A v\aW:.a
'I' /THE
RELIGION OF BURMA
AND OTHER PAPERS
BENNETT
/*
({
I '
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
ADYAB, MADRAS, INDIA
1929
UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO
LIBRARY
INTRODUCTORY
THE author of these essays was a combination
of two faculties which, in any high degree, are
rarely found in one and the same mind. Early
in life he had obtained a training in Chemistry
and Physics, and soon found that he had a
strong bent to those sciences, which, with
opportunity m proportion to his ability, he
would certainly have pursued with eagerness.
Yet he was also a true poet. Not that he
wrote much in metre, though his beautiful
verses entitled The Word of tlie Buddha make
one wonder that he did not write more. One
can hardly turn a page of his prose essays
without coming across some passage which is
instinct with the imaginative expression that is
the very essence of poetry. Like other poets,
however, he had his growth, his culmination,
VI
and his decline, bis power being at its maximum
from 1902 till 1912.
Rightly indeed have the Buddhists of the
Bast decided that these inspiring writings shall
not be consigned to the oblivion which over-
takes back-numbers of journals, but made
accessible to the world in the form of a volume.
For the whole of the powers of this remarkable
man were devoted to one single object : to the
exposition of the Dhamma in such a manner
that it could be assimilated by the peoples of
the "West. Not, indeed, that we could ever
forget that the powers of the great Rhys
Davids were devoted, with no less singleness
of aim, to that same purpose ; nor forget that it
was the work of Rhys Davids that made
possible the work of Ananda Metteyya. But
Rhys Davids was a scholar, and the scholar is
not properly the advocate : indeed, if he be,
his scholarship comes under suspicion, possibly
even into peril.
Vll
Ananda Metteyya is frankly the advocate,
and what an advocate ! Ages have passed since
the Dhamma has been set forth with such
power, and who can tell when it will be so set
forth again ?
When this volume reaches the western
world, there will, of course, be criticism, two
points of which it may be well to anticipate.
One is on a matter of style ; for it may be
admitted that our author's sentences are often
involved and hyperparenthetic, his metaphors
occasionally somewhat redundant.
The other is a little more serious, for it
involves a question of scholarship. Has he, like
so many western expositors, introduced into his
expositions modern ideas of his own? That
indeed, in itself, is a perfectly legitimate
proceeding. Any man is free to construct
what seems to him an ideal system, by
combining ancient ideas with modern ones.
What is illegitimate is to call the combination
vm
by a single, usually an ancient, name. No wit
cannot be denied that our author thus applies
the term "Buddhism," and scholarship may
here and there find him guilty. Indeed, it is
difficult to avoid a suspicion that some of the
compilers of the Pitakas would be mightily
r SC,R<PTUtf-<, J
astonished, could they see the towering
structures which he, with a chemistry and
physics whereof they never dreamed, with
a literary power which they rarely wielded,
and a poetic imagination to which they seldom
if ever rose, has built up around their phrases !
And if so, what are we to say ? Dismiss it
all as unscholarly and unreliable? Hardly.
We may indeed, in the name of sound scholar-
ship, refuse to call the whole content of these
essays by the name of " Buddhism ". We may
say that they are a compound of certain ideas
of ancient Pali Buddhism with certain ideas of
modern origin. But what if the need of the
West to-day be just such a compound ? Then,
IX
if it bring a fresh light into our lives, let us be
grateful to the genius of Ananda Metteyya.
Whether it be adequate to the whole of our
needs that is another question. Finality,
surely, is incredible. Are there not, moreover,
deep-seated needs, yearnings unspeakable,
which no system ever yet devised by man is
adequate to meet ? This is not the place for a
discussion of them, but to commend to readers,
both in Bast and West, the contents of this
remarkable volume.
A BUDDBIST
B
CONTENTS
PAGE
Portrait of the Author Frontispiece
Introductory v
The Religion of Burma . . . . .1
The Three Signata 112
Bight Understanding ...... 178
The Culture of Mind 235
The Miraculous Element in Buddhism . . . 282
The Rule of the Inner Kingdom .... 311
Devotion in Buddhism ...... 341
Buddhist Self-Culture 385
Kamma 409
Appendix :
The Late Mr. Allan Bennett . . . . 433
Buddha-hood as an Office 437
THE RELIGION OF BURMA
THE ORIGINS OF BUDDHISM
THE national, and in former times the state-
supported, religion of Burma is Buddhism of an
exceptionally pure type. This religion, at the
time of the census of 1901, was accepted by
9,184,121 persons, amounting to 88*6 per cent
of the total population, inclusive of a large
proportion of alien races, as well as the savage
or semi-civilised tribes (Chins, Kachins, Karens,
etc.) inhabiting the remoter parts of the
country. Buddhism of the national type may,
in fact, claim the adhesion of practically the
whole of the two chief civilised races inhabiting
the country the true Burmese, constituting
the bulk of the civilised population of Upper
2 THE KELIGION OF BURMA
Burma, and the Mon or Talaing race, for the
most part resident in Lower Burma. It is
further predominant in the Shan States, and
has of late years made considerable pro-
gress amongst the semi-civilised Karens.
Buddhism of the type prevalent in China
(which differs widely from the local type, as-
will shortly appear) is followed by the large
and important Chinese community, including
both immigrants direct from China and the
offspring of their marriages with Burmese wives.
The religion of Burma is commonly classified
by occidental scholars as belonging to the
" Southern " school of Buddhism. In fact, how*
ever, the terms " Northern " and " Southern,"
as applied to the different types of Buddhism,
are misleading, historically since all schools
of Buddhist thought alike took their rise
in India, and even in China and Japan have
undergone later but minor modifications
and also as a matter of fact. For whilst, in
THE EELIGION OF BUKMA 3
speaking of the so-called " Southern " school-
predominant in Burma, Ceylon, and Siara we
have to deal with a single and definite body of
doctrine and ethics, we find no such unanimity
in the " Northern " Buddhist countries China,
Japan, Tibet, Corea, and a large area in north-
ern and eastern Asia in general. There is, in
fact, no one " Northern " Buddhism, but a
great number of widely differing sects, bodies
agreeing only in the absolute fundamentals of the
Buddhist doctrine, and in claiming The Buddha
as the Founder of their respective creeds.
Another classification which has been put
forward by western scholars in the attempt to
define the Buddhist schools now prevalent
is that of the Vehicles, Northern Buddhism
being defined as Mahayana or the Greater
Vehicle, and Southern Buddhism as Hinayana
or the Lesser Vehicle. These terms are, indeed,
of Buddhist (and, as might be deduced, of
Northern) origin, but, whatever distinction may
4 THE RELIGION . OF BURMA
have been originally involved in these terms, it
certainly is not the same difference as that now
prevalent .between the Southern and the
Northern schools, so far as we can tell by com-
paring the works of Ashvaghosha with those in
Pali and their commentaries ; or judging from
the accounts the Chinese pilgrims to India have
bequeathed to us, concerning the doctrines
and the distribution of followers of either sect.
The native, and the correct, designation of
the pure form of Buddhism now prevalent in
Burma, Ceylon, and Siam is Themvdda, " The
Tradition of the Elders" or, as we might
justly render it, the Traditional, Original, or
Orthodox School. It unfortunately happened
that European scholarship, during the last
most remarkable century characterised by so
general a widening of the mental horizon, came
first into contact, not with the pure and simple
Buddhism of the Theravada School, but with the
divers teachings and Scriptures of the various
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 5
Northern sectaries ; and the earlier work of
occidental scholars in the field of Buddhism was
directed for the most part to the study and
translation of the multitudinous Scriptures
in Samskrt, Chinese, Tibetan, and so forth
of the various sections of the Northern
Church. The effect was much the same
as if a body of non-Christian scholars, setting
out to investigate the nature and origins of
Christianity, had first encountered, not the
genuine sources of that religion, the Canonical
Scriptures of the New Testament, but the
later, garbled, and miracle4eeming writings
of mediaeval monks. Buddhism came thus to
be first presented to the western mind as an
oriental mysticism of the most extravagant
type ; its Founder no historical personage, but
an imaginary divinity evolved from solar
myths. So tenacious is the human mind
to first impressions, that later, when the Pali
Scriptures of the Theravada School, with
6 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
their commentaries, came to the knowledge
of western scholars, there were many who
still maintained the earlier and inaccurate
views, supporting these, in face of the new
additions to their knowledge of Buddhism,
by the astounding supposition that the Pali
literature was the production of Buddha-
ghosha and other Buddhist divines who lived
some thousand years after the date ascribed
to the Founder of the Eeligion.
Happily, however, further evidence was
brought to light by the discovery in India of
the celebrated Inscriptions of Asoka -inscrip-
tions written in a character that no Singhalese
monk of the tenth century of the Buddhist
era could have read, even had he been aware
of their existence ; the contents of these
Edicts, written in a language practically the
same as the Pali used in the Scriptures of
Theravada Buddhism s demonstrated beyond all
doubt the authenticity of the Pali Canon and its
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 7
commentaries, and of the Singhalese Chronicles.
Later archaeological discoveries in India
brought further startling confirmations, even
Vs^ to the very names of Buddhist missionary
monks who, the Chronicles and Commentaries
stated, had gone forth from the third Great
Council of the Eeligion, together with details
as to the actual districts in which their mission-
ary labors had been pursued. The great
mass of evidence from these discoveries, and
from other non-Buddhist sources, as well as
the strong internal evidence of the unique Pali
literature itself, enable us now to assert that be-
yond all reasonable doubting in the Theravada
Buddhism now prevalent in Burma we
have, practically unchanged after twenty-five
centuries, the pure and original Eeligion pro-
pounded by The Buddha; and that in the
Pali Pitakas the Canonical Scriptures of that
Eeligion- we have the veritable Teaching of
The Master 5 preserved in the language He
8 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
spoke, and for the most part couched in the
actual words He employed in the course of His
religious mission.
In order that the reader may understand
the intense devotion of such a people as the
Burmese a people young in racial develop-
ment, eager, active, impatient of all restraint
to this Buddhist religion, whose key-note
is self-restraint and " Selflessness " in life;
and that the significance to modern civilisation
of the preservation amongst a Mongolian
people of this greatest product of Aryan
thought may be rendered clear, it is necessary
that we should first consider the circum-
stances and the environment in which it arose.
Wherever, in actual fact, the original home and
cradle of the great Aryan race was situate, we can
have but little doubt that, at some very remote
period in its history, that race divided into
two great streams of emigration, each prob-
ably consisting of many a successive tidal
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 9
wave. Of these two streams, one spread north
and westwards, populating Europe ; the other
south and perhaps eastwards into Persia and the
modern Afghanistan, ultimately penetrating
the great barrier- wall of the Himalayas, and
passing through the valleys of Kashmir into
India proper, taking up its final resting-place
in the vast and fertile Gangetic plain. As it
progressed in its conquest of India, everywhere
displacing more or less completely the indigen-
ous inhabitants by dint of its superior civilisa-
tion and its higher mental growth, the Indian
branch of that race found itself in an environ-
ment very different from that of the north-and-
westward-tending stream. Brought earlier
to maturity under the warm Indian skies;
findhig, in that genial and productive climate,,
opportunities for leisure and reflection such as
were denied in the severer conditions of life in
the temperate zone, the Indian Aryans had
reached, before the era of The Buddha, to
10 THE RELIGION OP BUBMA
a state of intellectual progress such as even
now their northward-wending kinsfolk of the
European stream are but approaching. The
climatic conditions of the Gangetic valley,
indeed, tended to the promotion of such
mental, rather than material, growth ; and so
it was that the Indian Aryans, though falling
far short of the material prosperity of Greek
and Roman civilisations, yet indefinitely tran-
scended these in philosophy, in religion 9 in
comprehension of those deeper lessons of life
which can only be approached when civilisation
has attained to a more or less complete eman-
cipation from the primary necessities of life.
Food, warmth, and clothing all came easier or
were less needed in India than in Europe ;
whilst leisure which is the first essential of
deep and earnest thinking was the privilege
even of the poorest. Thus came about the
high degree of mental progress mentioned ;
and whilst, even to the instructed western
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 11
reader, acquainted for the most part only with
the smaller realm of Latin, Hellenic, and
Hebraic culture, the statement may appear
doubtful or impossible, in Pali literature
which we are considering we find ample dem-
onstration that such high mental progress
was a fact. In the Pali Pitakas are lists,
for instance, of the divers schools of thought
and systems of philosophy which were extant
in India in The Buddha's time ; lists the
most significant and interesting to the Euro-
pean reader, who may find amongst them
the equivalent of every latest development
of modern thought, the very replica of all
our most " advanced " philosophies, from
the crudest of materialisms to the most
transcendental, purely idealistic views of life.
The chief difference between the civilisa-
tions of eastern and western Aryans, due to
their differing environment, reached of neces-
sity into every department of human polity ;
12 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
the same typical divergence manifesting in
every realm of life. For the western, of hard
necessity, material progress, material science,
material development, came first and foremost.
It was only when the application of science
came, during the past century, to add immense-
ly to the material welfare of the "West, that even
the worldly sciences found manifold adher-
ents and made speedy progress. Theretofore
the man who gave his life to science was either
a wizard, an anathema, or an idle dreamer in
the popular estimation ; the great man of the
West was he who oiuned the most, who exercised
the most authority over the goods and persons
of his fellow-men. In Aryan India all was
different ; spiritual progress, spiritual science
these held the foremost place, even in popu-
lar estimation ; the chief concern of life was
with the things that lay beyond it ; and the
truly great man in the popular imagination
was not he who held the most in this world,
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 18
but he who knew the most of the other
world.
And if the clear and lucid-Aryan mind-
perhaps the greatest, and without a doubt
the most active and most earnest mental
instrument humanity has yet evolved upon
our earth if that keen engine of research
has lately, in the western world, made
strides so marvellous in the conquest of the
material world, it had not done less in India in
The Buddha's days in conquest of the wider
realm of spiritual knowledge, the Kingdom
of Truth, the Empire of the deeper things
of life. Our western world has only within
the last decade produced its first attempt to
study and to classify those deeper realms of
life to which the mind, in special states of
exaltation, can gain access." 8 In India, not the
1 The reference is to The Varieties of Religious Experience, by
Prof. William James. The Author, however, was unfortunately
admittedly unacquainted with the Buddhist aspect of his subject ;
and, consequently his work for the most part is concerned with
Christian religious experience, and its classification, alone.
14 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
mere three earlier stages of spiritual experience
dealt with in Professor James's work but
eight such stages had been so thoroughly
investigated, had so far become the common
knowledge of all who studied these matters,
that their nature is dismissed with a mere
stereotyped collection of phrases most tan-
talising to the modern student, as premising a
knowledge of their details which he does not
possess. To these Eight Realms of Thought
each in succession transcending the last one, as
the clear lucid realm of waking life transcends
in vivid sequent consciousness the world of
dreams The Buddha added yet another : that
" State beyond All Life," which now we call
Mbbana.
The reason for the intense devotion of the
Burmese to their religion, on the one hand,
and on the other the significance and value of
that religion in itself, will now be clear to the
reader. That devotion and that significance and
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 15
value arise from the fact that in the religion of
Burma, preserved albeit in the minds of a Mon-
golian race, till recently secluded by the natural
barriers of sea and hill, we have the final and
the greatest product of Aryan religious thought,,
the ultimate outcome of centuries of religious
training and experience, the result achieved
by generations immemorial of Aryan thinkers
under circumstances as favorable for success in
this direction as the conditions of western life
have been favorable to the development of
modern science. The parallel, indeed, between
the two extends much further than mere
similarity of conditions extends to the very
fundamental principles of the two great bodies
of knowledge. In both, the whole grand
edifice of thought rests upon the discovery of
the Principle of Causation ; in both, the natural
concept of the immature mind the thought
arising from the earlier reign of Animism, that
all phenomena are the outcome of the activity
16 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
of some living, if spiritual, being or beings is
set aside, and we enter the ordered kingdom of
the Reign of Law ; and we may truly say that
what Newton did for modern science in his
stupendous discovery of the Law of Gravitation,
thatj twenty-five centuries ago. The Buddha
accomplished for the science of the deeper
things of life the science, rather, of Life
itself in His discovery and enunciation of the
universal Law of Karma. A religion without
a God, denying the animistic conception of a
subtle and immortal spirit tenanting the body
of man, which yet can give, not faith, but
reasoned hope for future progress and ultimate
-supreme attainment ; empty of prayer, yet
.giving to its followers the solace prayer so
surely brings ; void of all dogma, yet offering
to the fullest extent the sense of surety which
dogma brings to those who can accept it ; a
religion founded on observation and attainment,
whose results are always open to any who may
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 17
duly carry out the requisite preliminaries;
asking of its followers not Faith, but Under-
standing -such is the astonishing spectacle
afforded the student by the religion of Burma,
a spectacle not, perhaps, without keen signifi-
cance for that other western stream of Aryan
life, now, by dint of mental growth, come
well-nigh to parting with all its earlier
beliefs.
The religion of Burma thus appeals to its
adherents in each of the great departments of
human mental activity ; in the domain of
intellect by the clarity and reasoned logic of
its doctrines ; in the realm of emotional life
by the heart-moving story of its Founder's
search after Truth, His compassion for all that
suffer, and His Attainment ; and, not less
even than these high influences, by the exalted
altruism of its deeper teachings. If you were
to ask of a Bur man the reason for his passionate
devotion to his religion, the reply that he
18 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
would give would be " because it is so beautiful
and true " ; and this reply gives us the key-
note of the whole teaching of the Buddhist
Sacred Books. For, in these, in the ancient
language which The Master spoke and which
has come to hold in Burma much the same
position that Latin held in Europe in the
Middle Ages, we find no word equivalent to
our " Buddhism " at all. The native word is
Dhamma (Skt. Dharma), meaning, in this
connection, both " Truth " and " Law," and
the common phrase used in Pali to cover
the entire body of the religion, may be trans-
lated " This Truth and Discipline," a phrase
which at least more nearly approximates to
the nature of the religion than does our modern
" Buddhism ". Whatever is true the truth
concerning the deeper things of life that, for
the " Buddhist," is part of his religion ; and in
fact, whilst indeed He gave a new and a special
significance to many a technical term then
THE RELIGION OF BDEMA 19
prevalent amongst His fellow-countrymen. The
Buddha handed on, in His " Truth and Disci-
pline," many a thought and many a detail of
spiritual practice and attainment which had
been won by Indian saints and sages long
before the era of His work and life.
From the synopsis already given of the
general character of Buddhism, the reader
will well understand that in this religion
there is nothing to correspond to the definite
creeds and sacraments familiar to western
minds. But there is a formula whichalways
understanding that in itself there lies no special
saving power has come to be regarded as
marking the formal entry of a person into the
numbers of the lay-disciples of The Buddha;
the recitation of which thus, in a sense, may be
regarded as the equivalent of the Christian
baptism, or to the public enunciation of one of
the various Christian creeds. This formula is
known in Pali as the Ti-sarana or Threefold
20 THE BELIGION OF BURMA
Refuge -formula ; it runs : " Buddharh saranam
gacchami, Dhammam saranam gacchami. Sail-
gharh saranam gacchami " " I go to the
Buddha as my Refuge (or, as my Guide), I go
to the Truth as my Refuge, I go to the Order
as my Refuge"- the whole formulary being
thrice recited. This recitation marks the
beginning of every religious function in Burma>
from the offering of a few flowers by a child
at the local sanctuary to the public acceptation^
at the hands of a Chapter of the Order of the
higher degree of Ordination into the Monastic
Brotherhood, on the part of an adult novice.
