THE MONKHOOD--I
'Let his life be kindness, his conduct righteousness; then in the
fulness of gladness he will make an end of grief.'--_Dammapada._
During his lifetime, that long lifetime that remained to him after he
had found the light, Gaudama the Buddha gathered round him many
disciples. They came to learn from his lips of that truth which he had
found, and they remained near him to practise that life which alone can
lead unto the Great Peace.
From time to time, as occasion arose, the teacher laid down precepts and
rules to assist those who desired to live as he did--precepts and rules
designed to help his disciples in the right way. Thus there arose about
him a brotherhood of those who were striving to purify their souls, and
lead the higher life, and that brotherhood has lasted ever since, till
you see in it the monkhood of to-day, for that is all that the monks
are--a brotherhood of men who are trying to live as their great master
lived, to purify their souls from the lust of life, to travel the road
that reaches unto deliverance. Only that, nothing more.
There is no idea of priesthood about it at all, for by a priest we
understand one who has received from above some power, who is, as it
were, a representative on earth of God. Priests, to our thinking, are
those who have delegated to them some of that authority of which God is
the fountainhead. They can absolve from sin, we think; they can accept
into the faith; they can eject from it; they can exhort with authority;
they can administer the sacraments of religion; they can speed the
parting soul to God; they can damn the parting soul to hell. A priest is
one who is clothed with much authority and holiness.
But in Buddhism there is not, there cannot be, anything of all this. The
God who lies far beyond our ken has delegated His authority to no one.
He works through everlasting laws. His will is manifested by
unchangeable sequences. There is nothing hidden about His laws that
requires exposition by His agents, nor any ceremonies necessary for
acceptance into the faith. Buddhism is a free religion. No one holds the
keys of a man's salvation but himself. Buddhism never dreams that anyone
can save or damn you but yourself, and so a Buddhist monk is as far away
from our ideas of a priest as can be. Nothing could be more abhorrent to
Buddhism than any claim of authority, of power, from above, of holiness
acquired except by the earnest effort of a man's own soul.
These monks, who are so common all through Burma, whose monasteries are
outside every village, who can be seen in every street in the early
morning begging their bread, who educate the whole youth of the country,
are simply men who are striving after good.
This is a difficult thing for us to understand, for our minds are bent
in another direction. A religion without a priesthood seems to us an
impossibility, and yet here it is so. The whole idea and thing of a
priesthood would be repugnant to Buddhism.
It is a wonderful thing to contemplate how this brotherhood has existed
all these many centuries, how it has always gained the respect and
admiration of the people, how it has always held in its hands the
education of the children, and yet has never aspired to sacerdotalism.
Think of the temptation resisted here. The temptation to interfere in
government was great, the temptation to arrogate to themselves priestly
powers is far, far greater. Yet it has been always resisted. This
brotherhood of monks is to-day as it was twenty-three centuries ago--a
community of men seeking for the truth.
Therefore, in considering these monks, we must dismiss from our minds
any idea of priesthood, any idea of extra human sanctity, of extra human
authority. We must never liken them in any way to our priests, or even
to our friars. I use the word monk, because it is the nearest of any
English word I can find, but even that is not quite correct. I have
often found this difficulty. I do not like to use the Burmese terms if I
can help it, for this reason, that strange terms and names confuse us.
They seem to lift us into another world--a world of people differing
from us, not in habits alone, but in mind and soul. It is a dividing
partition. It is very difficult to read a book speaking of people under
strange terms, and feel that they are flesh and blood with us, and
therefore I have, if possible, always used an English word where I can
come anywhere near the meaning, and in this case I think monk comes
closest to what I mean. Hermits they are not, for they live always in
communities by villages, and they do not seclude themselves from human
intercourse. Priests they are not, ministers they are not, clergymen
they are not; mendicants only half describe them, so I use the word monk
as coming nearest to what I wish to say.
The monks, then, are those who are trying to follow the teaching of
Gaudama the Buddha, to wean themselves from the world, 'who have turned
their eyes towards heaven, where is the lake in which all passions shall
be washed away.' They are members of a great community, who are governed
by stringent regulations--the regulations laid down in the Wini for
observance by all monks. When a man enters the monkhood, he makes four
vows--that he will be pure from lust, from desire of property, from the
taking of any life, from the assumption of any supernatural powers.
