ABSTRACT
Buddhism believes in transitive causation, where one state transmits its paccayasatti, or causal energy, to some newly conceived germ. For a few centuries Buddhism flourished in India but then died a natural death, though Buddha himself survives as a living spiritual force. Asoka dispatched missionaries to many countries outside of India, among them Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, and Epirus, and under his influence Buddhism gradually attained the status of a world religion. Asoka, though a Buddhist ruler, showed the same spirit of toleration and the same sympathy in relation to Hinduism that the Hindus had shown in relation to Buddhism. Zen Buddhism, a peculiar blending of Mahayana Buddhism with the native Taoism, by enhancing the tendency to meditation spread throughout China, and was carried to Japan, where it established itself as one of the chief religions of the land. In both China and Japan Buddhism was the inspiration of their greatest artistic triumphs.