Having now given, in these introductory pages y
a general idea of the nature, significance, and
origin of the religion, we may most conveniently
classify its details under the three headings
of the Members of that Ti-ratana, that Three-
fold Precious Treasure, wherein the Buddhist
seeks, as we have seen, his Refuge and his
Guide in life the Treasure of the Enlightened
THE EELIGION OP BUBMA 21
One, the Exalted Lord, the Buddha; the
Treasure of the Most Excellent Law, the
Truth or Dhamma- ; the Treasure of the
Holy Brotherhood, the Community of the
Sangha. One might briefly sum up the Holy
Three The Teacher, The Teaching, and The
Taught.
II
THE BUDDHA
The word Buddha, from the Indo-Aryan
root- word Buddh, to be awake, aware, and
hence to know, signifies the Awakened, or
the Illuminated, or Enlightened One; it
is thus not a name, but a title, the desig-
nation of an office or state of attainment.
Correctly speaking, it is to the office, rather
than to the holder of it, that reference is made
in the above-cited Formula of the Threefold
22 THE RELIGION 1 OF BURMA
Refuge; but, in just the same way as a
British subject, speaking at the present time,
might use the term "The King," meaning
George V, so the Buddhist, in common usage,
speaks of " The Buddha " as meaning the
particular Indian Sage who founded the
present Buddhist Religion. Buddhist escha-
tology informs us that alike in this world
as in others (for Buddhism teaches the exist-
ence of innumerable inhabited worlds besides
our own), there arises, from time to time, a
man who, by dint of long search after Truth,
sought for the sake of the salvation of suffering
beings, attains by his own effort to Supreme
Enlightenment, to Sammasambodhi or Very
Buddhahood ; and, having so attained, He
announces to all mankind "The Way," by
following which they likewise may attain to
this same Goal of Perfected Wisdom and
Compassion. Those who, following the " Truth
and Discipline " set forth by a Very Buddha^
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 23
reach in this life to the same ultimate Goal
of Perfected Being are termed, not Buddhas,
but Arahans, meaning the Exalted or Honored
Ones ; whilst yet a third class, who win again
by their own effort, protracted through many
lives, to the Goal of Perfection, finding the
Way for themselves, instead of following the
Way taught by a Very Buddha are termed
Pacceka-Buddhas (Skt. Pratyeka-Buddha,
meaning, enlightened by self -effort). These
differ from a Very Buddha in this that not having
sought the Truth for the sake of others, but
only for their own deliverance, they lack the
special " Iddhi of the Dhamma " the Power
of the Truth which enables a Very Buddha
so to frame words as will best move the hearts
of His fellow-beings and bring them also to
seek out the " Way of Peace ". Buddhism
teaches, in a specially modified sense which we
shall presently consider, the Doctrine of Trans-
migration teaches, that is, that every living
24 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
being both has lived before this present birth,
and will continue in existence hereafter ; and, in
accordance with its root-conception of Causation,
it makes the state of each birth causally depend-
ent on the acts of those which preceded it.
The qualifications, therefore, for the subsequent
attainment of the status of a Very Buddha
are, first, an immense and all-dominating
compassion for the suffering involved in
life, and the desire to find some Truth so
great that by its application beings may
achieve eternal relief ,from the suffering of
repeated transmigration ; secondly, the practice,
with this end in view, of certain Ten High
Virtues 1 (Dasa Paramita, in Pali) perfecting
himself in these through the devotion and
self-sacrifice of many following lives ; thirdly,
the self-destined Buddha, thus suffused
1 The ten are : Dana, Charity ; Sila, Morality ; Nekkhamma,
Benunciation ; Panna, Wisdom ; Viriya, Strenuousness j Khanti,
Patience; Sacca, Truthfulness j Adhitthana, Eesolution ; Metta s
Loving-kindness ; and Upekha, Resignation, or aloofness from the
world's desires.
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 25
with Pity past all measuring, aspiring to
attainment of the Supreme Enlightenment for
that suffering's relief, must solemnly devote
himself to this stupendous task in the presence
of a Very Buddha, and must thereafter practise
the Ten High Virtues through manifold
successive lives, until the necessary " Power
of the Truth" is won.
One who possesses these qualifications and
has so definitely decided that, instead of seek-
ing out the Truth for himself, so reaching
Nibbana and passing " Beyond " all life, he
will continue suffering rebirth after rebirth,
in order that he may become a Very Buddha,
is termed a Bodhisatta, or Buddha-To-Be,
from the era of his self-devotion to this task
until his attainment of Very Buddhahood.
He, who for this our own world is now known
as The Buddha, thus perfected Himself in the
Ten High Virtues for five hundred and fifty
successive lives, in any one of which He might
26 THE BELIGION OF BURMA
so high already was the nature and degree
of His spiritual attainment in even the first
of them- have won to Arahanship, have
attained Nibbana and so secured His own
immediate and everlasting Peace, had He not
thus devoted Himself, at the expense of His
own spiritual progress and attainment, to life
after life of self-renunciation, of arduous
practice of the High Perfections, so that He
might in the end throw wide the Way of Peace
to all. 1
1 All these details as to the previous existence of the Buddha,
His renunciation, as Bodhisatta, of His own immediate spiritual
welfare for the sake of others, and so forth, are, it may appear, of
the nature of dogmas of ew-cathedra statements of facts beyond the
possibility of demonstration. This, however, is not the case ; they
are, primarily, facts ascertained by the insight of The Buddha, and
placed on record by His disciples ; accepted, indeed, " on faith," by
His present followers, though it is a reasoned belief rather than
mere blind faith reasoned, that is, from the circumstance that
wherever we can test the truth of a statement of The Buddha (as
in the case of the two first of the Four Noble Truths) we find His
statements absolutely true. But the point is, first, that belief in
these details is not necessary to the Buddhist ; a man might be
truly a Buddhist in our sense without accepting them at all ; and,
secondly, the chief fact to which our attention is directed in con-
nection with them is the nature of the ideal they portray. That ideal
Selflessness, renunciation of self-interest for others' sake is
Buddhism, and is essential.
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 27
Passing from these traditional details as to
the previous lives of the Bodhisatta to the
historical facts concerning His last existence,,
we find that He, who was presently to receive
the adoration of more followers than any other
of the great teachers of humanity, was born in
Northern India in the earlier half of the sixth
century before Christ, as son of Suddhodana^
the King or Chief of an aristocratic and proud
Aryan clan known as the Sakyas, " the Capable
Ones". The limitations of the present essay
as to space, and the wide extent of the ground
that must yet be covered if we are to give even
a mere outline of what the religion of Burma
teaches and implies, make it impossible that
we should give more than the barest outline of
the story of this Life which has changed the
history of Asia, and may yet change the desti-
nies of all the world. Those who seek further
acquaintance with that story and much indeed
of the wonderful hold of Buddhism on its
28 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
followers' minds is due directly to its inspiring
and heart-moving circumstances, so that clear
insight into the Burmese character can scarce
be had without this knowledge may find it in
The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold ; in The
Soul of a ^People by Fielding Hall; Bigandet's
Life and Teaching of Gaudama the Buddha ; and
in several other current works. Here we
confine ourselves to the briefest possible outline.
Born the son of King Suddhodana and
Queen Mayadevi, the birth-name of Sid-
dhattha, " The All-Prospering," was given to
the illustrious subject of this sketch. Marked
out from His very nativity as of world-changing
destiny for the Brahmanas of His father's court
had announced that either He would become a
CdkkavaHin, a world-ruling Emperor, or else,
renouncing earthly conquest, home and king-
dom, He would attain to the Supreme Enlighten-
ment, to Universal Empire in the far more
glorious Kingdom of Truth the young
THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Prince, commonly known in after-life by His
clan-name of Gotama, was from His cradle
surrounded with all the pomp and luxury and
circumstance that an oriental court of those
days could bestow. The worldly heart of His
royal father, moved by that selfsame spirit of
contempt for the realities of life which makes a
changing of their native religion, at dictate
of " high interests of State," possible even for
modern royalties, desired for his Son no spirit-
ual empire, but only the worldly kingship won
at the cost of the suffering of thousands ; and
dreamed of the Prince as adding kingdom unto
kingdom, till all the earth should own His
sway. Kemembering the prophecy of the
greatest among the sages who had prophesied
the Prince's future glory, that of the two paths
of life but one the path of spiritual achieve-
ment lay truly open for the Prince to tread ;
remembering, also, how that sage had told
him further that his Son would be inspired
30 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
to leave the world when He should learn how
sickness, suffering, and death were .common
heritage of all that live, the King ordained
that the young Prince should be brought up in a
palace from which all sight and mention of these
evils should be banished ; thinking thus to hide
from Him all motive to compassion, until He
should have entered past all doubting into the
course of earthly conquest and of human rule.
So, shielded from all knowledge of the wide
world's suffering, surrounded by young and
lovely playfellows, all eager to secure that
never a careless word should whisper, in
His heart, of misery without those guarded
palace-walls ; girt by a never-ending stream of
pleasure and instruction in the sports and
duties of His royal caste, the little Prince grew
-up from youth to manhood, nor ever dreamed
of pain, sickness, and sorrow, of old age or
drear decay or death. Yet even so begirt by
all that fair conspiracy of silence and of
THE EELIG10N OF BURMA 31
worldly love, those round Him noted signs that
filled the King's too worldly heart with fear.
Often, he learned, the Prince would fall, de-
spite all effort of His young companions, into
deep reverie and silent hours of thought. So
} when, grown presently to manhood's age, he
loved and wedded the daughter of a neighboring
monarch, the Princess Yasodhara, Suddhodana
rejoiced, thinking that here, in earthly love,
a fetter stronger than all his palace-guards
could forge was found. Wedded at nineteen,
for ten long years no offspring came to Him,
and the King greatly grieved thereat, lacking
this second chain of worldly love wherewith to
bind his Son.
But vain at last were all the King's pre-
cautions, as vain at last are all the plans and
schemes of worldly policy and compromise,
seeing that all things change, that Death is
Lord and guerdon of all life. What the present
might not tell Him, all His selfless past lay
32 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
ready to reveal ; and the story tells us, with all
the pomp and circumstance of oriental
imagery, how Truth at last came homeward
to the Prince's heart. Even there amidst that
guarded palace-garden, in the sunlight scented
with the fairest' flowers of life, the Love that
would not be denied, the Truth that would not
be concealed, practised and sought through all
those previous lives of self-renunciation for the
world, told Him how all that lives is subject to
Borrow : to Despair, to Sickness, to Old Age
and Death. For Him the Veil that hides from
us the memory of the bygone life and garnered
wisdom was for a moment lifted ; for Him a
Vision, seen'H. by no other eyes, appeared; a
Voice that none else might hear spoke from
the immemorial past ; and, even as He rode in
His chariot with His chief comrade, Truth
the bitter truth about the world came home>
Men of those days in India had realised how
no one could follow in the path of worldly
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 38
compromise, and at the same time win the
inner hidden Kingdom of Spiritual Truth and
Life. So it had become the custom, when a
man had heard the call of the religious life,
that he should leave all home and friends
and every circumstance of worldly welfare
and, clad in the orange robe of the religious,
wander about the earth, even as he was
wandering through the deeper reaches of the
mind's wide kingdom, begging his daily food
from the charity of the poorest of his fellow -
men. Sickness, Old Age, and Death, each in
His vision appeared, personified before the
Prince's wondering, pitying gaze ; and last of
all there stood before Him the simulacrum
of one of these ascetic Wanderers ; whereat
the bygone sleeping memory stirred within
His heart, and He saw and understood
what it behoved Him then to do. Could
Truth live in a palace, or the anodyne for all
this mass of Suffering be found amidst that
34 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
acme of the worldly life He then was living ?
Nay, surely ; and then and there the Prince
resolved that even that, night He would go
forth, a homeless Wanderer, to seek the Way
of Liberation for the healing of the sorrow
of the "world.
And then, just when the King's last
hope had really crumbled into dust, then,
as He returned, silent and thoughtful from
that last chariot-drive, they brought Him
the news Suddhodana so long had look-
ed for, news that there was born to Him
a child, a son. Hanging upon His words,
the attendants, little comprehending, heard
him murmur : " This is, indeed, another Fetter I
must break " and so, thereafter, they named His
son as Hahula, The Fetter ; and later, when he had
become one of his exalted Father's followers, he
bore that name, even in the Brotherhood itself.
That night, when all lay sleeping, the Prince,
summoning His faithful charioteer, rode forth
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 35
from home and kingdom, from wife and child,
from luxury and love ; and, at the boundary of
His father's little kingdom, cast aside His
royal dress and went away, clad in the
Wanderer's Yellow Eobe, never again to see
the faces He had loved until Supreme En-
lightenment had widened for His heart the
boundaries of Love's Empire, till they included
the infinitude of every being that has life. He,
bred upon the lap of luxury, henceforth was to
live on such poor food as charity might offer ;
brought up in a palace, henceforth the earth
must be His couch ; no longer Prince, He
dwelt among earth's humblest, but earth's
holiest ; for He had done what was truly great.
He had set aside the path of compromise with
worldly wisdom and the estimation of His royal
kinsfolk; had cast aside that shadow of pos-
session which worldly men deem real, for the
Heart's Light within, the true kingdom of
spiritual possession.
36 THE RELIGION OF BURMA.
And yet, so far, it was but for a dream, a
hope, tliat He had made this Great Kenuncia-
tion. 1 In His heart there lay no store of inner
knowledge such as might seem to offer rec-
ompense for all He cast aside ; it was but a
hope that shone before Him, and not unseldom,
we may be sure, a hope that seemed well-nigh
despairing. Surely somewhere, somehow, a
sovereign remedy for all life's pain must hide I
For six long years He sought it that hope
so near as all, and yet so hard to find. Men
then believed that Wisdom might be won only
by starving, torturing the body ; they thought,
like the ascetics of all climes and ages, that
Insight might be gained only by treating as an
enemy, the body of this life. As has been said,
i It is to this event of " The Going-forth from Home "His
Pa&bajja that the Buddhist world in general gives the title of
"The Great Renunciation", But more truly, perhaps, may that
term be applied to some still greater episode of the interior, the
spiritual life of the Exalted Lord, perhaps to His decision, after
the Supreme Attainment, to declare the Liberating Truth for the
Healing of All Life instead of entering the Peace at once, or,
perhaps, to some event even beyond our possibilities of thinking.
THE EELIGION OF BURMA 37
the religious of India in that time won to
depths of spiritual attainment far beyond
aught that the West-Aryan yet has learned ;
they knew the way, by intense inward contem-
plation, to wake up from this our waking state
as a man wakes out of dreams ; to enter realm
*
after realm of spiritual attainment, depth after
depth of being's mystery, so that whilst the
earthly body lay entranced, the mind wandered
free through heights and depths of ecstasy, of
being so intense that our thought can never com-
pass it, just as in dreams we cannot grasp the
clearer vivid consciousness of waking life.
What the wise then knew, quickly the erst-
while Prince now gathered, passing from sage
to sage, learning their methods, and practising
alike their modes of inward ecstasy and their
austerities, until at last there lived no sage, no
Holy One amongst them, all, who had won
further into Being's depths than He ; or any
Wanderer so famed, even there in India, where
38 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
asceticism long had reached to the very ultimate
of human endurance, for the awful rigor of
His penances, the strictness of His vigils and
His fasts.
To the very heights of Being He attained-
to that supreme, that ultimate of conscious
Being, known in India as the Brahman or the
Paramatman ; the uttermost of Selfhood, the
Light of Life whereto all this Universe is as it
were but a shadow ; this living, breathing,
manifold existence but the wavering darkness
of Its multiscient Light. To that Supremest
Cosmic Consciousness He won, and yet turned
back to earth in what approached despair,
As indeed all others who thus had reached
that Higher Self of all the Universe, had also
seen, in the light of the wide-reaching under-
standing that that attainment of itself involves,
so He saw that even here was no Finality, ,no
Endless Peace such as He had sought for the
Liberation of All Life. There too, howsoever
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 39
exalted, howsoever subtle and supreme that
Ultimate of Life might be -there too reigned
Selfhood ; and there, thence, Desire ; even as
one of India's ancient sages sang: "In the
beginning Desire arose in That, wliich was the
Germ,, the Origin of Mind." Subtle and high as
It might be, It still lay under the fell bondage
of Desire ; and, as the Rshis taught, that
Brahman, desiring, had emanated all this
Universe in Its creative thought, and when at
last, after the " Age of Brahma " all living
things had once again, through paths of
suffering life innumerable, won back to that
Supreme of Being, even then, after the vast
period of rest in the " Night of Brahma,"
once more the uudestroyed Desire must
spring; once more a new, another torture-
teeming Universe come forth and so on to
eternity.
But it was just from this same awful Cycle
of Unending Life inalienably involved in Pain,
40 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
that He, now grown so wise, sought refuge
and a Way of Liberationa final Peace, a Goal
secure, not destined to be lost again, was the
one remedy for all this pain-filled self-repeat-
ing life. Finding that in these spiritual
attainments of the Rshis, and in the dread
austerities they practised, lay -not that sure
Peace He hoped to win, He turned away alike
from system and from practices ; and then it
was that the little body of disciples, five in
number, who had so far followed Him -hoping
to win guerdon of their service when He should
gain the Ultimate Enlightenment deserted
Him in that hour of disappointment and despair.
He, who had so starved His body as never
another saint in India, once more took food
sufficient for proper nourishment of His frame ;
and so these five, daring, as ever the little-
minded dare, to judge their Master's conduct,
left Him, thinking that now He never
would attain.
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 41
But ever the darkest hour precedes the dawii,
and so it was with the Bodhisatta. We may
well see how, at that self-righteous judgment
and desertion, His thoughts must have well-
nigh a moment wavered, must have turned back
to all that real-seeming life that He had cast
away for this. When His disciples left
Him in petty scorn, because He not only
perceived that the ascetic practice of six long
torturing years was all an error, a mistake
that no Way of Liberation ever could open up
that way but also had the moral courage then
and there to leave a practice He had seen was
useless ; weakened by long fast and vigil,
wearied as even the greatest must weary of
the littleness of life, the futility of all our
utmost striving ; then, we may well conceive
how even that compassionate Heart must once
again have turned to the thought of all the
worldly welfare He had left behind. Father
and wife and child, old faces and beloved
42 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
companions of His youth ; the throne that waited
still and prayed for Him ; the visible reality of
kingship He had left behind ; how these things
must all have called to Him now, deserted,
discredited, abandoned, because even in defeat
He would not for a moment follow on a path
that once He saw could not lead to the G-oal
He sought ! Not for Himself, but for helping
mankind, the suffering, pain -filled world,
had He abandoned all these things : and yet,
at fancied rumor of a temporary defeat, those
who to Him represented the world for which
He had so arduously striven, left Him
discredited, alone ! The Books relate, once
more in oriental trope and imagery, how this
last terrible temptation 'came to Him ; how
Mara the Tempter of men's hearts, the Spirit
of Worldiness that lives in each of us,
marshalled his hosts for conflict the last great
battle for the mastery between the good and
evil of that incomparable mind. There in the
THE BELIGION OF BURMA 43
solitary jungle came the conflict, as, seated
beneath the Tree thereafter sacred to His
memory, He passed in review the painful
struggle of those six arduous years.
