Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/226

 CHAPTER III. WHAT THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS REPORTED IN REGARD TO THE NATURE OF MAN. IN a ninth- day paper on "Hinduism," Swami Vivekananda set forth the Brahmanical doctrine of man. The human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change from one body to another. The Hindu refuses to call men sinners. It is a sin to call man so. They are the children of God, divinities on earth, sharers of immor- tal bliss, free and blest and eternal spirits. The Vedas do not proclaim a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws, an end- less prison of cause and effect, but that the soul is divine, only held under bondage of matter, and that perfection will be reached when the bond shall be broken. The Zhikko Shinto Japanese idea of man, presented in a third-day paper by Rev, Reuchi Shibata, represents that every child of the Heavenly Deity, whence all things originate, comes into the world with a soul separated from the one origi- nal soul of Deity. In an eleventh-day paper on "Buddha," by Rev. Zitsuzen Ashitsu, the Buddhist view of man was shown by the statement that right after Buddha attained his perfect enlightenment he preached that all beings have the same nature and wisdom with him. The fundamental principle of Buddha is the mind. According to the Jain view, set forth in a fifteenth-day paper by V. A. Ghandi, of Bombay, the first of the nine princi- ples is soul, the element which knows, thinks, and feels; the divine element in the living being. The Jain belief is that both soul and matter are eternal and cannot be created. According to the Parsee faith, represented in the essay of Mr. E. S. D. Bharucha, sent to the Parliament from Bombay, the spiritual and immortal part of man was created before his material part. They combine at his birth and separate at his