mbrace the little imprisoned pool
of water. So still is the spot and so clear the liquid that you know the
one only as the reflection of the other. Mirrored in its glassy surface
appears everything around it. As you peer in, far down you see a tiny
bit of sky, as deep as the blue is high above, across which slowly sail
the passing clouds; then nearer stand the trees, arching overhead, as if
bending to catch glimpses of themselves in that other world below; and
then, nearer yet--yourself.

Emblem of the spirit of man is this little pool to Far Oriental eyes.
Subtile as the soul is the incomprehensible water; so responsive to
light that it remains itself invisible; so clear that it seems illusion!
Though portrayer so perfect of forms about it, all we know of the thing
itself is that it is. Through none of the five senses do we perceive it.
Neither sight, nor hearing, nor taste, nor smell, nor touch can tell us
it exists; we feel it to be by the muscular sense alone, that blind and
dumb analogue for the body of what consciousness is for the soul. Only
when disturbed, troubled, does the water itself become visible, and then
it is but the surface that we see. So to the Far Oriental this still
little lake typifies the soul, the eventual purification of his own; a
something lost in reflection, self-effaced, only the alter ego of the
outer world.

For contemplation, not action, is the Far Oriental's ideal of life. The
repose of self-adjustment like that to which our whole solar system
is slowly tending as its death,--this to him appears, though from no
scientific deduction, the end of all existence. So he sits and ponders,
abstractly, vaguely, upon everything in general,--synonym, alas, to
man's finite mind, for nothing in particular,--till even the sense
of self seems to vanish, and through the mist-like portal of
unconsciousness he floats out into the vast indistinguishable sameness
of Nirvana's sea.

At first sight Buddhism is much more like Christianity than those of us
who stay at home and speculate upon it commonly appreciate. As a system
of philosophy it sounds exceedingly foreign, but it looks unexpectedly
familiar as a faith. Indeed, the one religion might well pass for the
counterfeit presentment of the other. The resemblance so struck the
early Catholic missionaries that they felt obliged to explain the
remarkable similarity between the two. With them ingenuous surprise
instantly begot ingenious sophistry. Externa