Had he not tried it all> proved every
path by personal effort, won to the very
highest State of Being of which the ancient
saints had sung ? He was profoundly acquaint-
ed with states of being so high and wonderful
that men might spend whole lives in seeking
them, and yet could not attain ; the ancient
saints said this was all ; that beyond That
Brahman was -no further progress' It 3 the
Ultimate of Life and yet, even in That was
still a bondage, even that Heart of Being still
was subject to the Law of Change, subject,
since Desire still reigned in It. Desire ! Eron*
height to depth of life Desire was King ; and
the root of this Desire lay hidden and protected
in the very citadel of Self, of Life ! If from
that all-dominant Desire, even in the Ultimate
44 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
of Life, the Self Supreme a Selfhood widened
till its boundaries embraced even the whole of
life was no escape, how should there be ever
a deliverance out of suffering ; seeing that
Sorrow's Cause lies in Desire, in Self-desire
alone ? What use, indeed, to give up all the
goods of life, to cast aside the world in search
of Liberation for All Life, if so one but
exchanged the lower bondage for the higher ;
the gross desires of worldly life, the petty
kingdom of the lower selfhood, for that all-
immanent and all-including Selfhood of the
Brahman if so one but exchanged the suffer-
ing of years for that of aeons ; if even Brahman
still was Selfhood, subject still to that grim
Law whereby pain follows every thought for
self ?
So, to the Bodhisatta seated solitary beneath
the Tree, now termed the Bodhi-tree or Tree
of Wisdom, came home the Great Tempta-
tion, the conflict with Mara the Wicked
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 45
and his host, the powers of evil dramatised
to vivid Selfhood in His mind : the final
struggle in that great mind -empire for the
mastery betwixt the powers of evil and of
good. In the end (as always in the end)
the nobler triumphed ; the evil perished never
to rise within that Heart again. Even as
He seated Himself beneath the Tree of
Wisdom, the Bodhisatta made the Great Be-
solve : " Never ivill I arise from this place,
though this My frame shall perish of starvation
not though the blood within these veins shall
cease to flow, till I have won Enlightenment
Supreme" When at last the final dire
temptation the image of the weeping wife
calling Him back to glory and to love was
vanquished and had fled, then, before that
searching mental Vision sprang open the sealed
doorways of a new, another Pathway, a Path,
the very name of which had died out of the
memory of earth's holiest ; the Path which
46 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
leads to Liberation from all thraldom ; the
Way of Selflessness which reaches to Life's
Further Shore. Through the long sequent
line of many a bygone and forgotten life He
looked back to that time wherein, meeting
Dipankara, the Very Buddha of an age well-
nigh unthinkably remote. He, then named
Sumedha, an ascetic Wanderer already come
near to the fulfilment of all holiness, had
turned back from the Path that Dipankara, the
Blessed One, had opened to His followers ;
and then, before that holy Exalted One, had
taken the Great Resolve Himself to become
a Very Buddha for the salvation of the worlds.
Through it all He now, in the light of the
new great Dawn that was upon Him, traced
the clear causal line of this high Path of Peace.
Not through the well-known Way of Indian
saints and sages, mounting from height to
height of being, yet ever bound by chains
of subtler-growing Selfhood, stretched this
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 47
high Path, so new and yet so old ; not through
the successive planes of consciousness ; but
through the Way of Selflessness that Path
extended, outcome of acts innumerable of
self-renunciation, its motive power Compassion
pity for suffering life grown great and
strong, till it embraced all things that live.
As one whose mind had opened to perception
of a fourth spatial dimension might under-
stand, the way to it lay equally from high
or low, from up or down, in three-dimen-
sional space, so now He saw how this new Path
led equally from highest as from lowest realms
of conscious life. Wherever in the All of
conscious life there reigns no thought of self,
there lies that Path of Peace ; so hard to win,
and yet so nigh to all. Looking deeper yet in
that profoundest meditation, He saw behind
the causal sequences of all those lives the
power that moved them all the twelve-linked
Cycle of Causation Nescience, Ignorance,
48 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Not-Understanding, giving birth through an
inevitable sequence to conscious Life, to
Change, to Death, and so to Life once more ;
and here again His growing Insight showed
Him how Self the Enemy lay at the root of
all this cycle of self-repeating change ; how,
when the thought and hope of self died,
with it, too, died the power of Life's Law,
the power which brings about birth and death.
And so, finishing the Path, He came to
where its end is ? in a State beyond All Life,
wherein the triple fires of Nescience Craving,
and Hatred, and the Delusion of the Self no
more can burn ; to That which is the Goal
and Hope of Life, the State of Peace that
reigns where self is dead. Fruition of all life,
and yet Beyond and Other than all life, it
grows but from the ashes of the self outburnt ;
as from the seed's decay and utter dissolution,
from the mire and darkness of the earth,
springs forth the flower to sunlight and the
THE RELIGION OF BTJBMA 4$
wide-extending air. Freed from all mental
"^bondages, Conqueror of Self, Master of the
Hidden Mysteries of Pain and Birth and Death :>
a Very Buddha, Utterly Enlightened, with the
great Knowledge in His Heart whereby whoso
should follow it should likewise win Mbbana's
Peace : so He attained His Aim, His Hope,
His Goal : so won the Healing Truth that
salves the fever of this life enselfed ; saw,
yet beyond all life, a new, another, and a
final Light.
So, with the dawning sun that saw the end
of that great night's Temptation and Attain-
ment; 80^ with the vaster, ultra-cosmic dawn
of Utter Wisdom in His Heart, once more the
Way of Peace stood open to the world. Millions
unnumbered since that day have followed in
the Way He showed; and even now, when
half five thousand years have well-nigh sped,
millions still seek it, -still turn to it as Hope,
and Light of Life, and Goal. Over this land of
4,
50 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
Burma, where these words are written, it still
reigns supreme ; its message written over
all the land in shrine and monastery and
temple ; written still deeper in the hearts and
lives of women and of men. Forty long years
after that supreme Illumination, The Master
lived and taught His growing band of follow-
ers ; passing at last Himself from life for ever,
into the Silence, the Utter Peace whereunto
*
He had shown the Way.
All that long ministry of Love and Wisdom
we must needs pass over; and if it shall
appear that too much space has even now been
given to these earlier, striving, searching years
rather than to the longer period when their
fruits were garnering, the answer is that in
these earlier years the secret of The Master's
power over Burmese hearts lies hid. Become
a Very Buddha, won to Full Enlightenment,
freed from the Chains of Selfhood, Master and
Teacher of the Gods and men, His personality
THE EELIGION OF BURMA 51
submerged in His all-dominating Office, men's
hearts refuse to think of Him so Holy and so
High. But when, like all of us, He knew not ;
when, for pity of the pain of all that lives.
He gave up all that men hold dear to follow
what the worldly deem a shadow ; when He
made mistakes, as in those six long years of
vain self-torture, and learning their vanity,
was forsaken by His disciples in that He could
no longer follow what He saw to be untrue :
then, there, the hearts of men can echo in
response to Him, then the thought of Him can
thrill our lives to greater nobleness ; stirring
our life's depths until we long yet ah! how
vainly long to grow a little nearer to His
likeness, to live a little nearer to the life He
lived!
Only one thing more can here be told of
that great life : a fact which cannot be omitted
here, for without its deep significance the
whole incomparable history of Buddhism could
52 THE 'RELIGION'' 'OF "BURMA
not be understood. It is the fact that, when
He passed away. His near disciples, looking
back on all those years of constant teaching
and example, could say of Him : " So passed
away the Great, the Loving Teacher } who never
spake an angry or a cruel word." Only that s
and yet what blessing for humanity has not
been hidden in that brief pregnant summary
of a lifegreater than any life amongst the
myriads of the sons of men ! A Teacher of
Religion, the Founder of a great religion,
who lived amongst His fellows, these holding
views and following creeds the most divers ;
who lived and taught for forty years the
new Truth He had found, the Truth where^
with He burned to help His fellow-men ^
and yet, who never spoke an angry or
a cruel word I Think, you that read, what
potency of truth lies hidden in that little
sentence. Forty years' ministry of teaching,
and never an angry word no word of blame
THE RELIGION OF BUEMA 53
or harsh denunciation of the worldly of His
time; no threatenings of hell for those who
would not follow in the way He taught ! It
is because His followers could truly say that
of His life, that, in such contrast to all other
of the world's great faiths, Buddhists : this day
can boast that on their Creed's behalf has never
one drop of blood been shed, never a persecution
waged, never a "Holy War " been prosecuted ;
although to-day five hundred million human
beings have taken refuge in His Name, His
Truth. To the Buddhist, that fact, did it
stand alone, were proof beyond traversing
of His religion's truth. For men who fcnow,
no longer fight or angrily denounce each other ;
where Wisdom is, there is perfect tolerance.
The things for which men war are false by that
same proof that where hatred and denunciation
reign, there Truth is not. Think of the bitter
wordy warfare of the logomachic pseudo-science
of the Middle Ages in Europe, of the
54 THE EELIGION OE BURMA
interminable controversies which raged between
the different bodies of scholastics then ; contrast
this with the relative peace of modern science
at least where fundamental matters are-
concerned and at once this attitude is obvious,
Over acknowledged fads such as the Law of
Gravitation nowadays appears no vainest or
most foolish man ever has lifted hand in wrath
against his fellows ; it is the fancies that men
fight for; in defence of vain and false
imaginations that they hate, oppose, and fight.
After even this brief account of that first
of the " Three Jewels " or K-efuges, The
Buddha, the nature of the Second Member of
the Buddhist Triad will in part already seem
clear. In His last message to the world,
The Master said to His disciples : " Do not
tiling after I am gone ( Our Teacher is no-
longer 'With us. 3 The_ TT^Sk Jh^JL .haveJaugM,
J5 and so it has
been to this day. The Master's life and The
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 55
Master's Teaching, these are but parts
reciprocal of one great Truth ; that life was
the Truth in terms of human action ; that
Truth is but the Way whereby we seek to
follow Him. Therefore it is that in this article
so much space has been given to the story of
The Buddha ; with that His Teaching at once
grows clear and luminous; without it much
must needs be little understood.
Ill
THE DHAMMA
The Dhamma (Skt. Dharma), the second of
the Three Great Refuges, is then the Teaching
which The Master left us in His stead.
Derived from a root- word meaning " to mani-
festly exist," "to palpably appear," we may
transcribe it as The Truth, as has been done in
these pages ; or as The Law, the causal
56 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
sequence of the deeper things of life. As
a Law carries out a series of phenomena, or
as clear Truth alone can carry us over the
trackless waters of life's ocean to the Goal
Unseen beyond, so also has the root Dhar the
secondary meaning of "that which bears, or
carries 9 or conveys ".
All Buddhist Truth was summed up by a
great disciple of The Master in a single
stanza : To abstain from all evil ; To fulfil all
Good; And to purify the Heart This is the
TeacMng of the Biiddhas. The first term, To
abstain from all evil, sums up the whole
body of Buddhist practical ethics on its negative
side; it is summarised in the word Stta,
meaning Harmony or Virtue ; and it includes
all the ordinances of The Master as to
those things His followers should avoid. In
practice it becomes the Five Great Precepts
five commandments binding on every Buddhist,
which commonly are recited in the ancient
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 5?
language of the Sacred Texts, the Magadhi,
after the Refuge-formula detailed above. The
Five are : Not to take life ; Not to take
property ; Not to commit impurity ; Not to
lie or slander or use harsh speech ; and Not to
use intoxicating liquors. These Five Precepts
are absolutely binding on every humblest
follower of The Master; they constitute the
essential minimum of Buddhist ethics, and he
who constantly violates any one of them is no
Buddhist, however loud his proclamation of his
faith may be. Buddhism is Understanding
Truth, and hence since what we really under-
stand, we do (as we understand " fire burns,"
and so abstain from touching burning coals)
it is to act accordingly. It is understood
that men are human, fallible-^-that a man may
break any or even all of these Five Precepts
now and then ; but if, considering (as the
Buddhist is taught constantly to do) his
conduct, he finds he has so erred, he still can
58 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
set things right by 'actual repentance, by using
his every effort to abstain from a like mistake
in future..
To this irreducible minimum of the Five
Precepts, the pious Buddhist layman frequently
of his own accord sets himself to observe three
more : Not to take food after noon (as such
is held to conduce to sloth and to impurity) ;
Not to use high or broad seats or couches
(which in the East, where the floor is the
common sitting-place, betokens pride and
luxury) ; Not to use personal adornments, scents,
and unguents, and to abstain from witnessing
dancing, shows, and plays. These Bight
Precepts- regarded, as to the three last of
them, as binding only for the day on which
they are assumed are commonly taken on the
Buddhist " Sabbath," a movable fast-day or
feast-day, dependent on the changes of the moon,
and so following roughly at intervals of a
week.
THE RELIGION OP BURMA
On these Uposatha days, especially during the
period of the " Buddhist Lent " (three months,
roughly July, August, September, the time
of the rains in the birthplace of Buddhism, the
Grangetie valley), men, women, and children,,
and especially the elders, leave off work, and
repair to the neighborhood of the local
Monastery, where there is nearly always a
separate rest-house for their accommodation.
Here, during the morning, the women
prepare the day's one meal for Monks and
Novices, as well as for themselves and families,,
wait on the Monks before meal-time, and
" take the Refuges and the Precepts," Five
or Eight according to their wish. In general
it is the elders of both sexes who elect to
take the extra three Precepts, whilst the
younger generation take but the usual Five,
and so can have their ordinary evening meal-
After the chief meal of the day -which for
Monks and Novices and those among the laity
THE RELIGION OP BURMA
who have taken the Eight Precepts must be
iinished before middayall generally repair
to the Monastery itself, and listen to an ex-
position of the Dhamma by some senior Member
-of the Order ; thereafter returning to the
rest-house, they spend the remainder of the
day in meditation and the practice of their
various devotions. Not uncommonly since
the psychology of Buddhism is a favorite study
in Burma, even with the laity they pass a
part of the time in discussion of the preaching
they have heard, or of some special point in
the profound Abhidhamma, the portion of the
Scriptures devoted to the consideration of the
processes of Thought and of Life ; or, as we
might translate the term, the Psychology of
Buddhism.
Of the further extensions of SUa, Virtue 3 this
first caption of the Law the ten Precepts of
the Novice and the 227 Rules which regulate
the conduct of the Monk^further mention will
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 61
be made in the discussion of the Third Great
Treasure, the Sangha-Ratana, or Treasure of the
Brotherhood. Here we need only call attention
to the underlying principle of all these various
commandments : they all involve the beginnings
of self -restraint ; they are all imposed and have
their rationale in that the commission of the
actions forbidden involves the infliction of pain,
of loss and suffering of some sort on others.
Thus, from the very beginnings of his teaching*
from the very commencement of his life, the
Buddhist-born is trained up to self-restraint,
to the giving up of acts that would inflict loss
or suffering on other lives. Thus early in the
Law appears that Doctrine of Selflessness in
practice, which, as we shall later see, crowns
the whole edifice of Buddhist Teaching.
The second term of our threefold Dhamma*
text, To fulfil all Good, sums up the next great
chapter of Buddhist practice. This is termed
Dana, Charity in every sense of the word, and
62 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
it includes the whole of what we may term the
active side of morality, just as Sila covers and
includes the negative aspects. It is as though
the religion begins with the very lowest type
of man that base and ignorant type which is
accessible to fear alone by telling him : " This
life is not all ; nothing that is, but must in some
form .be again ; out of this present life you
must surely die, and just as surely take rebirth.
See how unevenly are apportioned the lots of
living things ; some bound into low and loath-
some forms of insects and of animals ; and, even
amongst mankind, some great and prosperous
and noble, others poor and wretched and
debased. None can escape from death, and
death is but the porfcal of another life. Just
as the thistle-seed gives rise to thistles only and
the good rice to rice alone, so is it with the lives
of men and animals, for through all life
Oausation reigns supreme. If then, you would
avoid these low, base, wretched, and ignoble
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 63
lives or others yet the sages wot of, lives
i
filled with horror and remorse and pain for
evil deeds wrought in the past then you must
practise Sila, Virtue, true morality ; that is the
one method of escape from all that threaten-
ing mass of pain."
But to the man who albeit from the basest
of all motives, fear practises even the mere
Five Precepts, there comes an inward growth
which makes of him a nobler, hence happier
man. For 'all that, Sila is really self-renuncia-
tion; and when, growing thus wiser, the
humblest follower of The Master comes to the
second stage of growth, then the Law speaks a
new, a greater message : the message of Dana,
Charity and Love. " It is not enough," it says,
6t only to secure your freedom from the lower,
pain -filled lives ; there is a greater hope than
this. If, in addition to mere abstention from
the evil, you will fulfil and practise Good ; if
you will feed the holy poor those who are
64 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
sick and weak and old ; if you will give of
your substance to the world about you, taking
thought for others' sorrows, helping to relieve
what suffering can be relieved by generous gift
of wealth and food and care ; then again will the
Great Law act in its inevitable sequences. By
avoiding evil, you escape from base and evil
lives ; by practising Charity you further ensure
to yourself lives full of happiness and joy;
lives full of earthly bliss, or, higher yet than
you can think of, lives of the bright, the
Heaven-dwelling-Ones the denizens of holier^
happier spheres than this our world." And so
that man, still for no high, exalted motive,
but yet for one not all so base as fear -so that
V
man, out of self-interest^ thinking : " Thus will
I, giving now a little of my wealth, secure
unbounded riches in the lives to come," sets out
in practice of this second task; he gives of his
goods, his wealth, his help, his care to those
less fortunate in life than he ; he relieves the
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 65
destitute, is father to the fatherless, gives
shelter to the homeless and unhappy ; using his
worldly wealth no more for self's sole sake,
but for the aiding of the weak and poor.
And here again the Law of Life acts and
reacts upon the heart of him who gives for
such is the essence : of Love, which, like a
magnet, grows but the stronger the more it is
employed in imparting its magnetism to other
bars of steel. Starting to, give for love of
self, of self alone, the very contact with the
lives and needs of others widen the erstwhile
petty limits of man's self -hood. Giving to the
poor, the weak, the desolate ; giving to the
holy those who have/ renounced all that the
world holds dear for the sake of Truth and love
of all -giving to these, ithe confines of his own
heart's life grow wider ; to include their hopes,
their sorrows; so that the kingdom of his
mind, the inner purpose of his being, extends,
enlarges, and grows nobler each succeeding.