Consider this last, how it disposes once and for all of any desire a
monk may have toward mysticism, for this is what he is taught:
'No member of our community may ever arrogate to himself extraordinary
gifts or supernatural perfection, or through vainglory give himself out
to be a holy man; such, for instance, as to withdraw into solitary
places on pretence of enjoying ecstasies like the Ariahs, and afterwards
to presume to teach others the way to uncommon spiritual attainments.
Sooner may the lofty palm-tree that has been cut down become green
again, than an elect guilty of such pride be restored to his holy
station. Take care for yourself that you do not give way to such an
excess.'
Is not this teaching the very reverse of that of all other peoples and
religions? Can you imagine the religious teachers of any other religion
being warned to keep themselves free from visions? Are not visions and
trances, dreams and imaginations, the very proof of holiness? But here
it is not so. These are vain things, foolish imaginations, and he who
would lead the pure life must put behind him all such things as mere
dram-drinking of the soul.
This is a most wonderful thing, a religion that condemns all
mysticisms. It stands alone here amongst all religions, pure from the
tinsel of miracle, either past, or present, or to come. And yet this
people is, like all young nations, given to superstition: its young men
dream dreams, its girls see visions. There are interpreters of dreams,
many of them, soothsayers of all kinds, people who will give you charms,
and foretell events for you. Just as it was with us not long ago, the
mystery, _what is_ beyond the world, exercises a curious fascination
over them. Everywhere you will meet with traces of it, and I have in
another chapter told some of the principal phases of these. But the
religion has kept itself pure. No hysteric visions, no madman's dreams,
no clever conjurer's tricks, have ever shed a tawdry glory on the
monkhood of the Buddha. Amid all the superstition round about them they
have remained pure, as they have from passion and desire. Here in the
far East, the very home, we think, of the unnatural and superhuman, the
very cradle of the mysterious and the wonderful, is a religion which
condemns it all, and a monkhood who follow their religion. Does not this
out-miracle any miracle?
With other faiths it is different: they hold out to those who follow
their tenets and accept their ministry that in exchange for the worldly
things which their followers renounce they shall receive other gifts,
heavenly ones; they will be endued with power from above; they will have
authority from on high; they will become the chosen messengers of God;
they may even in their trances enter into His heaven, and see Him face
to face.
Buddhism has nothing of all this to offer. A man must surrender all the
world, with no immediate gain. There is only this: that if he struggle
along in the path of righteousness, he will at length attain unto the
Great Peace.
A monk who dreamed dreams, who said that the Buddha had appeared to him
in a vision, who announced that he was able to prophesy, would be not
exalted, but expelled. He would be deemed silly or mad; think of
that--mad--for seeing visions, not holy at all! The boys would jeer at
him; he would be turned out of his monastery.
A monk is he who observes purity and sanity of life. Hysteric dreams,
the childishness of the mysterious, the insanity of the miraculous, are
no part of that.
And so a monk has to put behind him everything that is called good in
this life, and govern his body and his soul in strict temperance.
He must wear but yellow garments, ample and decent, but not beautiful;
he must shave his head; he must have none but the most distant
intercourse with women; he must beg his food daily in the streets; he
must eat but twice, and then but a certain amount, and never after noon;
he must take no interest in worldly affairs; he must own no property,
must attend no plays or performances; 'he must eat, not to satisfy his
appetite, but to keep his body alive; he must wear clothes, not from
vanity, but from decency; he must live under a roof, not because of
vainglory, but because the weather renders it necessary.' All his life
is bounded by the very strictest poverty and purity.
There is no austerity. A monk may not over-eat, but he must eat enough;
he must not wear fine clothes, but he must be decent and comfortable; he
must not have proud dwellings, but he should be sheltered from the
weather.
There is no self-punishment in Buddhism. Did not the Buddha prove the
futility of this long ago? The body must be kept in health, that the
soul may not be hampered. And so the monks live a very healthy, very
temperate life, eating and drinking just enough to keep the body in good
health; that is the first thing, that is the very beginning of the pure
life.
