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THE BUDDHIST DOCTRIVES. houses to the Order, wherein in safety and in peace to meditate and think at ease, the Buddha calls the best of gifts. Therefore let a wise man, who understands what is best for himself, build beautiful houses, and receive into them knowers of the doctrine. Let him with cheerful mind give food to them, and drink, raiment and dwelling-places, to the upright in heart. Then shall they preach to him the doctrine which drives away all suffering; if he apprehends that doctrine here below, he goes sinless into Nirvana.” Naturally there was sometimes a tendency for monks to exact too much, and the sacred books exhibit a stern repression of such practices, together with considerable sensitiveness as to the opinion of the lay-believers.
We may here briefly refer to the modern doctrine termed “Esoteric Buddhism,” which finds favour with
Esoteric some persons in our own land. In the Book Buddhism. of the Great Decease, Buddha expressly disclaims any secret doctrine of this kind. Modern Esoteric Buddhism should rather be called a form of Theosophy, which takes hold of some points in Buddhism, especially that of transmigration or reincarnation, and expresses the belief that souls become reincarnated in successive bodies, without remembering what took place in a previous state of existence; the successive lives being separated from one another by "intervals of spiritual consciousness on a plane of nature wholly imperceptible to ordinary senses." During this stage, the lower passions of earth are forgotten and the higher alone enjoyed; and the vividness of this joy will depend on the impulse and intensity of previous upward aspirations. Reincarnation, when this impulse is exhausted, provides an appropriate punishment for ordinary evil doing.
The word "karma," or " doing,' is very important in Esoteric Buddhism : it is explained as the law of cause tramme and effect in the moral world. It determines,
* according to fixed consequences, the state and condition in which reincarnations take place; on earth good karma may be laid up, and bad karma worked out by suffering. (See A. P. Sinnett, “ Esoteric Buddhism."').
Karm
