Idols and Religious Symbols.
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5. It was a saying among the Sages of old that the body was a prison. By this they meant that man, by reason of his body, was tied and bound with the chains of mean lusts, and that his heart, for the same reason, could never have free play for its affections and desires. This is a self-evident truth; if, however, we enlarge this thought, it is not merely the individual body of man, but the whole of human life[1] which is a prison,—and a prison, moreover, the bars of which it is impossible to break.
6. Why this should be is a point that can be verified from our experience. For consider. We are hedged in on all sides, within and without, so that we cannot always do what we
- ↑ This must be understood of course with reference to the doctrine of re-incarnations which is universally held by Buddhists. It is a difficult thing, they say, to be born a man. Once born as a man it is of course easy enough to fall back into one of the lower grades of sentient life. It requires a certain amount of merit to keep at the human level: to pass beyond it into the higher ranges of life can only be done by a very great effort. But, says the Amida-ist theologian, a man, quá man, is in a position to receive the call of the Tathāgata, and then he can burst through the prison-walls of human life and rise to higher planes.