And as he trains his body by careful treatment, so does he his soul. He
must read the sacred books, he must meditate on the teachings of the
great teacher, he must try by every means in his power to bring these
truths home to himself, not as empty sayings, but as beliefs that are to
be to him the very essence of all truth. He is not cut off from society.
There are other monks, and there are visitors, men and women. He may
talk to them--he is no recluse; but he must not talk too much about
worldly matters. He must be careful of his thoughts, that they do not
lead him into wrong paths. His life is a life of self-culture.
Being no priest, he has few duties to others to perform; he is not
called upon to interfere in the business of others. He does not visit
the sick; he has no concern with births and marriages and deaths. On
Sunday, and on certain other occasions, he may read the laws to the
people, that is all. Of this I will speak in another chapter. It does
not amount to a great demand upon his time. He is also the schoolmaster
of the village, but this is aside entirely from his sacred profession.
Certain duties he has, however. Every morning as the earliest sunlight
comes upon the monastery spires, when the birds are still calling to the
day, and the cool freshness of the morning still lies along the
highways, you will see from every monastery the little procession come
forth. First, perhaps, there will be two schoolboys with a gong slung on
a bamboo between them, which they strike now and then. And behind them,
in their yellow robes, their faces cast upon the ground, and the
begging-bowls in their hands, follow the monks. Very slowly they pass
along the streets, amid the girls hurrying to their stalls in the bazaar
with baskets of fruit upon their heads, the housewives out to buy their
day's requirements, the workman going to his work, the children running
and laughing and falling in the dust. Everyone makes room for them as
they go in slow and solemn procession, and from this house and that
come forth women and children with a little rice that they have risen
before daylight to cook, a little curry, a little fruit, to put into the
bowls. Never is there any money given: a monk may not touch money, and
his wants are very few. Presents of books, and so on, are made at other
times; but in the morning only food is given.
The gifts are never acknowledged. The cover of the bowl is removed, and
when the offering has been put in, it is replaced, and the monk moves
on. And when they have made their accustomed round, they return, as they
went, slowly to the monastery, their bowls full of food. I do not know
that this food is always eaten by the monks. Frequently in large towns
they are fed by rich men, who send daily a hot, fresh, well-cooked meal
for each monk, and the collected alms are given to the poor, or to
schoolboys, or to animals. But the begging round is never neglected, nor
is it a form. It is a very real thing, as anyone who has seen them go
knows. They must beg their food, and they do; it is part of the
self-discipline that the law says is necessary to help the soul to
humility. And the people give because it is a good thing to give alms.
Even if they know the monks are fed besides, they will fill the bowls as
the monks pass along. If the monks do not want it, there are the poor,
there are the schoolboys, sons of the poorest of the people, who may
often be in need of a meal; and if a little be left, then there are the
birds and the beasts. It is a good thing to give alms--good for
yourself, I mean. So that this daily procession does good in two ways:
it is good for the monk because he learns humility; it is good for the
people because they have thereby offered them a chance of giving a
little alms. Even the poorest may be able to give his spoonful of rice.
All is accepted. Think not a great gift is more acceptable than a little
one. You must judge by the giver's heart.
At every feast, every rejoicing, the central feature is presents to the
monks. If a man put his son into a monastery, if he make merry at a
stroke of good fortune, if he wish to celebrate a mark of favour from
government, the principal ceremony of the feast will be presents to
monks. They must be presents such as the monks can accept; that is
understood.
Therefore, a man enters a monastery simply for this: to keep his body in
health by perfect moderation and careful conduct, and to prepare his
soul for heaven by meditation. That is the meaning of it all.