66 THE EELIGION OP BUftMA
day. This is the second, deeper Truth the
Dhamma has to leach us ; how, like a flame of
fire. Love kindles Love, grows by mere act of
loving; and nowhere in the world is that great
Truth more understood and so more followed
than in this Golden Chersonese. Never was
there a people more generous, more full of
charity than this ; it has been the wonder of
every author who has truly gained an insight
into the hearts and lives of this most fascinating
race. All the land is covered with tokens of
their charity, from the golden glory of the vast
fabric of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda at Rangoon-
gilded all over at intervals of a few years, at a
cost of lakhs of rupees, by voluntary offerings
of the people to the village well, or Monastery,,
or rest-house for chance travellers ; down ta
the little stand containing a few vessels of
clear cool water, which even the poorest can
set up by the roadside and keep daily plenished
for the benefit of thirsty passers-by.
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 67
In a land where Charity holds so high a
place, not in the talk, but in the conduct of it&
daughters and its sons, such poverty as India
and all western countries experience, is utterly
unknown. True, in a sense, the vast majority
of the peasantry are poor poor, that is, as
judged by the European standard of living,
, with its manifold and unceasing " wants.".
But of the poverty that is cruel, harsh, base,
and sordid ; the poverty of an Indian village
or a London slum, there is naught at all. The
poverty that shames and curses western
nations, that breeds crime and cruelty, that
starves even little children to death, such is
unknown in Burma ; and it will remain unknown
for just so long as they shall hold fast to their
Love-teaching religion. There is always food
to be obtained, if not in the layman's house,
then in the Monastery ; and the doors of the
Monastery travellers' rest-house stand ever
open to the poorest wanderer, be he a layman
68 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
or a Monk. True it is that in much of the
ceaseless tide of Burmese -charity is somewhat
of wastefulness; pagoda added to pagoda,
shrine built by the very side of shrine, great
meals prepared, too great by far for their
recipients, the Monks and Monastery -boys and
.wandering lay-devotees, to eat, so that when
all have fed, the very dogs can scarce finish
.the remains; but the Burman would justly
answer criticism on this point by saying that
one cannot have too much of what is truly
good ; and he does not merely talk of charity,
he lives it in the smallest detail of his daily
-*
life; With growing national wisdom for the
Burmese as yet are but a youthful race, nll_ed
with youth's joy in life, having the failings as
-.:._ <J l_ _/..... ' __ v3..__ ,.., 3 _
well as the virtues and enthusiasm of youth
with greater ^experie nee, with their quick
assimilation of the . new _coD^tioftS. of Jif e^and
the resultant wider understanding, the Burmese
will grow, not less, but more wisely charitable.
THE RELIGION OF BURMA. 69
As it is, this second Teaching of their Law,
their Truth, is so lived up to by them as to
have become the common marvel of all who
have seen it, all who have realised what
it means.
Thirdly, and lastly, in our Text we read :
To purify the Mind ; and here we enter into that
domain which differentiates Buddhism from all
other religions; the realm of its Teaching as
to the nature, content, and the Goal of Life ;
the viewpoint of its entire structure. Here it
is that we pass forthwith into a region so far
alien, so strange to occidental views of life,
that most of the modern writers on the subject
the bulk of them, unhappily, men who
believed themselves opponents of Buddhism
(which is tantamount to saying that they had not
, achieved its meaning) have gone utterly astray.
All other world-religions, even the wonderful
philosophies, Vedanta, Sankhya, and others,
elaborated by the Indian sages, have, following
70 THE' RELIGION OF BUBMA
the obvious in life, centred their Universe in
the concept of the Self just as, in the old:
Ptolemaic astronomy, moon, sun, and planet,
and the firmament of stars beyond, all centred
in and circled round the stable wide expanse of
the earth. The lesser self of man, the immortal
soul that tenanted this body of flesh, that
after life must leave it, "as a man sets aside
his worn-out clothes " ; that, and the greater
Self, the Soul Supreme of the Godhead
whether the thought of it were, limited and
personal like that of the ancient Hebrews, or
subtle and well-nigh impersonal like the highest
transcendental concept of the Indian saints
those are the two ideas : ideas in fact inter-
dependent and complementary, wherein all
other creeds have centred their hope, their
universe, and their goal.
And both, in this Buddhist Truth, are not
merely absent, but actually denied. Just as
to the men of the Middle Ages to whom
THE EBLIGION OF BURMA 71
Copernicus first propounded the doctrine, that
the earth in fact was not the centre of the
Universe, that there is in truth no centre, but
only a constant, ordered flux of change, soon
to be reduced to definite law by Newton's great
discovery : just as to those who, in geocentric
times, first heard this new doctrine of the
non-centred Universe, the very thought of
it seemed monstrous and absurd, against the
constant evidence of sense (for did they not daily
see the rise of sun and moon and stars, and their
wide circling round the earth ?) so, to those
nurtured on the self-centred creeds and world-
views outside Buddhism, appears at first the
non- self -centred doctrine of The Buddha's Law.
Let not the student here imagine we are
concerned merely with a dogma, with a view
of life important but in men's imagination or
belief. In the Anatta Doctrine, or, as it might
be rendered, the Teaching of Selflessness, we
have the statement of a fact so profound, so
72 THE KBLIGION OF BURMA
true, that every action of the man who holds
it must needs be modified from what he
otherwise would have done. On it depends
the whole of Buddhist Teaching, the three-
fold practice of its ethics, Morality 3 Charity,
and Samddhi, or Eight Culture of the Mind ; to
it, once more, is due that perfect Buddhist
tolerance and freedom from all persecuting or
denouncing spirit. Not least significant of all,
it is the conception towards which the philosophy
of modern science is steadily bearing the West
Aryans ; established already in the domain of
physics, it now is finding ever wider and deeper
acceptance amongst the foremost thinkers of
the modern world.
Briefly stated, this fundamental principle on
which The Buddha's Truth depends is to the
effect that there exists, in the light of the
Highest Wisdom, no Self, and hence no not*
Self (in the old metaphysical, antinomian sense
of the term) at all. " Whether high or loiv, great
THE EELIGION OF BURMA
*
or small, gross or subtle, mean or exalted " to
quote an oft-repeated passage of the Pali canon,
"there- is no Self at all" and this astounding
proposition is the chief concept of the final,
Third Stage of the Buddhist practice : Samddhi
or Mental Concentration so directed as to lead
to Panna f) the Higher Wisdom or Insight. Put
in other words, the meaning of this Doctrine
of Anatta is, that Life in deepest truth is One
that the conception of the " I " and the " not-I,"
or " the Universe," as contrasted or separated
entities is founded on a misapprehension far
greater and much farther reaching than was
the old delusion of the geocentric astronomy.
All Life is One. There is neither in the heart
of man nor in the heart of heaven any one
separate and immortal being an existence-
other and apart from aught in all the worlds.
This One, this All of Life, so far as we are
here concerned with it, is subject to Three
Great Signata or Characteristic Signs or
74 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Marks : it is Impermanent, and Subject to
Suffering, and without a Self, or separate
Soul.
How the Universe first came to be ; what
was its origin, the First Cause (to use a phrase
the Buddhist would deem self -destructive,
because involving a contradiction in very terms,
a Cause being really a link in a series which
is endless like a circle) ; who or what " made "
it, and all such futile questionings as these
were answered by The Buddha with the sole
appropriate reply : with what the Buddhist
Scriptures term " the Noble Silence of the
Wise ". The truth is, that to such question-
ings there is no answer ; our world indeed had
its beginning it is detailed in an ancient
Buddhist work in terms singularly like those
of the modern nebular theory but not the
Universe ; and, as The Master once explained,
such questions do not tend to help us ; they
have no answers, or what answers one might
TEE RELIGION OF BURMA 75
frame to them bring us no nearer to our object,
to the End of Sorrow, to the Goal and the
Fruition of all Life. Thus The Buddha to His
interlocutor upon these subjects :
It ,is as if a man, wounded in battle by a poisoned
arrow, should say to his friends, -when they came with a
physician and an antidote, and besought that he should
let the doctor salve that poisoned wound, or ever the
poison won into his veins : " But no, I will not have
the dart drawn out, or the healing salve applied, till I
have learned whether the man who shot the arrow was
short or tall, fair or dark, noble or base." That man
would die, Malankyaputta, ere ever one of all these
useless questionings could be replied to.
How true, and how appropriate to these
problems as to the " Origin of Sin," of Life,
of all the Universe ; and yet alas for the
fatuity of human reason it is just about such
useless and vain problems that men have spilt
more blood, have waged more cruel wars and
persecutions than over any other cause of
human disputation I
So it is that we find, in the more "doctrinal"
part of the Dhamma, only that " Noble Silence
76 THE BEEIGION OP BUBMA
of the Wise" where all such problems are
concerned. But it must not hence be imagined
that Buddhism resembles the modern Agnosti-
cism beyond the limits of this simple fact.
Buddhism is a Gnosis ; it has a positive, an
active, as well as a negative or passive side in
doctrinal affairs. Looking back, as the full
Insight He had won enabled Him to do, over
the long succession of His lives, the Teacher saw
how through them all there reigned one ordered
if
Law, the Law of Kamma (Skt. Karma) or of
Action, the Law of the Doing of a being and its
consequences on him and the rest of life. What
gravitation is to mass its fundamental pro-
perty, not turned aside from acting, though
other forces indeed may suspend the visible
manifestation of its action for a while all that,
and more, is this Kamma to the conscious Life.
It is the Law of Causation operating in the
sphere of the Mind, that is to say, of Life : it is
alike our Character (since our present mental
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 77
make-up is the outcome of our whole long line of
lives) and our Destiny (since, in the Buddhist
view, Mind, maker and fashioner of all that is,
as it were .dramatises itself as our environment,
according to the sum of all our bygone tender
cies) ; and. yet again, seeing that it is in the
very nature of Causation that like effect should
V
follow on a given class of action, it takes the
place held by the Deity in Theistic creeds-
bringing happiness in the train of good, and pain
in the wake of evil acts. We are our Kamma,
in fact ; and just as the mind, in a nightmare
following on some over-indulgence in food,
dramatises part of itself as the demon that
pursues or haunts us, another part as the
seeming " I " which is pursued, and yet
another still as the environment the World
and Space and Time wherein the " evil Kamma "
of that indulgence operates so is it with the
wider stage*play of the visible world about us
in the waking life,
78 THE RELIGION OF .BURMA
But here the occidental reader, trained in
mental schools of various ego-centric faiths and
views, will naturally pause. How then, it
will be asked, how then, if indeed there be no
self, no soul that on our death moves onwards*
clothed in some cloak of subtle substance, or
taking some new body in the flesh how can
the Buddhist talk of " earlier " or " later ?
lives ; or how explain the fact that often, in
the Buddhist Scriptures, the Tathagata Him-
self concluded some tale of bygone lives with the
words : " That very person was Myself" ; if indeed
there be no soul, no self, who speaks, thinks,,
acts, and suffers, who dies and takes rebirth
according to the tenor of his deeds ? To make the
answer clear, recourse must be had to an analogy.
Two men are standing by the shores of
an ocean, its waters heaped in undulations
by the power of the winds. Both see the
same phenomenon, but one is uninstructed,.
a man of clear intelligence, of the type termed
THE RELIGION OF BURMA
"common-sense " ; the other learned in modern
physics, conversant with the scientific aspect
of the phenomenon before him. The un*
instructed man will say : " There, on the horizon,
is a mass of water, piled up in a wave ; thi&
mass of water so moulded by the winds, travels
towards us over the ocean, and breaks at last
here at our feet." But the instructed man
will answer : " Not so, friend. What you see
is but a seeming, a wrong interpretation of the
facts your sight conveys to you ; there is in all
this wave-birth, wave-life, wave-motion, and
wave-death, no single mass of water that so
moves over the sea at all. Bach wave in truth
is in a sense one thing ; but it is a child of
Force, and not of Substance. Ail that is really
happening is that force is being transmitted by
these manifold waves; the water is moving,,
but with no motion of translation over the
ocean's depths ; it is but rising and falling as
the real wave the collocation of hydraulic
80 . THE RELIGION OF BURMA
forces which give to it a temporary, but even
so an ever-changing identity passes onward,
in the end to break here at our feet. 55
We know, of course, that the instructed man
is right, and this is just the understanding of
the Buddhist as to the Transmigration, the
passing-over of each wave of life. All Life
is One, as are all the ocean's waters ; what goes
on, not only from death to the new birth, but
from hour to hour and moment to moment of
our lives, is that the temporary collocation of
life-forces called a being, resultant from the
powers playing on that one life-wave, (the winds
of Nescience, Avijja: Craving and Hate and
Self -delusion, both in the past and now ;
interaction with other life- waves, and many
other modifying forces) is passing onward
over life's wide ocean, presently, perchance^ to
break upon Life's Further Shore, Nibbanjj,
the Great Peace and Rest. Gazing with the
far-reaching Inner Vision which the Holy and
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 81
the High can gain and use, both The Buddha
and the other Indian sages of olden time saw
this phenomenon of the sequent lives. But to
the earlier sages, as to the uninstructed man of
"common-sense," there seemed (as apparently
their vision told them) to be but one changeless
mass of being, separate from every other " soul,"
that, keeping its one self -hood through eternity,
passed from the far horizons of life over its
restless surface to the Goal. To The Buddha,
seeing yet deeper, searching right to the
Causation and the manner of it all, there
was no immortal and enduring spiritual
substance or persona only a collocation
of life's fluxing forces, changing not
only at death and birth, the trough and
crest of each successive wave, but every
instant of its life. So to His deeper
Insight, as to that of the modern physicist,
there was no self, no separate mass of life at
all ; and what, for convenience of speech and
6
82 TBE BELIGION OP BURMA
as a designation, we term our self a " way of
counting" as the Scriptures well define it -
that is in very truth only an ever-changing
Collocation of the elements of life, bound
together by the power of Tendencies set
going by this very dream of " I " and "Mine".
Otherwise regarded, we may summarise the
body of the Buddhist doctrine under the
headings of the formula used by The Master in
His first lesson to the world, given to those
same Five Disciples who had deserted Him in
that sad hour when all seemed lost. That
formula is known as the Doctrine of the
Middle Way : the "Way that leans neither to
the extreme of Austerity, as practised by the
Indian sages ; nor to the extreme of Worldly
Life, given over altogether to the pleasures of
the senses. It consists of Four Aryan or
Noble Truths. First the Truth of Sorrow :
How all this individualised life, involved as
we have seen in Change and consequent Pain
THE RELIGION OF BUEMA 83
and Self-delusion, is inseparable from Suffering ;
since either we have, and (changing in our
Kamma's ceaseless changef ulness) we lose,
some cherished object ; or else we have not
what we desire, and so again comes Pain.
The modern student of biology may get an
insight into this First Truth if he considers the
humblest origins of life, remembers how the
lowest organisms move and act only in response
to irritation as the modern term accurately
and significantly puts it.- The Second Truth is
Sorrow's Cause : How all suffering springs only
from Desire desire to win for the sake of
self-hood, for the sake, in very truth, of an
illusion. Truth the Third is Sorrow's Ceasing :
How, by the culture of the Mind to see the truth
in all things ; by constant deep endeavour to
weed out the old " self's " ill tendencies, to
sow new seeds of Virtue and of Love, comes
Panna, "Wisdom, Insight in the light of which
the darkness of self-born desire can dwell no
84 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
more. Truth the Fourth is termed the Path-
Truth : How, even in our very heart of hearts,
there lies a Path, a Way which leads from
suffering life to Peace ; an Eightfold Way
whereof the members compose a threefold inner
training restraint of Body (action), of Word
(speech), and of Mind (thought).
Of that Noble Way the parts are these : (1)
Right Views- meaning the Understanding that
there is no self in truth, for Life is One, and
One alone ; the Understanding that this One Life
is pervaded in all its parts by the three charac-
teristic signs Impermanency, Subjection to
Suffering, and Absence of real Self -hood ; and
the Understanding how this life, and the
motion of its innumerable parts is subject
throughout to the causal Law of Kamma,
which we can see in action every time
we think logically and in sequence. 1 (2)
1 Kamma, it must be understood, is no dogma or hypothetical
principle ; it is, obviously and palpably, to one who understands the
teaching, all the time working in the daily thought-chains of our
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 85
Right Aspiration the earnest desire to help
reduce the suffering of life, and, by self-re^
straint and self -reform, to bring the Great Peace
nearer unto all the world. (3) Right Speech
loving and kindly and true* (4) Right Action
avoiding evil deeds and practising charity in
all our way 8* (5) Right Livelihood following
a mode of obtaining our daily bread which
inflicts no harm or hurt on any living thing.
(6) Right Effort the constant endeavor to
suppress our evil tendencies and to cultivate
the thoughts, words, and acts which lead to
good, further classified ai the Fourfold Great
lives. But for the fact that Kamma, Mind- or Life-Causation, is
the fundamental Law f Life, we could not for two consecutive
seconds remember our past, or frame an intelligible sentence in the
mind ; and as to the Buddhist teaching that this Kamma, at a
being's death, causes an immediate rebirth to occur (a rebirth,
according to Buddhist phrase, which " Is not he, and yet is not
other than he "), that is merely a logical extension of the constantly
perceived Law on the basis of the principle of the Conservation
of Energy. A man exists now : an immensely complex bundle of
mental forces ; these must have been set going, since all things are
caused, and the nature of Causation is that like breeds .like ; there-
fore the present mental make-up of a man must have had its
origin in mental causes set in motion in a similar life. And the
same argument applies to rebirth in the future.
86 THK RELIGION OF BUBMA
Btruggle : (a) the inhibition of old evil tenden-
cies ; (b) the inhibition of the acquirement
of new evil habits and ways; (c) the careful
constant cultivation, by dint of special mental
practices, of good habits, noble and helpful
thoughts (such as Love, Sympathy, Compassion,
Charity,) already formed ; and (d) the assiduous
cultivation of such good qualities and habits
of thought and life as are not already a part
of our mental habitude. (7) Right Watchful-
ness the continued observation of all we speak,
think, do, following out in each the operation
of the Causal Sequences, classifying each as
" Good " (tending to reduce life's suffering),
"Indifferent" (free from taint of Craving,
Hatred, and Self-delusion, and so producing
no new causal sequences at all), or " Evil "
(tainted by one or other of these last three
Modes of Nescience, and thus tending to set
in motion causal sequences adding to the
suffering of life). Besides this observation of
THE BELIGION OF BURMA 87
all our mental operations, and the discrimina-
tion as to their moral value, with the determina*
tion to cultivate the good in future and to
avoid the evil. Right Watchfulness includes the
constant application to each and all of them
of the Doctrine of Selflessnessthe practitioner
thinking and observing, as regards each
phenomenon, of Action, Speech, and Thought,
of every mental modification that constitutes
his life, without exception" This is not I,
this is not Mine, there is no Self herein" (8)
Right Concentration the practice, according
to the rules laid down in the books, of those
high methods of Mental Culture which lead
to the " Awakening " in the .higher realms of
conscious life ; all directed to the entering and
following of the Path of Peace, and the final
Attainment of Arahanship, of Liberation from
Graving, Hatred, and Self-delusion.
