Let us return to the hillside preacher. A change has come over his
audience. All are now alert and eager. Seated around his platform,
they are holding a cord which seems to bind them in some mystic
circle. It is "_Pirit_": a kind of magic incantation. The preacher is
reciting the ancient runes by which evil is averted and demon armies
kept at bay. He is telling how the bandit, Angulimāla, who had killed
nine hundred and ninety-nine victims and wore their fingers as a
chaplet, tried to kill the Buddha so as to make the full tale of a
thousand, but was converted on the spot. "May the merit of this be
yours," he says, and they all cry, "_Sadhu_, Amen."
"All humbug," grunts the layman. "Come, let us go to the Young Men's
Buddhist Association, where a Singhalese advocate, newly returned from
England, is going to read a paper on 'Buddhism, a Gospel for Europe.'"
Leaving the palms and fragrant trees of the jungle silhouetted against
the brilliant sky, and passing the white buildings of the Buddhist
High School and of the precious and venerated Temple of the Tooth, he
talks of this possibility. It seems that a movement is on foot to send
a mission to Europe. We agree that, if Christians were real followers
of Jesus of Nazareth, such missions would be futile: and that the
spirit of Gotama is akin to that of Jesus. "We see your Christ," he
says; "in His beauty, because we have first seen the beauty of our
Buddha." Here is a preparation for the gospel indeed. And may not all
idealists--Christians, Buddhists, and others--cooperate much more
freely than they do in great causes? In a League of Nations, for
example, and in social programmes? In Ceylon, as in Burma, Buddhism is
in some degree adapting itself to the new world-environment. Its old
cry of pain, "All is fleeting, transient, sorrowful," is giving place
to attempts at social service and positive living. Yet as compared
with Burma or with Christian lands, the predominating note among
Buddhists in Ceylon is one of world-weariness and despair.