If you see a grove of trees before you on your ride, mangoes and
tamarinds in clusters, with palms nodding overhead, and great
broad-leaved plantains and flowering shrubs below, you may be sure that
there is a monastery, for it is one of the commands to the monks of the
Buddha to live under the shade of lofty trees, and this command they
always keep. They are most beautiful, many of these monasteries--great
buildings of dark-brown teak, weather-stained, with two or three roofs
one above the other, and at one end a spire tapering up until it ends in
a gilded 'tee.' Many of the monasteries are covered with carving along
the facades and up the spires, scroll upon scroll of daintiest design,
quaint groups of figures here and there, and on the gateways moulded
dragons. All the carvings tell a story taken from the treasure-house of
the nation's infancy, quaint tales of genii and fairy and wonderful
adventure. Never, I think, do the carvings tell anything of the sacred
life or teaching. The Burmese are not fond, as we are, of carving and
painting scenes from sacred books. Perhaps they think the subject too
holy for the hand of the craftsman, and so, with, as far as I know, but
one exception in all Burma--a pagoda built by Indian architects long
ago--you will look in vain for any sacred teaching in the carvings. But
they are very beautiful, and their colour is so good, the deep rich
brown of teak against the light green of the tamarinds, and the great
leaves of the plantains all about. Within the monastery it will be all
bare. However beautiful the building is without, no relaxation of his
rules is allowed to the monk within. All is bare: only a few mats,
perhaps, here and there on the plank floor, a hard wooden bed, a box or
two of books.
At one end there will be sure to be the image of the teacher, wrought
in alabaster. These are always one of three stereotyped designs; they
are not works of art at all. The wealth of imagination and desire of
beauty that finds its expression in the carved stories in the facades
has no place here at all. It would be thought a sacrilege to attempt in
any way to alter the time-honoured figures that have come down to us
from long ago.
Over the head of the image there will be a white or golden umbrella,
whence we have derived our haloes, and perhaps a lotus-blossom in an
earthen pot in front. That will be all. There is this very remarkable
fact: of all the great names associated with the life of the Buddha, you
never see any presentment at all.
The Buddha stands alone. Of Maya his mother, of Yathodaya his wife, of
Rahoula his son, of his great disciple Thariputra, of his dearest
disciple and brother Ananda, you see nothing. There are no saints in
Buddhism at all, only the great teacher, he who saw the light. Surely
this is a curious thing, that from the time of the prince to now, two
thousand four hundred years, no one has arisen to be worthy of mention
of record beside him. There is only one man holy to Buddhism--Gaudama
the Buddha.
On one side of the monasteries there will be many pagodas, tombs of the
Buddha. They are usually solid cones, topped with a gilded 'tee,' and
there are many of them. Each man will build one in his lifetime if he
can. They are always white or gold.
So there is much colour about a monastery--the brown of the wood and the
white of the pagoda, and tender green of the trees. The ground is always
kept clean-swept and beaten and neat. And there is plenty of sound,
too--the fairy music of little bells upon the pagoda-tops when the
breeze moves, the cooing of the pigeons in the eaves, the voices of the
schoolboys. Monastery land is sacred. No life may be taken there, no
loud sounds, no noisy merriment, no abuse is permitted anywhere within
the fence. Monasteries are places of meditation and peace.
Of course, all monasteries are not great and beautiful buildings; many
are but huts of bamboo and straw, but little better than the villager's
hut. Some villages are so poor that they can afford but little for their
holy men. But always there will be trees, always the ground will be
swept, always the place will be respected just the same. And as soon as
a good crop gives the village a little money, it will build a teak
monastery, be sure of that.