Such is the briefest of surveys of the third
stage of the Buddhist practice the stage of
88 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Mental Culture ; one from which we have been
compelled, for want of space, to omit all but
the most fundamental details. To the man
who, by the practice of Virtue and Charity,
has come to adolescence in his mental and
moral growth, the Most Excellent Law here
brings its final message. "By Virtue and
by Charity," it says, "we avoid ill lives
and win to good ones; but, seeing that all
things pass to Change and Death, not even
the good Kamma so made can last for ever.
So long as we remain subject to Life and to
Causation's Law we remain also subject to
Death, to the wearing out of good as well as
of evil Kamma. He who is truly wise seeks
to deliver that fraction of the One Life which at
the moment is manifested as himself from this
subjection ; he seeks to realise tlie Final Purpose
of all this changing, suffering cycle of existence
and rebirth. Beyond the highest Heaven
beyond aught that in this dream of life we
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 89
even can conceive there reigns a State of
Peace wherein there is no Change for ever-
more ; wherein is no more Suffering ; the Goal
and the Fruition of Life, the Incomparable
Security of Nibbana. If you can win to that, you
bring all life a little nearer to its Groal ; to win
to it you have to realise the final Truth the
truth that there is no Self at all that this
certain-seeming self -hood is but a delusion,
direst of all the bondages of Mind, of Life.
Enter, then, on this Way of Peace : enter
it by self-restraint, by self-renunciation^
Live, work, strive, no more for self But for
pity of all life : so, by reforming what appears
"yourself," you may in very truth help to
relieve the suffering of all life; and bring
your little wave on life's great ever-surging
ocean at last to break upon " Nibbana's Further
"Shore".
90 THE RELIGION OF BUBMA
THE SANGHA
The third of the Refuges is Sangha-Eatana,
the Treasure of the Brotherhoods-mat cornmu-
/ ~ .-.~,-.-^ ------ ,-:, .-X'
nity of Monks or " Homeless Ones " which
The Master founded for those who wished
to enter on a way of life far more conr
ducive to swift progress on the Path than
^ver the purely worldly life could be.
Besides this function, it has another: that of
maintaining the racial recollection of the Truth
The Master found and taught ; the passing-on
of the Dhamma; the teaching of the laity.
From what has gone before it will be under-
stood that the Buddhist BhiKklw or Monk in
no sense is the equivalent of the priest of the
Theistic creeds ; in a religion in which there
is no Deity, wherein Causation reigns supreme,
and no petitipnal prayer or ritual can bring a
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 91
man one jot the nearer to the Goal, there
is no place for the " priest "-that is, for
the intermediary between the layman and
his Q-od. Each man's own acts alone affect
his future ; * and no charms or rites or prayers
can in the least alter the inevitable sequence
of Causation's Law. But, as we have seen,
Charity is an essential practice in applied
Buddhism ; and seeing that, in a truly Buddhist
1 So far, of course, as he makes any sort of (Mind-born) Doing,
or Kamma, his own, by dint of mental functioning ; that is, by dint
of living it. This view does then of course by no means exclude
the possibility of one man's actions affecting another's Kamma. For
example, we may hear of the life and Teaching of The Buddha j if
we choose to assimilate what we can of that Teaching, and choose to
folloiv what we can of the example of that great life, then our
Kamma may become, even in a single life, so profoundly modified
as to seem almost a different Kamnia altogether. And such
modification of a man's Kamma by his religious teachers, his
loved ones, his friends, enemies all who contact his life is
constant and considerable j it is analogous, in the wave-simile, to
the effect of surrounding waves ; except, of course, that in the
intelligent, conscious life of man the element of choice comes in.
Again, Kamma is far from being the sole arbiter of a man's
Destinies : some sorts of Suffering (as a congenital disease) may,
for example, be due to Kamma acting from past lives j but others
may again arise from any of seven other causes : as, Heredity,
Environment, the Seasons, and so forth. Thus the phrase must be
regarded as, for the present moment, conditionally or only mainly
true : it would only become absolute did we add the words " in the
long run".
92 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
land like Burma, there are none who starve
for want of food, it might be difficult to find
suitable recipients for the large and constant
charity of the Buddhist, this function is fulfilled
by the Members of the Order, who are abso-
lutely dependent on the laity for each day's food,
for their robes, monasteries, books, medicines,
and in general for their entire support. The
layman's object in giving charity is to " make
Merit," to pile up, as it were, good Kamma
to his credit in the bank of life ; so that he
may come to better and nobler states of exist-
ence, may win to lives in which the entering
of the hard Path of Selflessness, now impossible
for him by reason of his manifold desires,
may be found easier. Buddhist teaching also
indicates that the effect of charity in producing
powerful Merit depends on many things besides
the mere value of the gift. It depends, for
example, on the motive in the giver's mind; on
the extent to which it involves a real act of
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 93
abnegation to him ; and, finally, besides yet other
considerations, very largely on the moral status
of the recipient. Other things being equal, the
holier the recipient, the greater the Merit of
the person helped, the greater will be the fruits
of an act of charity, in the way of potent
Merit, to the man who gives.
Thus, on the one hand, to him who finds
himself so far advanced as now to need to
devote all his time to the practice of Mental
Culture, the Brotherhood affords a state of life
in which all those worldly cares which are so
harmful to the needed peace of mind are
absent ; he has no more, once in the Order, to
take thought as to how he shall secure his daily
bread. And on the other hand, to the layman,
desiring to practise the highest active virtue of
his creed, the Brotherhood, by reason of the
special holiness of the lives its Members lead,
is s as the Buddhist phrase has it, " an
incomparable Field of Merit "a field which
94 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
will yield a richer harvest for the sowing of
charity's good seed than well-nigh any other
in the world.
The Brotherhood .- 1 consists of two classes-
the Novices and the fully ordained Monks. The
Novices have Ten Precepts to observe (the
1 That is, using the term in its widest sense, as including every
person who, under our Buddha's Dispensation, has adopted the
" Homeless Life," received the Pablajja, or " World-renouncing *'
Ordination, and who wears the Yellow Robe. Technically , fully-
ordained (Upasampanna) Monks, or Bhikkhus, only .axe "real"
Members of the Order whilst, again, in the highest (and the most
restricted) sense in which the word Sangha may be used-^-that
involved when we speak of the Sangha-Ratana, the " Treasure of
the Brotherhood " to which the Buddhist turns as his Refuge and
his Guide it is no more even the majority of the living Bhikkhus ;
it then consists of that far rarer Great Brotherhood of those loho
have entered uyjon the Path : the Holy Ones, alike of the past and
present, who, under our Master's Dispensation, have attained to one
or other of the Four (or, according to another classification, one
hundred and eight) Stages of the Way to the Incomparable
Security. In this last sense, our Sangha-Ratana recalls the
"Communion of the Saints" of the Christian creed. Thus
looking on its Third Member, we might regard the whole Refuge-
Formula as a species, of conjugation of the idea of Attainment
Enlightenment, Awakening in respect of the three Modes of
Time. It is as though the Buddhist asserts : (1) In the Past, One
the Exalted Lord attained and passed-utterly-away. (2) In
the Present, in His Place we have Him living in His Dhamma
through which we may noiv 'attain. (3) In the Future, even u r e
may yet attain as the Communion of the Holy Ones, the Sangha-
Ratana, ever exists to aid and to attest.
THE RELIGION OP BORMA 95
Bight Precepts before given, one of which here
is divided into two, thus making nine of what
were given as eight ; and in addition a precept
as to abstaining from the acceptance or use of
money, or of gold or silver in any form). Any
male above seven years of age may be ordained
as a Sftman&ra, or Novice; and in general
practice in Burma, every boy so enters the
Monastery and undergoes its discipline at some
age between seven and twenty. Any Bhikkhu
can ordain a Samanera, but only with the
consent of his parents or guardians if a child ;
and, once ordained, the Novice can leave the
Order at will at any time. He wears the
Yellow Robe, takes food like the Monks, only
before noon ; and may own no property except
such as is allowed to the Monks themselves*
A Burmese lad is generally put into the
Novitiate by his parents for a period of a few
months, or a year or so ; and thus well-nigh
every man in the country has lived some time
96 THE EBLIGIQN OP BURMA
in the Monastic Order, a fact on which the
immense esteem in which the Monk is held
largely depends. Every- man has lived in
immediate contact with the Brotherhood, and
is personally acquainted both with the high
standard of purity and holiness and of learning
therein maintained ; he also has practical
experience of the restraints so hard to a
young and eager people like the Burmese-
involved in the monastic life. In the Monastery,
the Novice acts as attendant to the Monks
maintains order, draws water for drinking and
bathing purposes, sweeps out the Monastery
before dawn, sees that the sanded " walking-
place " is clear of lives or leaves, and so forth.
Besides these attendant's duties he learns from
some resident Monk the special duties of his
station, studies his religion from the Sacred
Books, and joins the Monks at their united
devotions, generally twice a day, at dawn and
eventide. Before the establishment of secular
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 97
schools by the British Government, the entire
education of the male population of the country
was in the hands of the Monks ; and, apart from
the period of the Novitiate (designed more
especially with a view to instruction in
religion), a large number of Burmese boys
still obtain their whole education in the village
Monastery.
In commemoration of the Great Renunciation,
the entry of a boy into the Novitiate is
frequently made the occasion of one of those
public festivals which delight the play-,
movement-, and color-loving Burmese heart.
Even poor parents will often save money for
some time (a very hard task for the generous
and, indeed, thriftless Burman) in order to give
their sons a lavish Shin-pyu. (making a Holy
One), as the festival is called; and the Shin-
pyu of a rich man's son is often a very grand
affair. Personifying the Prince Siddhattha,
the boy is dressed in regal robes and crowned;
7
98 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
and, after receiving all his friends in state, the
little Prince rides round the village, mounted,
if possible, on a white horse, in memory
of white Kanthaka, the Bodhisatta's steed.
A procession is formed, and amidst a great
display of royal canopies and insignia, hired
for the occasion from some theatrical company,
it marches to the air of stirring music round
the village to the Monastery walls. Here the
Princeling must dismount and music must
stop, for the little mystery-play has reached
the point corresponding to the arrival of the
Bodhisatta at the River Anoma, when He put
off His royal robes and donned the ascetic's
garb. Entering the compound, the lad bathes
and is clad in a temporary plain white robe ;
and, so attired, makes his request, in the
ancient Pali formula, that the ordaining Monk
will, " Out of Compassion, and for the sake of the
Attainment of NMana's Peace," grant to him
the Yellow Robe. The Monk, assenting, gives
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 99
him the parcel of Three Kobes, placed ready
to his hand. The lad retires and robes himself
in these, after having his head shaved ; he
then returns to the Monastery, where the
ceremony of Ordination is completed by
his recitation of the vow to observe the Ten
Precepts of a Novice.
Full Membership in the Brotherhood may
only be conferred upon a male, 1 of twenty
years and upwards, who must be free from
debt, the king's service, and certain specified
diseases and deformities. It can only be
1 Men only can now receive the (Jpasampada or Full Ordina-
tion. Originally The Buddha founded a Bhikkhuni-Sangha, or
Sisterhood of Nuns, as well as the Bhikkhu-Sangha or Fraternity of
Monks ; and some of His most eminent disciples were members of
this Community, which had its own Vinaya Bule, and its own
Ordination, separate from that of the Brotherhood. This
Bhikkhuni-Sangha, however, owing to the corruptions creeping
into Buddhism in India the fast-growing power of the Brahmanical
caste which caused this, and the increasing seclusion of women,
which was one of the results of the priestly dominance perished in
India, and indeed elsewhere also (since at one time there were
Nuns as well as Monks in Ceylon) some five hundred years after
the Nirvana of the Buddha (about the first century of the Christian
rn) ; as, indeed, the Master Himself had prophesied would be
the case.
100 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
conferred in practice by a Thema, Senior
Monk, that is, one of at least ten years' stand-
ing in the Order ; and he can only perform the
ceremony in the presence of a technical Sanglia
^a Chapter composed of not less than ten
fully-ordained Monks. The office of Ordina-
tion, as used in The Buddha's time, is read out
by the Thera, in the presence of the assembled
Chapter, in ancient Pali. It is customary in
Burma, likewise, to go through it in the
vernacular, since so miich Pali is not likely
to be known to the Novice desiring Ordination,
The Thera who confers the Ordination is
thereafter known as the Upajjhdya or spiritual
Superior of the new Monk, to whom likewise
an Acariya or Instructor is allotted. For five
years the Monk remains in Nissaya, or
" dependence " on Superior and Instructor ;
thereafter he is permitted to dwell in a
Monastery apart from such dependence ; but
not till he has acquired ten full years of
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 101
seniority in the Brotherhood does he become
himself a Them, an Elder. Thereafter he can
himself, in the presence of a valid Chapter as
detailed, confer the Full Ordination, take
pupils, and generally act as the head of a
community of Monks.
The Pali title for the Monk is fihiklchu,
literally "the Mendicant," but in Burma this
word is seldom employed outside the Order ;
the laity term their Bhikkhus Hpon~gyi s or " the
Great Glory," and they are treated with the
utmost deference and consideration. The
younger Monks of a Monastery, accompanied
by the Novices and the " Sons of the
Monastery" (boys, that is, who are placed
for their schooling at the Monastery, but
who do not take Orders as Novices, and
so can feed after noon) commonly go in
silent procession, early each morning, round
their village to beg their daily supply of food.
jBach Monk and Novice carries a large earthen
102 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
or iron bowl, sometimes, for convenience,
slung in a string satchel over one shoulder ;
whilst the Sons of the Monastery bear each
a large platter, or a pair of these, slung from
the ends of a bamboo carried on the shoulder
in the immemorial manner of the Far East, on
which are placed various cups and dishes for
the curries or seasonings to be taken with the
rice. As the procession comes to each door
it halts a moment, when the householder, or
more commonly one of his womenfolk, (who
has been up long before dawn cooking the
day's supply of food), comes out and places a
spoonful of plain rice in the begging-bowl
of each Monk and Novice ; and, if any curry-
stuff is to be given, this is placed in one of
the dishes carried by the boys. If that day
there is no offering to be made, the householder
comes forth and begs the Monks to pass on-
wards. The whole round is conducted, on the
part of Monks and Novices, in unbroken silence ;
THE RELIGION OF BUEMA 10B
and, when each house has been visited, or
when in towns sufficient food for the day's
consumption of all at the Monastery has been
secured, the procession returns to the Monas^
tery. Here the food, commonly re-heated by
the Sons of the Monastery, is taken before noon.
The bulk of the day is passed by the Monks in
teaching their scholars, in studying the Pali
language and the Scriptures; in writing with
an iron stylus copies of some sacred Scriptures
;qn the immemorial palm-leaf, which till lately
formed the chief writing material of the Bast,
and such-like simple, pious work. Some few
Monks, further, devote themselves mainly to the
practice of Bhdvana or Meditation the intent
contemplation of some object physical or
mental, with a view to the attainment of one
or other of those higher states of consciousness
of which mention has been made, and which
form a very large subject by themselves,
impossible here to deal with.
104 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
The Monk has to observe 227 coded Precepts ;
the whole course of his conduct being further
regulated by multitudinous rules laid down
by The Master as occasion arose. Of the three
great divisions of the *Ti-Pitaka, the " Three
Baskets " or Collections of the Buddhist
Dhamma, one, comprising five extensive works,
to which, outside the actual Canonical Rule, is
appended a still larger commentary -literature,
is devoted solely to the Monastic Rule. There
are Four Deadly Sins, each involving ipso facto
expulsion from the Order : the breaking of
the Precept of absolute Chastity binding on
Monks and Novices alike ; the taking by fraud
or violence of aught not given to him ; the
taking of life (here it is only the taking of
human life which involves actual expulsion,
though taking even the life of an animal would
be regarded as a grievous offence against the
Rule); and, lastly, the laying claim falsely
to the Attainment of Arahanship or to the
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 105
possession of any superior, superhuman powers
at all. This last is, with its minor theses, a most
salutary rule, and has served, even for the
long period of twenty-five centuries, to main-
tain the Dhamma of The Buddha free from all
changes ; it has made impossible, for Theravada
Buddhism, any additional " revelations " result-
ant from some Monk's proclaiming, for example,
that he had had a vision of The Master com-
manding such and such an alteration in the
" Truth and Discipline " to be made.
The Monk may own but Bight Possessions
his three Yellow Robes, his Begging-Bowl
(which forms also his dish), his Girdle, his
Water-strainer (used to filter his drinking-
water, lest he should destroy the life even of an
insect), a Razor to shave with (the head of the
Monk is commonly completely shaven, the
members of a" Monastery doing this service for
one another), and a Needle with which to
repair his Robes.
106 THE KELTGION OF BURMA
The Monks of Burma are held in the highest
esteem bj the people, an esteem which the
purity of their conduct and the high excellence
of their lives fully justifies. In Upper Burma
especially, (where the manners and customs of
the people have not yet been so far demoralised
by western civilisation as in Lower Burma,
where the British occupation has been much
longer), the deference shown them is most
marked ; a Burmese layman there will never
address a Monk except in an attitude of
obeisance ; whilst all over Burma the Monk has
actually an entire set of words to denote
respect, used for his daily actions; thus he
does not, as we might translate, " walk," but
. - - *
*'-'&/$' proceeds," he "pronounces " instead of
;E ? - merely "speaks," and so on.
i c j I fj A'
"*/ The Brotherhood of Burma dates back to the
"most ancient times, although local wars and
<.!&:; >.
r other disturbances have on several occasions so
>to?oreduced its numbers as to necessitate an
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 107"
application to Siam or Ceylon for fully-ordainedv
Monks to restore the impaired Parampara or
Apostolic Succession (of the Ordination). Some
two hundred and fifty years after The Buddha's
demise there arose in India a great Emperor
named Aspka (the royal author of the Edicts
already referred to), who became a convert to-
Buddhism and a most enthusiastic patron alike
of the Teaching and the Brotherhood. Under
. S^'^f
his patronage, the then SAngha^BS^a. t or
Hierarch, summoned a Great Council of the
Order the third that had been held and
from this Council, after a revision of the Canon,,
missionary Monks were sent forth to various
distant lands. Amongst these were two, the
Theras Sona and Uttara, who came to
Lower Burma, landing at what is now the
town of Thaton, then a seaport, though now
some twenty miles inland. This was the
beginning of Buddhism in Burma. Into
Upper Burma,, it seems likely there later
"*""fty SHI.V fTRfiMtt" /N PUG A." 3>iwrt&Ti r/Mi'M'^
108 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
penetrated some sort of degenerate Buddhism'
probably one of the much later Tantrika,
magic-working sects which sprang up in India
during the period of the Buddhist decline, and
which had entered Burma from Tibet through
the mountain-barrier in the north. This
degraded form was, however, put an end to by
the Burmese king Anoratha, who, incensed at
the insulting refusal of the then king of Lower
Burma, whose capital was at Thaton, to give
fl ' * ' O
him copies of the Pali Sacred Books, attacked
:and sacked Thaton, and carried away to Upper
Burma, to his capital city, Pagan, the persons
of the defeated king and his family, as well as
every copy that could be found of the coveted
Sacred Books. Thereafter, moved by the
study of their contents to atone somewhat for
his evil action in fighting, he became, like a
second Asoka, a staunch adherent of the purer
Buddhism, and made the latter alone the
state religion; the Ari or Priests of the
THE RELIGION OF BURMA 109'
degenerate faith then prevalent in his domains
being given the alternative of becoming lay
officials of his government, or of entering the
orthodox Sarigha, which was thus for the first
time established in Burma proper.
