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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
He said nothing, but looked disappointed; and I felt a little sorry for him. Devils trampling on the
Cross, as a display line in some London poster announcing the arrival of "josses from Japan," might
certainly have been relied on to catch the public eye.
"This is more wonderful," I said, pointing to a beautiful group, - Maya with the infant Buddha issuing
from her side, according to tradition. Painlessly the Bodhisattva was born from her right side. It was
the eighth day of the fourth moon.
"That's bronze, too," he remarked, tapping it. "Bronze josses are getting rare. We used to buy them up
and sell them for old metal. Wish I'd kept some of them! You ought to have seen the bronzes, in those
days, coming in from the temples, - bells and vases and josses! That was the time we tried to buy the
Daibutsu at Kamakura."
"For old bronze?" I queried.
"Yes. We calculated the weight of the metal, and formed a syndicate. Our first offer was thirty thousand.
We could have made a big profit, for there's a good deal of gold and silver in that work. The priests
wanted to sell, but the people wouldn't let them."
"It's one of the world's wonders," I said. "Would you really have broken it up?"
"Certainly. Why not? What else could you do with it?... That one there looks just like a Virgin Mary,
doesn't it?"
He pointed to the gilded image of a female clasping a child to her breast.
"Yes," I replied; "but it is Kishibojin, the goddess who loves little children."
"People talk about idolatry," he went on musingly. "I've seen things like many of these in Roman
Catholic chapels. Seems to me religion is pretty much the same the world over."
"I think you are right," I said.
"Why, the story of Buddha is like the story of Christ, isn't it?"
"To some degree," I assented.
"Only, he wasn't crucified."
I did not answer; thinking of the text, In all the world there is not one spot even so large as a
mustard-seed where he has not surrendered his body for the sake of creatures. Then it suddenly
seemed to me that this was absolutely true. For the Buddha of the deeper Buddhism is not Gautama, nor
yet any one Tathagata, but simply the divine in man. Chrysalides of the infinite we all are: each contains
a ghostly Buddha, and the millions are but one. All humanity is potentially the Buddha-to-come,
dreaming through the ages in Illusion; and the teacher's smile will make beautiful the world again when
selfishness shall die. Every noble sacrifice brings nearer the hour of his awakening; and who may justly
doubt - remembering the myriads of the centuries of man - that even now there does not remain one place
on earth where life has not been freely given for love or duty?
I felt the curio dealer's hand on my shoulder again.
"At all events," he cried in a cheery tone, "they'll be appreciated in the British Museum - eh?"
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