Monasteries are free to all. Any stranger may walk into a monastery and
receive shelter. The monks are always hospitable. I have myself lived,
perhaps, a quarter of my life in Burma in monasteries, or in the
rest-houses attached to them. We break all their laws: we ride and wear
boots within the sacred enclosure; our servants kill fowls for our
dinners there, where all life is protected; we treat these monks, these
who are the honoured of the nation, much in the offhand, unceremonious
way that we treat all Orientals; we often openly laugh at their
religion. And yet they always receive us; they are often even glad to
see us and talk to us. Very, very seldom do you meet with any return in
kind for your contempt of their faith and habits. I have heard it said
sometimes that some monks stand aloof, that they like to keep to
themselves. If they should do so, can you wonder? Would any people, not
firmly bound by their religion, put up with it all for a moment? If you
went into a Mahommedan mosque in Delhi with your boots on, you would
probably be killed. Yet we clump round the Shwe Dagon pagoda at our
ease, and no one interferes. Do not suppose that it is because the
Burman believes less than the Hindu or Mahommedan. It is because he
believes more, because he is taught that submission and patience are
strong Buddhist virtues, and that a man's conduct is an affair of his
own soul. He is willing to believe that the Englishman's breaches of
decorum are due to foreign manners, to the necessities of our life, to
ignorance. But even if he supposed that we did these things out of sheer
wantonness it would make no difference. If the foreigner is dead to
every feeling of respect, of courtesy, of sympathy, that is an affair of
the foreigner's own heart. It is not for the monk to enforce upon
strangers the respect and reverence due to purity, to courage, to the
better things. Each man is responsible for himself, the foreigner no
less than the Burman. If a foreigner have no respect for what is good,
that is his own business. It can hurt no one but himself if he is
blatant, ignorant, contemptuous. No one is insulted by it, or requires
revenge for it. You might as well try and insult gravity by jeering at
Newton and his pupils, as injure the laws of righteousness by jeering at
the Buddha or his monks. And so you will see foreigners take all sorts
of liberties in monasteries and pagodas, break every rule wantonly, and
disregard everything the Buddhist holds holy, and yet very little notice
will be taken openly. Burmans will have their own opinion of you, do
have their own opinion of you, without a doubt; but because you are lost
to all sense of decency, that is no reason why the Buddhist monk or
layman should also lower himself by getting angry and resent it; and so
you may walk into any monastery or rest-house and act as you think fit,
and no one will interfere with you. Nay, if you even show a little
courtesy to the monks, your hosts, they will be glad to talk to you and
tell you of their lives and their desires. It is very seldom that a
pleasant word or a jest will not bring the monks into forgetting all
your offences, and talking to you freely and openly. I have had, I have
still, many friends among the monkhood; I have been beholden to them
for many kindnesses; I have found them always, peasants as they are,
courteous and well-mannered. Nay, there are greater things than these.
When my dear friend was murdered at the outbreak of the war, wantonly
murdered by the soldiers of a brutal official, and his body drifted down
the river, everyone afraid to bury it, for fear of the wrath of
government, was it not at last tenderly and lovingly buried by the monks
near whose monastery it floated ashore? Would all people have done this?
Remember, he was one of those whose army was engaged in subduing the
kingdom; whose army imprisoned the king, and had killed, and were
killing, many, many hundreds of Burmans. 'We do not remember such
things. All men are brothers to the dead.' They are brothers to the
living, too. Is there not a monastery near Kindat, built by an
Englishman as a memorial to the monk who saved his life at peril of his
own at that same time, who preserved him till help came?
Can anyone ever tell when the influence of a monk has been other than
for pity or mercy? Surely they believe their religion? I did not know
how people could believe till I saw them.
Martyrdom--what is martyrdom, what is death, for your religion, compared
to living within its commands? Death is easy; life it is that is
difficult. Men have died for many things: love and hate, and religion
and science, for patriotism and avarice, for self-conceit and sheer
vanity, for all sorts of things, of value and of no value. Death proves
nothing. Even a coward can die well. But a pure life is the outcome only
of the purest religion, of the greatest belief, of the most magnificent
courage. Those who can live like this can die, too, if need be--have
done so often and often; that is but a little matter indeed. No Buddhist
would consider that as a very great thing beside a holy life.
There is another difference between us. We think a good death hallows an
evil life; no Buddhist would hear of this for a moment.
The reverence in which a monk--ay, even the monk to-day who was but an
ordinary man yesterday--is held by the people is very great. All those
who address him do so kneeling. Even the king himself was lower than a
monk, took a lower seat than a monk in the palace. He is addressed as
'Lord,' and those who address him are his disciples. Poor as he is,
living on daily charity, without any power or authority of any kind, the
greatest in the land would dismount and yield the road that he should
pass. Such is the people's reverence for a holy life. Never was such
voluntary homage yielded to any as to these monks. There is a special
language for them, the ordinary language of life being too common to be
applied to their actions. They do not sleep or eat or walk as do other
men.
It seems strange to us, coming from our land where poverty is an
offence, where the receipt of alms is a degradation, where the ideal is
power, to see here all this reversed. The monks are the poorest of the
poor, they are dependent on the people for their daily bread; for
although lands may be given to a monastery as a matter of fact, very few
have any at all, and those only a few palm-trees. They have no power at
all, either temporal or eternal; they are not very learned, and yet they
are the most honoured of all people. Without any of the attributes which
in our experience gather the love and honour of mankind, they are
honoured above all men.