Finally we may add but this, that, so long
as the Burmese people remain, as now 5 devoted
to their Brotherhood and the beautiful Teaching
which that Brotherhood not all unworthily
enshrines, so long (and no longer) will they
retain those great characteristics which have
endeared them to every western author wha
has really entered into their lives and under-
stood the meaning of their remarkable charity,
their hospitality, and freedom from dire,,
sordid poverty. Buddhism is well able, by
reason alike of its beauty and its obvious
truth, to hold its own in the hearts of the
people ; and, whilst the contact with western
civilisation has produced in certain directions
a lamentable effect on the old high standard of
. i|,-ft , , f ^|J^.'f *-'.? ft *
-j- \ f*-- '
.Jk J\ ...,',
.,.
110 THE RELIGION OP BUBMA
Buddhist morality, 1 there are already signs on
every hand that the religion is now in the
process of receiving, not a diminution, but a
very active augmentation of its former strength.
There are many evidences of the progress of
this new Buddhist Revival : the appearance of
great Monks, like the well-known Ledi Say ad aw,
who, remaining no longer hidden in their
Monasteries, go forth among the people and
intensely stir them to better their ways; all
over the land, again, there are new societies,
forming for various religions purposes in the
new spirit of the age. Even the subject
of religious education, too long neglected, save
by the merest handful of far-seeing women 2
1 The most terrible and the most inexcusable instance of this
deterioration lies in the introduction of alcohol. The use of this
curse was practically unknown in the days of Burmese independence ;
whilst now there is a spirit shop in almost every village of Lower
U.8.Burma (British^ occupation, Jift years) and this state is slowly
. a pp roacn i n g fa Upper Burma (on|yjw_enty^-five years' occupation).
2 Nowhere in the world, perhaps^ is the status of woman so free
-as in Burma; a fact to which is doubtless due the high degree of
activity and intelligence possessed by the Burmese women. Two
-out of the three Bijddjvist schools in the populous city of Rangoon
V. fl.V.Se
THE RELIGION OP BURMA 111
and men, is now beginning to secure attention.
Not the least sign of allj perhaps, is the fact
that the Burmese are beginning to awake to
the ancient missionary spirit of their Faith.
Perhaps a thousand years after the last
attempt in this direction, a Buddhist Mission
was, in 1908 O.E., sent out to England ; which,
despite the exceedingly small scale of its
operations (consisting as it did of but a single
Bhikkhu and a few devoted laity), yet
succeeded in establishing in that country a
small but earnest body of accepted members
of the Buddhist laity.
(and for long the only two) were started and have been maintained.
at no small expense by the far-seeing charity and wisdom of a
Burmese lady, Mrs. Llla Ouug. The bulk, further, of the petty
trade of the country is in the women's hands ; and there are few
Burmese peasant women who do not supplement the family income,
often very largely by personally making and selling such wares as
clothes and scarves. Formerly, indeed, every woman was an
expert at the loom, and the hjind-logrn, was in every well-to-do
household ; nc^ unhappily, cheap Manchester goods hare well-
nis?h killed that industry. . - '
(I
}\\ cui' '(
THE THREE SIGNATA
IN the ancient epic literature of Aryan
India, the tale is told how once the wise and
virtuous king Yudhisthira, the ideal pattern
and exemplar, for that literature, of the man
who follows y Dharma 9 who, at whatever cost
)0 -self, unswervingly obeys the call of Duty
and of Truth, when called upon to tell what
fact in life appeared to him most passing
marvellous, made answer: " Man's belief in an
4
immortal life." Seeing on every hand but
Death as certain goal and crown of lifej seeing
it, whether in man's fratricidal warfare, or
in the grimmer> ceaseless strife whereunto
Nature dooms each sentient living thing;
seeing, in his own human world, father and
mother j wife and child, friend and foe, great
and mean, the wise and. holy as the" weak and
THE THREE SIGNATA 113
base, dying around him upon every side each
man still acts and lives as though himself were
deathless, as though this universal power of
death must somehow pass and leave him all
unscathed. Death hems him in on every side,
its terrors compass him about each day and
hour ; the teachings of the wise and great and
holy of each land and age unceasingly reiterate
the awful fact of its supreme, all-dominating
might; so trivial in its immediate causation
that a scratch, a thorn, a stumble by the way
may yet invoke it ; so imminent, it may be, in
respect of days, that none of us dare say:
" To-morrow," nay : " Next hour I shall surely
live." Yet each man still lives as though
all time yet lay before him ; still rejoices in
the petty pleasures of this threatened life;
plans for his future ; casts all his energies of
life upon the die of worldly living ; still loves
and hates; works all his days for wealth, no
penny of which he can take with him in the
8
114 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
end ; battles with all his powers for this or
that of this vanishing dream-life's fancied
benefits ; and, save for the thoughtful few, he
never realises that close imminence of the end
of all of it; nor understands that his own
position is in truth but little safer than that of
the death -sentenced criminal, before whom lie
but hours ere he must look his last on earth
and sky.
Why is this forgetfulness, this lack of
understanding ? By reason of Desire, by dint
of man's joy in life, his craving for yet more
and more of it at whatsoever cost ; because,
as ever with the uninstructed, thoughtless man,
he follows his emotions and desires rather than
the more clear-seeing guidance of intelligence;
he dreams of himself as steadfastly enduring,
thinks he must live, though all the Universe
might pass ; he craves for yet more of life so
fever-thirstily, that all this ceaseless agony
of death surrounding him is impotent to teach
THE THREE SIGNATA 115
him that he, too, must die. True, as a formula
of words, he knows and will admit the truth
of it ; but as a fact, as real understanding, as
realised within his heart of hearts, not so.
Who, did he understand, could live the petty
life of following the world's desires ; grasp
after this or that poor toy in this swift-fleeting
life ; give way to passion here, or hate or
cheat or otherwise bring suffering to his fellow-
sufferers there did he but understand that
truth, so pitiably plain : " Like all of these my
brothers, I am doomed to die. To-day, to-
morrow, in another year or years, and all this
., . ._ * .....,./ . . .U ......... .*..- .-.._.,.._
life that now seems all to me must, in a single
moment, after some minutes, hours, or_day_s
oJL_ago>ny, pass from me evermore" ? Who,
that had grasped it, still could live the petty,
pleasure-seeking life of worldly aspiration and
inane futility? None, surely, who once had
seen ; and yet, as Yudhisthira marvelled
untold centuries ago, despite life's daily
116 THE EBLIGION OP BURMA.
re-enacted tragedy, most of mankind, their
insight utterly blinded by Desire's dark clouds,
still deem themselves immortal and still live
as though this little life were all ; or, yet more
pitiable still, dream of themselves continuing
to eternity, finding about them those that here
they loved, repeating throughout all the
interminable asons the petty details of things
they loved on earth; a life (so utterly in
contrast to all life we know of) from which all
pains are banished, wherein the petty pleasures
of our life alone endure.
Some few, indeed, have seen further : one
such I well remember now. Once, in a distant
town, attending a funeral with other Monks,
I found a little bamboo-monastery built by
the burning-place ; so near that one might
watch, from its windows, the passing to the
elements of what had once been living woman,
man, or child. Only one Monk was permanently
dwelling there, an old, old man, whose face,
THE THREE SIGNATA 117
despite his age, still shone with that strong
inward light that may be sometimes seen in
human eyes : the light that speaks of life nobly
and greatly lived , that tells of glimpses of the
Truth, of the Light beyond All Life whereof it is
sign-manual and reflection. And so, courtesies
made, I asked that Thera how it came to pass
that he lived there, hard by the burning-ground ;
so far away from town or village ; so dangerous,
one might think, by reason of infection ; s0
sad a dwelling-place, by daily wont of that last
mournful scene of human life.
In reply, the Thera told me a little of
the story of his life how, as a boy and youth,
eager and active and full of the desire for life,
he had been burdened with a hasty, passionate
nature, quick to take offence ; and how, when
such was given him, his whole mind would be
so filled with wrath and hatred that no other
nobler thought could find admission to his
heart. Then, one day, in such access of
118 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
anger, somehow a new thought did come : he
asked himself what good this anger did him,
- *-.,.. . ,. ---- ^^~. --- , ~ - ^ -------- ------ . f
and to what end it might develop, if he should
"" "" ---.- - ^- -.- -. - ...... ^^ ,., __. - ~^ ^ -L-- -.._.- _-_i-.-.i--
Jet it grow unchecked ? Taking his trouble to
~r- ^, .,-.-,- . _, 1_J - ^-.i- .- *.-*._-. ^,,^>,_^-_ .... {__}
a learned Thera for advice, he was answered
in terms of the Master's Teaching in the
Dhammapada : "The many 1 do not understand
that are here must die ' : those who know
this, for them all hatreds cease."
Sometimes according to the nature and
Kamma of each one of us, it happens that a
few brief words, more especially when these
have come out of the mouth of some great
spiritual Teacher like The Buddha, strike upon
our minds with a new and vivid sense of reality :
seem gifted with an interior vital meaning that
suddenly illuminates our mind, like a lamp
brought into a darkened room. Before, with-
out the lighted lamp, the darkness of the room
1 "The many "in the original Pare, " Others "; that is, the
unthinking, unenlightened multitude ; as contrasted with the
thoughtful and enlightened few those who understand.
THE THREE SIGNA'FA 119
seemed almost tangible ; we felt as if surrounded
by a wall in all directions ; we moved forward
hesitatingly, groping our way through the
darkness, and that even when by the light of
day the room is perfectly familiar. But strike
a light in it ; bring in the lighted lamp, and
immediately our hesitance, our feeling of restric-
tion, melts away ; seeing, our path across the
room at once is clear to us ; the natural sense
of freedom to move here and there returns.
Just so is it when this mental experience occurs
to us. In some strange way the words that so
remarkably appeal to us seem to have kindled
a clear light in the groping darkness of our
mental chamber; our minds appear to have
perceived a new, a deeper truth behind those
words ; in the light of this interior illumination
our path through life, hitherto shrouded in
darkness, all at once grows clear and luminous :
and, from interior darkness and mental groping,
arguing about it and about, we pass into a new
120 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
mental state of seeing clearly, understanding
keenly and correctly what now is best for us
to do.
So it was with this young man, when his
teacher recited to him that Saying of The
Buddha. He was a layman, but at once he
left the world behind him, and, having entered
the Order, he spent his days, whenever possible,
in or near by the burning-ground, so that, by
dint of multiplying those &ankhcim& } those
MORTAL
Mental Elements which were related to the
consciousness of death, he might at length, in
the deep Buddhist meaning of the word, come
to understand : " We all here must die." So
simple a lesson is that, that it is very hard ta
learn ; for the simpler a thing is, the greater
and more difficult is it really to grasp it ; and,
besides, in the case of this particular lesson, the
element of Ignorance, of Not-understanding in
our minds, cries out against the very thought
of it. It is so difficult to learn that which our
THE THREE SIGNATA 121
minds, that which the greater bulk of our
mental elements, do not wish to learn ; and so
most men never understand at all that simple
fact : " We all must die."
But, by the falling of the water-drops, little
by little the filter-jar grows full to over-
flowing : that is the great secret of all mental
mastery, the fact which makes even self-renun-
ciation grow possible, nay, acceptable and
glorious at last. And so, to this young Monk,,
little by little the lesson came home ; it
grew daily in his mind to deeper and more
solemn certainty ; it shone daily brighter in his-
heart of hearts, revealing many a darkness-
hidden Truth. In his new life as Monk, the
manifold occasions to anger which the world's
life presents and multiplies were, in the first
place, largely absent ; yet a few remained ;.
and sometimes, even as Monk, he would find
the old bad tendency to swift anger flame up
in his heart at this or that trivial occasion of
122 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
offence. Bat, with the anger, by dint of the
associating faculty of the mind, came, too, the
thought he had prescribed to cure his
wrathf ulness : with each access of hatred there
<;ame the vision of that oft-repeated final
mourning scene. With the thought of it,
his heart would grow hot with self-reproach,
with shame: "He who knows this, for him
all hatreds cease" And also he remembered
One of whom His followers, at His death,
could say : " So passed away the Great, the
Loving Teacher, who never spake an angry
ivord"-
Thus, with the passing years and growth of
wisdom and true Insight, passed, for that Monk,
the tendency to anger with which he had been
born. As time went on, and he grew in the
esteem of the laity, his supporters, seeing how
he frequented the burning-ground, built him
an abode hard by. Then, when I met him, he
was very old, very high in the esteem of all
TBE THREE SIGNATA 128
men in that district men believed him to have
seen somewhat of that high Path whose seeing
is so difficult ; and, for my part, I could well
believe it to be so.
For there was not only that rare sense of the
interior Light, the sense of Vision in the
Thera's countenance : there was this simple
story of a well-lived life. That man had seen
a Truth, which is very rare and difficult in this
sad world; he had really seen, because at
once he had acted accordingly ; and no man
sees any Truth in actual fact who does not then
and there commence to live anew. All the rest
is talk.
I thought : Suppose that all of that
man's life had brought no other Vision, no
further fruit than that one Seeing of the Truth,
how fortunate- was he, thanks to the Holy One
whose words so changed his life. For how
C-J
many of the sons of men live life after life in
this or other worlds, in vain ? I thought of the
124 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
many men in my own country, where the
Homeless Life is held in low esteem because
men do not understand the full value of true
self-restraint who would look upon that
monkish life as lost, as useless to the world and
to himself, because, forsooth, it lacked the lesser
lessons that the care of wife and child can
teach a man. It seemed to me that, had
he learned that one Truth alone, had his life
a little only served to teach it to his fellows,
it were a life greater by far than most men
can hope to live. To see one Truth and by
example teach it : How greater far a life, how
nobler far a service to humanity, than most
men are privileged to live, to give !
But few there are with either Insight ta
perceive one Truth or strength to live accord-
ingly ; and still, as in the king Yudhisthira's
days, men, seeing Death round them upon
every side, can yet believe themselves immortal
or act as if they did. Had the great Indian
THE THREE 8IGNATA 125
Mng achieved fche greatest of all blessings, for
one so wise as he had he heard the Teaching
of our Master he would not have marvelled
only that men should deem themselves
immortal in a world of death, he would have
seen a threefold wonder greater still than that.
How so would his thought have run living
in a world where everything is in transition?
most men still believe themselves exempt from
this sure law of life, each dreaming that some-
thing in him still is deathless, changeless,
permanent. How, living in a world so full of
suffering, most men still think : " Somehow will
1 at least escape from pain ; some time I shall
achieve a life of pleasure only." How, living
in a world whereof the Life in deepest truth is
One -a world in which there is no separate
Self or Soul at all, but only a ceaseless flux of
life's elements from this one of its momentary
collocations to that other each man,still looks
upon himself as one, as a life separate from all
126 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
other lives to all eternity ; his self, his soul
or Atta or whatever he may call it, upon one
side, and all the mass of universal life upon
the other ; Self contra Life ; so he thinks and,
sorrow of the world that springs from it ! so
he acts accordingly throughout his swift-com-
pleting days !
e^ For this is our Master's Teaching of the
-* Tlhre.e^ ...Bianata : the three great Marks or
Characteristics whereby all life is determined.
" Whether Buddhas arise or ivhether They do
not arise " that is, whether the life in any
given world-system evolves so far as to include,
at any given time, reasoning beings so far
advanced in wisdom as, by their own Insight,
to be able to perceive this universal Truth, or
no -"Whether Buddhas arise or whether They do
not arise, it still remains true that all the Ele-
A ments of Life are Transitory, . . . of S_
. , . and devoid of Sjsifjbood" So
runs the Scripture, and in this threefold
THE THESE SIGNATA 127
Doctrine of the Signata lies the foundation of the
whole Buddhist outlook upon life, the key-note,
as it were, of the Buddhist philosophy or
theory of existence ; and, what in our Teaching
is synonymous with this, the foundation of the
whole great fabric of Buddhist ethics ; since,.
to the true follower of our Master, to under-
stand and to live accordingly are only the two
sides the static and dynamic aspects of the
one Truth The Master won and lived and
taught.
Not only is the Doctrine of the Three Signata
thus the very essence of our Buddhist Truth,,
theory and practice ; it is also the chief feature
which distinguishes Buddhism from all other
existent religious systems; it constitutes, to-
gether with the discovery and enunciation of the
Law of Kamma, and the Teaching as to
the existence of a State beyond All Life,
Nibbana, the especial contribution which
The Buddha made to the sum-total of
128 THE RELIGION OP BUEMA
religious Truth as known in His day. Our
Dhamma, indeed, may be said to mark the
-ultimate and supreme achievement in the
world of religious investigation and knowledge ;
it inherited from generations immemorial of
Jndian saints and sages the whole fruit of
Indo-Aryan religious experience and develop-
ment ; in these three great Teachings
Nibbana, the 'Doctrine of the Three Signata, and
the Law of KammaihQ Buddha added all
that remained lacking to the final perfection of
the Truth, so far as words are able to express
ihe way to Truth's Attainment ; and thus our
present subject may be regarded as in a very
-special and peculiar sense a Buddhist doctrine,
one which we find in no other great religion of
the world at all. Universal Causation, the Law
of Kamma, applied as rigidly to Life, to Mind,
.as modern science has applied it in the realm of
physics ; setting aside finally even the subtlest
iremnant of the old, animistic view of life the
THE THREE SIGNATA 129
belief, natural to the uninstructed mind, that
all this Universe was the outcome of the activity
of some great spiritual Being or Beings ; the
Doctrine of the Three Signata, the characterisa-
tion of all possible forms of life as Transitory,
Suffering, Unreal in their seeming Self -hood ;
and, lastly, the discovery and enunciation of a
State beyond All Life, Nibbana, the Uncondi-
tioned Peace s the unthinkably vast Goal
towards which, through fancied self-hood and
through suffering, all life is slowly wending,
a state 1 which was final, the Utter Peace, from
which there should be no returning evermore
these three Teachings constitute the distinctive!^
Buddhist element, as contrasted with all those
elements of religious truth and practice in our
Dhamma which were known in the Indo-Aryan
1 Differing herein from the probably later, and derived, Hindu
Nirvana or Moksha or union with Brahma, in that this last was not
eternal, seeing that after the "night of Brahma" was over, the
whole weary round of the projection of universal life into a
suffering manifold system of worlds must be commenced agairi^
and so on to eternity.
9
130 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
world before the day of the Supreme
Enlightenment.
