harvest, developed along the lines
indicated by the mind of that people. The Buddhism of Japan differs
from that of Tibet as profoundly as the Christianity of Abyssinia from
that of Scotland--yet both have conserved the essential principle.
Buddhism was not a dead abstraction, but a living faith, and it therefore
grew and changed with the growth of the mind of man, enlarging its
perception of truth. As in the other great faiths, the ascent of the Mount
of Vision reveals worlds undreamed, and proclaims what may seem to
be new truths, but are only new aspects of the Eternal. Japanese
Buddhists still base their belief on the utterances of the Buddhas, but
they have enlarged their conception of the truths so taught, and they
hold that the new flower and fruit spring from the roots that were
planted