The Burman demands from the monk no assistance in heavenly affairs, no
interference in worldly, only this, that he should live as becomes a
follower of the great teacher. And because he does so live the Burman
reverences him beyond all others. The king is feared, the wise man
admired, perhaps envied, the rich man is respected, but the monk is
honoured and loved. There is no one beside him in the heart of the
people. If you would know what a Burman would be, see what a monk is:
that is his ideal. But it is a very difficult ideal. The Burman is very
fond of life, very full of life, delighting in the joy of existence,
brimming over with vitality, with humour, with merriment. They are a
young people, in the full flush of early nationhood. To them of all
people the restraints of a monk's life must be terrible and hard to
maintain. And because it is so, because they all know how hard it is to
do right, and because the monks do right, they honour them, and they
know they deserve honour. Remember that all these people have been monks
themselves at one time or other; they know how hard the rules are, they
know how well they are observed. They are reverencing what they
thoroughly understand; they have seen their monkhood from the inside;
their reverence is the outcome of a very real knowledge.
Of the internal management of the monkhood I have but little to say.
There is the Thathanabaing, who is the head of the community; there are
under him Gaing-oks, who each have charge of a district; each Gaing-ok
has an assistant, 'a prop,' called Gaing-dauk; and there are the heads
of monasteries. The Thathanabaing is chosen by the heads of the
monasteries, and appoints his Gaing-oks and Gaing-dauks. There is no
complication about it. Usually any serious dispute is decided by a court
of three or four heads of monasteries, presided over by the Gaing-ok.
But note this: no monk can be tried by any ecclesiastical court without
his consent. Each monastery is self-governing; no monk can be called to
account by any Gaing-ok or Gaing-dauk unless he consents. The discipline
is voluntary entirely. There are no punishments by law for disobedience
of an ecclesiastical court. A monk cannot be unfrocked by his fellows.
Therefore, it would seem that there would be no check over abuses, that
monks could do as they liked, that irregularities could creep in, and
that, in fact, there is nothing to prevent a monastery becoming a
disgrace. This would be a great mistake. It must never be forgotten that
monks are dependent on their village for everything--food and clothes,
and even the monastery itself. Do not imagine that the villagers would
allow their monks, their 'great glories,' to become a scandal to them.
The supervision exercised by the people over their monks is most
stringent. As long as the monks act as monks should, they are held in
great honour, they are addressed by titles of great respect, they are
supplied with all they want within the rules of the Wini, they are the
glory of the village. But do you think a Burman would render this homage
to a monk whom he could not respect, who did actions he should not? A
monk is one who acts as a monk. Directly he breaks his laws, his
holiness is gone. The villagers will have none such as he. They will
hunt him out of the village, they will refuse him food, they will make
him a byword, a scorn. I have known this to happen. If a monk's holiness
be suspected, he must clear himself before a court, or leave that place
quickly, lest worse befall him. It is impossible to conceive any
supervision more close than this of the people over their monks, and so
the breaches of any law by the monks are very rare--very rare indeed.
You see, for one thing, that a monk never takes the vows for life. He
takes them for six months, a year, two years, very often for five
years; then, if he finds the life suit him, he continues. If he finds
that he cannot live up to the standard required, he is free to go. There
is no compulsion to stay, no stigma on going. As a matter of fact, very
few monks there are but have left the monastery at one time or another.
It is impossible to over-estimate the value of this safety-valve. What
with the certainty of detection and punishment from his people, and the
knowledge that he can leave the monastery if he will at the end of his
time without any reproach, a monk is almost always able to keep within
his rules.
I have had for ten years a considerable experience of criminal law. I
have tried hundreds of men for all sorts of offences; I have known of
many hundreds more being tried, and the only cases where a monk was
concerned that I can remember are these: three times a monk has been
connected in a rebellion, once in a divorce case, once in another
offence. This last case happened just as we annexed the country, and
when our courts were not established. He was detected by the villagers,
stripped of his robes, beaten, and hunted out of the place with every
ignominy possible. There is only one opinion amongst all those who have
tried to study the Buddhist monkhood--that their conduct is admirable.