One further peculiarity of the Doctrine of
the Three Signata is that, through the recent
marvellous developments of physical science, the
western thinking world is now day by day
receiving further demonstration of precisely
these same linked-together characteristics of
sentient and non-sentient life. That fact has
a great importance, as bearing on the possible,
or probable, future extension of our Dhamma
in the West ; for in the thought of the cultured
classes in all western lands the teachings of
science have by now well-nigh possessed them-
selves of the position formerly held by the
old-time theologies. What that means, in
brief, is, that given time enough for the effects
of heredity, and of human mental inertia, to
/ ' j
have fully worked themselves out (and that, in
the present progressive and transitional state
of occidental thought, no long time either)
THE THREE S1GNATA 131
it will become impossible for any great religion
to retain even a nominal hold on the (ever more
numerous) thinking classes, the fundamental
teachings of which, as to the nature of life, are
opposed to the knowledge derived from
scientific study and investigation. But, since
this Doctrine of the Three Signata, as well as
the equally fundamental, equally important
conception of Causation, is, as has been said,
exclusively Buddhist, 1 we can clearly foresee
that, given at most a century or two, it will be
impossible that any existent religion save
Buddhism only should survive, even nominally,
in the cultured western world. Buddhism,
and it alone amongst the world-religions, is
founded on Causation's Law, destitute of the
last faintest trace of animistic thought ; it, and it
i In their actual Buddhist form ; for the Hindu conception of
Karma, although again, as with the idea and term Nirvana,
probably derived from Buddhist sources, has in its modern form,
departed widely from the original, having become a simple system
of rewards and punishments to the Jwatmas or immortal selves* of
which Hinduism teaches.
132 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
alone, teaches this threefold nature of the
universal life; both of these ideas are becoming
every day more deeply realised as the result of
progress in the great world of physical science.
The recognition of Truths so great precludes
once the old inertia has worn off its effects the
acceptation of any view of life which is oppos-
ed to these great Truths ; thus, it seems
inevitable that Buddhism only of the world-
religions can survive in face of the daily-
extending conquests of the world of scientific
thought and action ; it alone can form the accept-
able guide in the things of the higher, the interior
life, for the women and men of coming genera-
tions of that western Branch of the great Aryan
Race which of late, through the applications of
that same science which is so profoundly altering
all its old-time thoughts and views, has inherited
the leadership of the nations of the world.
Having thus taken a general view of the
nature, importance, and significance to the
THE THREE SIGN ATA 133
modern world of the Buddhist Doctrine of the
Three Signata, let us now pass on to the
consideration of each of its three theses in detail.
AwiG& } Dukkha, ^.%ai^-~Impjrmanent, full of
Suffering, void of Self-hoo^Jn raality : such are
... .. -,-. .-. ' fj X .._.. _. . ,^-.~.,---. w ;,-,-... ^
the three words wherein this doctrine is
comprised ; and, whilst each presents its own,
and in a sense, separate, aspect of the truth
about life, yet the three are in reality so
linked together that it is often impossible, in
discussing one, to avoid the introduction of
another of the three ideas. Each, moreover,
stands in an especial relation to one of the
Three Modes of Nescience (frvjjja) Lobha, or
Craving, Dosa, or Hatred, and Mgha, Self-
delusion. Bach of these is especially opposed
to the corresponding Signatum, which is not
only its opposite in theory, but its antidote in
practice the means of overcoming it in actual
life thus ever do theory and practice go
hand in hand in this our Buddhist Truth.
184 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
These Three Modes of Nescience are, as
we might put it, the three fundamental forms
of Not-understanding typical of the natural,
the unenlightened mind. In such, Avijja,
Nescience, manifests, first, in the wrong view
that life, or at the least some portion of its
content, is Niccam, Changeless, stable, enduring
to all eternity. Of course and here at once
b
we come to that inextricable linkage of the
Three Modes and Signs already noted it is
his self which the unenlightened man thus
regards as in the first and most important
sense a changeless being. Secondarily, and
indeed as a development of this misconception,
thus still truly falling rather in the domain
of the Third Sign and Mode, the thought of
Changelessness is attached to the man's
conception of his God whether that idea,
as with the lowest American Indian savage,
is conceived of as a mere material fetish,
his " medicine " ; or whether, with the
THE THREE SIGNATA 135
highly-advanced and subtle -minded philosopher,
that crude conception of the Greater Self -hood
bas widened to the thought of an infinite God-
bead, conceived as having made or emanated all
tbis universal life. But, quitting for the present
this primary object whereunto the natural
man applies his attribute of Changelessness
in the highest, most essential degree, we find
he further attributes permanence to all those
objects which to him, howsoever developed
according to his Kanima, represent the Goods
*# "
of life. To tbe pure worldling, wealth and
the objects of his passions, wife and child,
place and power and all he can possess, take
on, more or less according to the extent of
Nescience's First Mode in his mind, this aspect
of things changeless and eternal. Though he
be utterly destitute in actual life, the man in
whom this Lobha is uppermost will grasp at
cJ^^aj- rr .
any idea involving even future possession of
these " Goods " of life : here, indeed, and riow,
136 THE EELIGION OP BURMA
he may be a slave, but somehow, somewhen,
perhaps by some propitiation of the Greater
Self-hood, of his God-idea, he will win a life
wherein all wealth, all power, all objects of
his lusts will be his own for evermore ; he will
wear a veritable golden crown and live in a
palace built of precious stones, to take the very
material concept of a seer of that strange,
wealth-loving race, the Jewish a race so
generally given to the life of sense, so crudely
materialistic, but which here and there, now
and again, brings forth a character of rarest
philosophy or highest spirituality, like some
fragrant rose grafted upon the thorny briar-tree.
With a higher type of mind, the natural man
will still thirst for fancied, changeless " Goods ' '
possessions but, with his higher mental
growth, the object of his craving will be
subtler, higher, nobler. No more desiring
ownership of the other sex merely for gratifica-
tion of his passions, he will seek his wife
THE TflEEE SIGNATA 137
in hopes of finding a mental and spiritual
companionship. Craving no more for worldly
wealth, he will still be eager for the fruits of
fame, he will have the nobler ambition to be
renowned for some great work amongst his
fellow-men. But, however far he may have
grown beyond his humbler brother of the
purely worldly type, however nobler may
be the objects of his desire, there will still be
for him some good thing to be sought and lived
for ; to that, as ever, his mind will attribute
this " Changelessness ". Is he an architect ?
He will talk of " building to eternity ". Is
he a lawyer or member of the law-making,,
ruling caste? He will indite his legal deeds
or acts "Forever, so long as the Throne-
shall endure." Is he a soldier ? He will
speak great words about the Flag that
he has served "Flying as long as the sun
shall rise upon this land". An author or an
artist? He will speak of the immortality of
138 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
ills "work". And so on always, and with all
men. Some things, to each, seem good in life,
make life worth living : things gross or subtle,
low or high, as is the nature of the man who
thinks. To those things always, that is, to his
possession, his ownership of them (or, growing
more developed, perhaps not only directly his,
but his Caste, his Country, his Religion),
-always to those things will the natural man
attribute Niccam, Changelessness. Because they
are " Groods " in his eyes, therefore they
must be eternal and unchanging; because
he conceives these "Goods" as changeless
-does he thirst for their possession. What
man will crave for aught he understands is
fleeting as the winds, gone in a little from his
life for evermore ? None, that is sane, assuredly ;
and thus it is that men, having this wrong view
as to the existence of things Permanent,
'Changeless, in this life or in another, fall into
Lobha, the Passion of Possession, the Craving
THE THREE SIGNATA 139
Thirst to have and to own, which constitutes
the First Mode of Nescience.
The Truth, the great Truth, that the
incomparable Insight of our Master won for
us (so far as we can understand it) is that
in fact there is nowhere in life, in this world
or another, above, around, below, any single
thing that is not at this very moment changing
passing, even as we think of it, from Birth,
through Life, to Death. Man builds his pyra-
mids, his shrines to all eternity ; and ere the
stones be fast cemented, already the invisible
work of dissolution has begun. A little time,
long-seeming, perad venture, if you measure by
the short span of man's generations, yet as
naught when meted out by the vaster unit-scale
of geologic age, a little time, and lo ! a pile
of dust ploughed o^er by incurious peasants, a
broken shaft or . two, a stone inscribed with
characters that none can read! ".Forever
and always, so long as the Throne khall
J
99
140 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
endure," the legislator writes ; so wrote they
in such words, before the " King of Kings,
the " Lord of the Two Crowns," in ancient
Egypt and Chaldsea; and to-day, after a
hundred dynasties have gloried in power and
waned and died, our children gaze upon the
crumbling mummy that once was Rameses the
Great. " So long as the sun shall shine upon
this land our Eagles shall rule over it," cried
the Roman generals ; but where on earth
to-day endures one vestige of Rome's iron
might? To-day, in little-altered words, our
generals boast it, to-morrow (if haply men
shall grow no wiser in the meantime than to
slay each other like the brutes), to-morrow
the same words will be proclaimed by men
not-understanding of a nation yet unborn*
Empires of man with all their pomp and boast
of world-extending domination rise, and move
a little, and are no more ; another and
another comes, and each has learned no lesson
THE THREE SIGN ATA 141
from its predecessors ; each makes that fatuous
boast of everlasting life and power. Swiftly,
as one with the geonian Vision of the Gods
might see it, swiftly they follow on another's
steps through Time's unending halls ; and the
names of them, the memory of their little
fleeting greatness upon earth, have perished
from the knowledge of the wisest. We, too, are
hurrying in their footsteps, swept onwards by
the winds of Nescience, whither we cannot
see; only this we know, a little while, and
naught that is of us shall still endure !
Men prate of the Eternal Hills, that could
we see with that seonian vision would seem to
spring up whilst we watched like some swift-
growing vegetation, to rise in their height and
adamantine strength, and in the eventide,
-cut by the softness of the waters, the dust of
them, cast wide amongst a hundred lowly
valleys, would lie before our eyes, another
fertile delta won for man's habitation "from
142 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
the seas ; of the Eternal Stars, the changeless
Heavens, that to the seer were as whirling
dust-streams, as light-motes shuddering in the
winds of universal life. And, passing ever
onwards as our time-sense and our vision
widened, we should see the unthinkably vast
geons whereof our Scriptures tell us the ages
wherein a "great ten -thousand- world -
system " springs into being, thrills for a little
while with life and then is goneslip by into
eternity without cessation ; and ever, as our
Insight deepened, ever swifter and swifter with-
out any end. Chaos would waken, shuddering
with torture, into life, to Cosmos for a
moment's seeming; the unfathomable depths
of empty-seeming spatial darkness flash to an
instant's trembling life ; the Vast Emptiness
be filled with hurrying stars and galaxies past
thinking, gleam for a little while and then
be lost in gloom forever; and through the
whole of it, life hastening through the gates
THE THREE S1GNATA 143
of Pain to Death; a horror of living past
conceiving, full of the Pain of Being, darkened
by Not-understanding ; thrilling with Hope in
youth, and ever ageing in Despair ! No where
stability, nowhere cessation, nowhere an
instant's slackening of that mad race of life ;
from the ephemeron, the insect of an hour's
endurance, to the age-long existence of a great
world-system, only Change, and hastening
onwards, the wail of birth, of life's endurance
and of Death ! Nothing endures, neither the
greatest of man's works nor the firm-seeming
earth ; swept onwards ever by the winds of
life, the very heavens with all their galaxies
of stars themselves are hurrying to never-ending
Change. That is the Truth our Master's
Insight won in place of man's false hope, his
vain belief in Changelessness ; and that, too,
when one can truly grasp it, is- the sure
antidote for Lobhd, Craving, the primal Mode
of Nescience. Know that see how in life
144 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
there is nothing one moment changeless, truly
stable and the Craving Thirst for this or that
of life's imagined " Goods " will pass for ever
from the heart ; for only, truly, by reason
of his desire-born thought, these things
that man so longs to have and to hold seem
permanent.
This is one of the principal directions
along which all our modern science is leading
the western Aryan Race in lines closely parallel
to Buddhist thought. The early pseudo-science
of Europe, based not on facts, upon experi-
mental work, but on mere fancies on what
men thought must be the fact or upon so-called
revelation was, by the natural Nescience of
man's mind, penetrated through and through
with ideas and dogmas as to the permanence
of this and that. First the Greater Self-hood
of the Godhead ; next the lesser self, the soul
of man ; and, following these, the fixity of the
earth, about which, in the old Ptolemaic
THE THBBB SIGNATA 145
system of those days, the moon, sun, planets,
and the crystal sphere of heaven all circled
in eternal revolutions ; and so on throughout
the range of human knowledge or pseudo-
knowledge of those days, all that man deemed
good was eternal.
The first great blow was struck against
the old delusions, the first step made towards
our modern science, when undaunted by fear
of the consequences, Copernicus put forward
the theory of celestial mechanism which now
bears his name and is the foundation of our
modern astronomy, the theory that the earth
was no stable, firm, enduring centre of the
Universe, but itself a minor planet circling
round an immensely distant star. Despite the
persecution of the Churchmen, who well saw
how the ideas involved in Coper nicaii
astronomy must, if accepted, ultimately over-
come the teachings of their Church and of tjie
Bible ; despite the fact that the Copernican
10
146 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
system demanded so immense a widening of
men's conceptions of the Universe, with
r
corresponding diminution of their views as to
their own hitherto supreme importance on the
earth ; despite the great difficulty, at that time,
of explaining why, if the earth were but a
globe, a planet, all unattached objects did not
fall off the underside of it ; despite all these
difficulties and the fact that so far it lacked a
proof, the inherent likelihood of this new
theory of astronomy the ease with which, by
it, the peculiarly looped apparent orbits of the
outer planets were accounted for, won for it
a rapid acceptation at the hands of the great
astronomers of the day. A little later Kepler,
throwing aside another of the old dogmatisms of
the scholastics, that the heavenly bodies could
only move in orbits either circular or forming
a system of circular curves, took the next
step. He, after years of immense labor spent
on his predecessor's observations of the positions
THE THREE SIGN ATA 147
of the heavenly bodies, proved conclusively
that the planetary motions could all be accounted
for on the supposition that their orbits were
elliptical, with their primary situated in one
of the foci of the ellipse. Again in a few
decades, followed the supreme achievement
which cleared away the last remaining difficulty
of the Copernican theory, when Newton, once
more as the fruit of a mathematical labor
simply stupendous with the existing methods,
brought forward his great discovery of the
universal Law of Gravitation, and proved the
truth of the Law of Inverse Squares as applied
to the orbit of the moon, from the known data
of its parallax, its motions, and the velocity
of falling bodies on the earth.
The second Sign or Characteristic of all
Life is Dukkha : how all existence, changeful
as we have already seen, is fraught inalienably
with Pain. Here again we see how these
Signata are interwoven and interdependent.
148 THE RELIGION OE BURMA
Just as the natural man desires such "Goods"
of life as he imagines to be permanent, so it is
the very fact of its Im permanency that is
largely responsible for this second feature
of life's Painfulness. Looking at the matter
from the higher standpoint of our very
advanced, fi ve-khandha'd, rational type of
being, from the view-point of mankind. The
Master well exhibited and summarised this
connection in His First Sermon, the " Estab-
lishment of the Kingdom of Truth ". He
pointed out how, having some cherished
object, the Impermanence of all things present-
ly results in its destruction, and so comes
Suffering.
- Leaving the highly developed domain of
conscious, thinking life, and . descending
to the lower end of the scale of sentient
things, we can further gain a valuable
insight into this Truth about Suffering if we
consider the result of modern investigation into
THE THREE SIGN ATA 149
the lowest forms of life. In the realm
where life such as we know is, as it were, but
in the making, it has been shown how every
motion of the simple organisms involved takes
place only in response to what has been well-
named irritation. That irritation may be
applied from without, or it may arise, as it
were automatically, from within, in con-
sequence of the wastage of tissue, the break-
ing-down of the complex living structure
that continues as long as life exists. It is as
though life in these low organisms were always
on the point of going outlapsing backward,
so to speak, into the mineral kingdom.
But the organism can feel in some dim way
and this power of feeling, this ability to suffer
pain, to respond as a whole to irritation, is the
fundamental fact which underlies the Sign of
Life we Buddhists term the Pain-Truth. For
the living, lowly organism, as for the more
advanced, there is no rest : ceaselessly,
150 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
remorselessly, living matter finds itself forced to
make new efforts, new attempts to adjust itself
to its changing environment. Ceaselessly, in
the constant flux of life, the outpouring of
molecules from the collection which we call the
amoeba or the coccus, reaches a point where
the stability of the whole somatic life the
card-house, as it were, of the whole complex
living structure is threatened with dissolution ;
the tremendously complex living molecule is,
as it were, in danger of toppling over or of
caving in, unless new molecules be brought in
from outside. The result of that is Pain, or
.rather in this connection, perhaps the scientific
terms, Irritation or Stimulus, are preferable,
as less anthropomorphic ; but both are included
in the Buddhist concept ofwDukkha, which
ranges even below the level that we regard as
the limit of sentient life. In response to that
irritation the whole organism begins to move
the amoeba beneath our microscope flows
THE THREE SIGNATA 151
forwards, there is no better word for it, like a
little lump of living jelly. As it goes, it
encounters the various objects with which
the water-drop it lives in is littered ; contact
therewith again produces Duhlcha upon the
delicate surface of the tiny organism; and
by the time it has become, so to speak,
conscious of this new source of irritation, the
living jelly of the amoeba has surrounded it,
altogether embedded it in its living substance.
This it may do, indifferently and without
discrimination (owing to its low place in the
scale of life) whether the object be a pain-
causing speck of gravel or a nourishing diatom
or desmid. If the former, however, the
amoeba presumably by dint of the growth,
in place of diminution, of its perception of
pain- presently flows away, rejecting it; if
the latter, the living jelly in contact with it
begins to break up into proteolytic ferments,
so digesting it. For this amoeba, lowest k\iown
152 THE RELIGION OF BTJBMA
of organisms, has no differentiation of its
substance into specialised organs; whatever
part of its cell-wall comes in contact with
nourishing material becomes, for the time being,
its stomach, digesting its new scraps of food.
And thus the amoeba lives, in a ceaseless flux
of being, unremittingly goaded on, as it were,
by irritation, internal or external and that is
the prototype of all sentient life.
. Nor is it only in what we are accustomed to
*/
regard as "living " matter that this responsive-
ness to irritation manifests. Even in the
mineral kingdom the rudiments of such
responsiveness are clear, differing from those
of the domain of actual " life " only by their
relative simplicity, as we might expect from
their relatively less complex structure. Really,
we might almost regard all the motions of matter
as being in some sense a rudimentary manifesta-
tion of an attempt to find relief from pain, from
some external force which imposes, as we justly
THE THREE SIGN AT A 153"
say, a " strain " or " stress " upon the thing that
moves. Take, for example, a magnetic needle.
This is surrounded by its own magnetic field,,
and so long as it lies in any direction save that
of the magnetic meridian, the earth's magnetic
field twists and distorts the little field of the-
needle, pulling on this group of force-lines and
pushing that. If it be free to move, that
is, if it be so suspended that motion would not
involve a greater effort than the distortion
of its field imposes on it, it will swing and dip
so as to lie precisely in the magnetic meridian
or as near to it as its support allows. It is-
as though the needle, over-stressed by the
straining of the earth's force-lines, moves round
so as to free itself from the pain the stress
involves, it moves, as we say, into the placa
or line of " rest," or of " least resistance ".
Further still than such simple and fundamental
responses to external stress, recent research
has shown how matter -even such elementary
154 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
forms of it as wires of pure metals and the
like exhibits under certain conditions an
actual, positive response to irritation differing
only in degree from that displayed by such
highly organised " living " matter as a nerve.
