Note (return) — Chapter VIII · - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS

The burden of the teachings of this sect is subjective idealism. They embrace principles enjoining complete indifference to mundane affairs, and, in fact, thorough personal nullification and the ignoring of all actions by its disciples. In these teachings, thought only, is real. As we have already seen with the Ku-sha teaching, human beings are of three classes, divided according to intellect, into higher, middle and lower, for whom the systems of teachings are necessarily of as many kinds. The order of progress with those who give themselves to the study of the Hossō tenets, is,12 first, they know only the existence of things, then the emptiness of them, and finally they enter the middle path of "true emptiness and wonderful existence."