Do you suppose the people would reverence it as they do if it were
corrupt? They know: they have seen it from the inside. It is not
outside knowledge they have. And when it is understood that anyone can
enter a monastery--thieves and robbers, murderers and sinners of every
description, can enter, are even urged to enter monasteries, and try to
live the holy life; and many of them do, either as a refuge against
pursuit, or because they really repent--it will be conceded that the
discipline of the monks, if obtained in a different way to elsewhere, is
very effective.
The more you study the monkhood, the more you see that this community is
the outcome of the very heart of the people. It is a part of the people,
not cut off from them, but of them; it is recruited in great numbers
from all sorts and conditions of men. In every village and town--nearly
every man has been a monk at one time or another--it is honoured alike
by all; it is kept in the straight way, not only from the inherent
righteousness of its teaching, but from the determination of the people
to allow no stain to rest upon what they consider as their 'great
glory.' This whole monkhood is founded on freedom. It is held together
not by a strong organization, but by general consent. There is no
mystery about it, there are no dark places here where the sunlight of
inquiry may not come. The whole business is so simple that the very
children can and do understand it. I shall have expressed myself very
badly if I have not made it understood how absolutely voluntary this
monkhood is, held together by no everlasting vows, restrained by no
rigid discipline. It is simply the free outcome of the free beliefs of
the people, as much a part of them as the fruit is of the tree. You
could no more imagine grapes without a vine than a Buddhist monkhood
that did not spring directly from, and depend entirely on, the people.
It is the higher expression of their life.
In writing this account of the Burmese and their religion, I have tried
always to see with my own eyes, to write my own thoughts without any
reference to what anyone else may have thought or written. I have
believed that whatever value may attach to any man's opinions consists
in the fact that they are his opinions, and not a _rechauffe_ of the
thoughts of others, and therefore I have not even referred to, or quoted
from, any other writer, preferring to write only what I have myself seen
and thought. But I cannot end this chapter on the monks of the Buddha
without a reference to what Bishop Bigandet has said on the same
subject, for he is no observer prejudiced in favour of Buddhism, but the
reverse. He was a bishop of the Church of Rome, believing always that
his faith contained all truth, and that the Buddha was but a 'pretended
saviour,' his teachings based on 'capital and revolting errors,' and
marked with an 'inexplicable and deplorable eccentricity.' Bishop
Bigandet was in no sympathy with Buddhism, but its avowed foe, desirous
of undermining and destroying its influence over the hearts of men, and
yet this is the way he ends his chapter:
'There is in that religious body--the monks--a latent principle of
vitality that keeps it up and communicates to it an amount of strength
and energy that has hitherto maintained it in the midst of wars,
revolutionary and political, convulsions of all descriptions. Whether
supported or not by the ruling power, it has remained always firm and
unchanged. It is impossible to account satisfactorily for such a
phenomenon, unless we find a clear and evident cause of such
extraordinary vitality, a cause independent of ordinary occurrences of
time and circumstances, a cause deeply rooted in the very soul of the
populations that exhibit before the observer this great and striking
religious feature.
'That cause appears to be the strong religious sentiment, the firm
faith, that pervades the mass of Buddhists. The laity admire and
venerate the religious, and voluntarily and cheerfully contribute to
their maintenance and welfare. From its ranks the religious body is
constantly recruited. There is hardly a man that has not been a member
of the fraternity for a certain period of time.
'Surely such a general and continued impulse could not last long unless
it were maintained by a powerful religious connection.
'The members of the order preserve, at least exteriorly, the decorum of
their profession. The rules and regulations are tolerably well
observed; the grades of hierarchy are maintained with scrupulous
exactitude. The life of the religious is one of restraint and perpetual
control. He is denied all sorts of pleasures and diversions. How could
such a system of self-denial ever be maintained, were it not for the
belief which the Rahans have in the merits that they amass by following
a course of life which, after all, is repugnant to Nature? It cannot be
denied that human motives often influence both the laity and the
religious, but, divested of faith and the sentiments supplied by even a
false belief, their action could not produce in a lasting and
persevering manner the extraordinary and striking fact that we witness
in Buddhist countries.'
This monkhood is the proof of how the people believe. Has any religion
ever had for twenty-four centuries such a proof as this?