And still, nearer simulating life, it even can
" remember " ; a wire which has once been
twisted slightly and then untwisted is no longer
the same as before ; it has had an " experience "
which for long will produce a demonstrable
effect on it. The difference in response to
external stimulus between so-called " dead "
matter and a living organism is simply a
difference of degree. It is, so to speak, in hopes
of finding, by combination, some way of escape
from the constantly recurring irritations or
straining to which it is subject. We may
conceive, that certain sorts of matter first united
into those great molecular complexes which,
owing to their high degree of impermanence, the
more rapid flux of their stream of incoming
THE THREE SIGNATA 155
and outgoing molecules, became the first
living organisms on our earth.
All evolution tells the same sad tale of life's
everlasting hope, if one might so express it, of
finding some Way of Peace ; or, put in terms of
the immediate necessity, hopes of finding
escape from danger, pain, hunger, fear, and all
of Nature's ruthless goads. The ancient doctrine
(it goes back at least as far as the earliest days
of ancient Egypt) of Vicarious Atonement,
the idea that the Divine incarnated Itself on earth
in this or that living being for the uplifting of
the animal man, seems like a dim attempt to
give expression to this fact about life. But,
unhappily, like so many ancient doctrines, it is
just the reverse of the real fact to state it
truly one must invert it. The truth is,
not that the Divine is incarnate in life, in us,
or in another, to bear our sins and take our
punishment, but that, by Nature's ruthless
laws, the lower in life is ever being sacrificed
156 THE RELIGION OF BUBMA
for the benefit of that which is higher, more
developed. All evolution spells that lesson, with
its terrible teaching of the " survival of the
fittest " ; its constant sacrifice of type after type
in the struggle for existence ; and the higher,
the more developed in strength, whether of
claw and beak and muscle, or of the mind of
man, the more, up to a certain point, does the
advanced being prey upon the lower till all
Nature is a shambles, a slaughter-house
wherein no thought of pity ever enters.
Even so-called " civilised " Man, inheriting this
dire lack of Understanding, preys on his fellows,
and on the weaker things below him ; even,
alas ! to the extent of making the death-agony
of highly sentient animals one of the foremost
of his foolish " games " or " sports ".
It is very largely just this fact of Suffering
not as the mere occasional accident of life,
but as its invariable and inalienable incident
that, borne in slowly upon the resenting mind
THE THREE SIGN ATA 157
of the West by the discovery of Evolution with
its grim "survival of the fittest " and the grow-
ing comprehension of the facts of life, has done,
so much to lead the advanced thinkers of the
modern world away from the old religions, to
bring it daily more and more in line with
Buddhist thought. For, in deepest truth, the
whole question really lies right on this point s
so far as what I may term the emotional, the
feeling side of mental life is involved. So long.
as men were ignorant about the facts of life, so
long as they could blind themselves to the :
terrible meaning of evolution and its attendant
horrors, they might well say, in the poet's
words: " G-od's in His Heaven : All's well
with the world I "That is what man ivishes to
believe ; hence, for many a succeeding genera-
tion, ifc has seemed to him, despite his own
direct experience of life, to represent the truth.
If the Self -theory be a fact ; .if indeed there be a
Greater Self -hood which has made or emanated
158 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
this universal life; if, further, there are in life
those eternal, permanent, enduring "Goods'*
imagined on that theory, and the Greater Self
be really supreme, all-powerful then, of
necessity, it must follow that the " Ills " of
life will not predominate, nay indeed will not
exist at all in such a world.
Against all our old teaching and beliefs and
hopes, we of the West are slowly learning now
that in fact the world we know is very terrible ;
learning how the very wit to understand
these things has only been won for us by dint
of the unthinkable suffering of the lower types
of life through countless ages. Learning all
that, we slowly come to understand that all our
deepest hopes must be abandoned, all our old-
time thoughts mast take some new direction.
We see how even the most heartless man, to
say nothing of a higher Being, could never,
given omnipotence, have devised that fearful
Law of the lower life, have made a world
THE THREE SIGNATA 159
wherein every advance could only be won at
the cost of pain past measuring ; and pain
and there the greatest pathos of it lies
always to the weak, the sick, the feeble, the
poor, just the type of being on whom its
lash falls without the mitigation that strength,
that health, that higher growth, and wisdom
bring. That slowly growing comprehension of
the Pain-Truth, on the side of the emotional
life, that is, in the thought-realm of feeling ;
and on the philosophic side the realm of
pure thinking i the growing understanding of the
meaning of Causation these two great dis-
coveries and fundamental principles of modern
science as of ancient Buddhism are the forces
that above all else are leading the West-Aryan
peoples away from all their old religions systems.
They must, in years to come, lead them more and
more potently into that one religion wherein
they take their right position as leading prin^
ciples upon which all Truth must needs be built.
160 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
The practical application of this Pain-Truth
lies just here : That, knowing Pain and fearing
it, as we all know and fear it; understand-
ing how it is the common lot of sentient life,
we ourselves should live, above all else, so that
our lives may, add no smallest further load of
suffering to this great burden of the Pain of
Life. We now have " survival of the fittest," the
Law that might makes right and that the
weakest things of life must bear the burden of
its pains, what time the strong and cunning
make of their shrinking bodies a soft path for
their feet to tread ; that cruel rule is indeed
the Law of Nature, the ruthless principle
of life and action throughout the lower king-
dom of the animals. Whilst it is even yet the
Law also of the natural man (since he, too, is of
the bruteSj close kin to them alike by his here-
dity and by his character), it never is the Law
for whoso but a little understands ; for thinking
men, who seek to follow in the Path announced
THE THREE SIGN ATA 161
by Him of Perfect Pity. The one thing that
differentiates Man altogether from the brute,
that mental faculty, no faintest germ of which
is found in the animals, is Pity, Sympathy,
Compassion. For that is Panna, Insight, as
manifested in our mental sphere ; the perfect
Understanding of the meaning and the pathos
and the purpose of this life that seems so
terrible ; that is the faculty of our minds which,
far more than all the rest, we should ever
strive to cultivate and practise in our daily
lives. That is the Power that brings our
wearied feet at last upon the Holy Path ; and
that high Pity only, when we have cast away
the self's dire bondage of delusion, can give us
strength further to live, to live for the love and
service of this so pitiable and so suffering
life.
To the Second Sign, this Fact of Suffering,
the Second Mode of Nescience, Dosa, Hatred or
f ,,'"*"- - '"^x_
Passion} stands opposed. Dosa includes, in its
11
162 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
full sense, all Passion, 1 not Hate alone ; but
Hate is herein typical, founded as it is upon
the special not-understanding of the fact of
Pain. Its antidote lies in that understanding ;
once see how all this life, including the
particular object of our anger, is involved in
Suffering, and at the very thought of it, Pity
awakes and kills our thought of hate. When
a pet animal, a cat or dog, is in great pain,
often it will try to bite the very hand of its
own master, the hand that is trying to bring
the suffering thing some respite from its agony.
Who, under such circumstances, would let his
anger rise against his poor dumb suffering
friend ? The very fact of it, telling us how
great its pain was, would make our pity and
our love stronger. Just so it is with all
forms of this Second Mode of Nescience, all
Mnds of Dosa, Passion, Hate. He who realises
1 All antagonistic Passion, that is, such as the passions of Pear, of
Loathing, etc. but not, of course, passions of attraction, sex-desire,
the desire for possession, etc., which fall under Lofe/ier, Graving.
THE THREE SIGNATA 163
in his heart of hearts how terrible is all this
Pain of life can no more hate ; that under-
standing fills the heart with that divinest light of
it, Compassion ; and, as in the story that I told
you of the Monk who once was prone to anger :
ft He who Jmoius this, for him all hatreds cease I "
Lastly, as the third of the Three Signata,
comes Anatta, the Doctrine of the Non-Self, of
the non-reality of the seeming individualisation
of life ; the teaching that there is in truth no
self, no separate soul or entity apart from
life at all. Otherwise put, we may here express
The Master's Teaching in the words " All Life
is One ". This is the profoundest Truth our
Master won for us a Truth so deep that none
in fact can truly, fully know and live it till
they have won the Arhan's Final Peace. But,
however far we may be from that supremest
Wisdom, we may still make a beginning, may
teach ourselves a little more of this great Truth,
so hard to understand, so -utterly hard to live.
164 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Those of vou who have fulfilled the Burmese
/
custom of entering the Monastery as SamaneraSy ^
will probably have had given you, as your first
lesson, a book containing the Pali of the
KhuddaJca Pdtha to memorise. That Kfiuddalca
Pdtha is a sort of little Manual for Novices ;
it contains, in very concentrated form, much of
the deepest Teaching of The Buddha ; and snch
beautiful poems as the Sermon on Blessings, the
Hymn of Love, and the Hymn of Treas'ures..
Just at the beginning of it, following the
Refuge-Formula and the Precepts, come the
Ten Questions for the Novices ; these Ten Ques-
tions and their answers contain the fundamental
elements of the whole great Buddhist Teach-
ing, expressed in very technical and concen-
trated form. First of the ten is EJca ndma
Jam ?" What is the One Norm ?" And the
answer runs : Sable sattd dhdratthitikd
*
" All beings depend for their existence upon
Nourishment (Ahara)." That, like much of
THE THREE SIGNATA 165
this very technical and compressed Buddhist
Teaching, seems at first sight to be a mere
obvious platitude ; and the careless student is
apt to pass it by as having no importance or
bearing on the religious life at all. In reality,
it is of supreme importance, as is frequently
the case with such brief trivial-seeming
enunciations of our Holy Truth ; or else,
indeed, it would hardly find place here amongst
the Ten Chief Teachings which even the very
Novice must learn and understand.
The Buddhist conception of life, that is to
say of the Universe, 1 may be summed up, as
already stated, in terms of the formula AH
Itife is One. Just as all the waters of the ocean
are one ivater, and one body of water, so is it
with this universal teeming life ; and just as,
1 Since all Buddhist Teaching is from the dynamic rather than
the static aspect, it treats of things only from the standpoint of
Consciousness (in the very widest sense of the term), not from that
of Matter ; or, as we would put it, it is couched in terms of Nama,
the Norm, as contrasted with modern science, which, dealing
so far mainly with the non-sentient world, is couched in terms
of RuO Form.
1 66 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
in the great ocean, there is, and can be by the
very nature of it, no individual body of water
separate from the rest, so in life's ocean there is
and can be by the very nature of it no
single separate unit or body of life, whether it
be the highest or the lowest, most subtle or
most gross. As with the sea, the waters of
life's ocean are in continual movement (the
First Sign) ; stirred by the winds of Nescience,
impelled by Craving, Passion and Self-delusion
our Lobha., Dosa. Moha\ the ocean of being
-,H^ffy.^^ ttM p ER zjfohfar* "
is cast into countless waves. Jftach tiatta
each living being that our Nescience makes
us regard as an individual, a real and separate
entity, a self or soul or Atma is in truth only
one such wave, whether a billow or a ripple
only, upon the surface of life's ocean. Just as
waves in the sea seem each to consist of an
individual mass of water which, rising in one
place, travels across the surface of the deep so,
to one gifted with the inner Vision (but not with
THE THREE SIGNATA 167
the Insight also of The Buddha or the Arhan),
it seems as though the various Sattas. gravel * ^
' T^~
on the vast pilgrimage of life. When, at one ~
point of time and space our wave arrives, one
who so watches will say : " So-and-so now again
takes t)irth." When the wave, after a duration
of life more or less long, passes away from the
point observed, the onlooker will say: " So-and-
so now dies here, but continues to live (he
looking a little further on) in such-and-such a
sphere of life, is reborn In such-and-such a
place." Just as the only real wave is no
individual mass of water, but a complex colloca-
tion of hydraulic forces, themselves constantly
in process of minor modifications so is the
Satta no individual unit of life ; there is, in any
living being, no self or soul separate from all
else in life. The only -real "individuality " there
is, is an immensely complex collocation of
life-forces ; which forces are every moment
causing new life-elements (new particles of
168 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
water) to enter into that motion which as a whole
we call the " wave " ; and likewise are every
moment causing other life-elements to pass away
from participation in the being of that
particular life-wave. These causal forces are
themselves being constantly modified, by
surrounding waves, by our intercourse with our
fellows, by the winds of Craving, Passion, Self-
desire, that still are breathing on them from
their past.
Further, just as the wave is component not
only of water, but of material solids, like salt,
dissolved in that water ; of gaseous matter, air
and other gases, dissolved in that water ; and,
beyond this, aether itself, the aether in the
inter molecular spaces of water, salt and air ;
that bound up in the complex water-molecules
themselves, and so forth so does a Satta, a
living being, contain, at any one moment,
life-elements on every plane on which its develop-
ment enables it to function. I say "contain,"
THE THEEE SIGNATA 169
but one might (but for the possible misunder-
standing of a materialistic teaching) almost say
" consist " ; the fact might better be expressed
by saying that the "real" wave the colloca-
tion of life-forces or Kamma finds temporary
expression in that thus-arranged mass of the
life-elements of all the different planes which
together constitute the range of its functioning.
Just as the actual wave could not exist for
an instant if it did not every moment receive
afresh the physical water, salt, air, aether,
and so forth, the thus-putting-together of
which constitutes its momentary expression-
so is it with the living being, the wave
of life.
With a Five-grouped * being like a man, every
or Group of him is constantly in
1 This paper, it must be borne in mind, was written for a body of
students already thoroughly conversant with the rudiments of
Buddhist Teaching. For such as have not that knowledge, it may
be explained that Buddhist metaphysic differentiates Man into
j Five Groups (Khandhas) viz. : (I) Rupa, the Body or Form-Group ;
i (2) Vedana, the Sensation -Group ; (3) Sanna, the Perception -Group ;
j{4) Sarikhara, the Tendencies orKamma-elements; and (5) Vinnana,
170 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
parallel, dual process of both intaking and
upbuilding, and of down-breaking and rejecting.
But nothing can serve to build new "moment-
ary expressions " for him but matter already on
the level of the Group whose upbuilding is
involved. A sentient, living being, the very
life-elements that go to build up his body must
themselves be far above the merely mineral
world. Life alone can feed life, and, as we can
see at once from the wave -analogy, the supply
must be continuous, concordant with his
Kamma's need to find particular expression.
Thus even the lowest of his Groups, his
Body-Group or Rupa-khandha, must be fed
with matter that has once had life. Only,
in terms of modern biology, the complex
proteid, fat, and carbohydrate compounds,
which living organisms (whether of the
vegetable or animal kingdom) are able to
the Consciousness-Group. Each of these Five Groups is, as the
name implies, itself an immensely complex collocation of life-
elements, or rather forces, ranging from "Matter" to "Mind".
THE THREE SIGN ATA 171
produce, can serve as dhara, as SPJJlishment^
for even the lowest, the Body -Group of him.
But man, Five-grouped, needs his Nourishment
on all five planes: sabbe sattd dhdrafthitikd
" All living beings are dependent on Nourish'
ment "-and, in this sense, we may regard even a
single thought as a Satta. Thus " Nourishment "
is constantly needed, if the Kamma is to continue
to find expression (i.e., if the being is to go
on living) ; and that on every plane or in every
Group in which the being considered functions-
Thus do we win another vision, a new r
sublimer outlook upon life ; we see the vast whole
of. it as constantly engaged in carrying on, in
the process of its very living, a ceaselesp, over-
whelming sacrifice continually dying so that
it may live anew. Looking at it from the
illusory quasi-personal viewpoint, we see how
life on every side is living, suffering, dying a
hundred thousand deaths, that we ourselves ^may
live, clearly enough in the instance of our
172 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
body-food, Ahdra to our Form-Group, but not
less obvious, to the man with Insight, in the case
of the higher Nourishments of the Four Ndma-
Khandha Groups. The life of each one of us
means at this moment the living, suffering,
dying, of other forms of life beyond all
numbering ; from the humble and yet even
there immensely complex- life of the seed,
the plant whose death this day has added to
our body-nourishment, to the builders of
the highest thoughts and aspirations which
constitute the nobler aspect of our life. Put
in one way though that is but a little part of
.all the deep, wide truth of it these very
thoughts that now are making just a little
clearer for us the nature of our being the Way
to Peace that Understanding means have
involved, in the mere handing-down only of the
words, the Eupa aspect of them, the living,
suffering, dying of noble, holy men beyond
all counting. Their study and their teaching
THE THREE SIGN ATA 178
have built the Path, the Way or Bridge that has
served to carry or convey the Teaching right
from our Master's lips to our own ears and
hearts this day. Thus seen, the All of Life
appears no more as when we look upon the
outer surface of its animal development a
terrible and ruthless strife, a ceaseless battle of
the strong against the weak and pitiful. We
see, thus understanding the true meaning of
this Doctrine of the Nourishments, all life as
a conspiracy indeed, but as a conspiracy of \
love, of never-ending sacrifice and mutual help. /
What little of wisdom, hope, strength ; what |
little of aught that is great and noble in our
characters, shines in our hearts, our lives this
day, is the fruit and outcome of suffering lives
beyond all thinking. Life's past has been, its
agony endured, that we might live, and
peradventure, later come to understand to
find the Peace whereunto, through this soonian
sacrifice, all life is slowly wending, growing
174 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
a little nearer with each sacrifice of life. So
is Life One.
Such is the threefold nature or character of
.' .. '."' ( "> ;
life : Ani.cca., , Dukkha} Anqtta, Ever-changing,
Fraught with Suffering, and of Self-hood Void.
Great and terrible to learn it is but true,
alas ! how true. A Truth so deep that could our
minds but grasp the whole of it, then, where
erst our petty, finite minds were limiting and
determining the Life, at that same point of
Time and Space and Consciousness were none
of these were but Infinitude, Infinite Under-
standing and Compassion $ Mbbana's sure,
inalienable Peace.
Anicca, Dukkha, Ana.Ua : and, now as I speak
the words, hundreds and thousands of our
fellows, here and in every Buddhist land, are
also reciting them, are also endeavoring, were
it but a little, to win the Insight of their
meaning, the Vision of their Truth which
means attainment of Peace. All that is
THE THREE SIGNATA 175
-v
round us teaches them : the flowers, the incense,
and the lights, all swiftly evanescent things, we
offer at our Master's shrine in memory of His
Love and Wisdom ; the deaths of those we
loved ; the long-drawn failure of our earlier
hopes ; and life -itself is whispering their
message in our hearts unceasingly Changeful,
Compact of Suffering, of Self-hood Void !
Great, wonderful, "aeonian Mystery of Life,
forth streaming from the utter gloom of
Nescience ; seeking the Ligh Beyond through
Pain, through Sacrifice, through age-long
giving of the hard-won individual-seeming
life 1 Blinded by Kescience, by Craving Thirst
.and Hate and Self-delusion, its witless crea-
tures nay, even also Man, whose greater
reason should make him wiser- strive, mad with
.torture, one against the other ; life fighting
against life because it does not understand !
How great it is, that, born from; such Dark-
ness, one still can burn so after Light ! Born
176 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
in life's battle, one still can strive so for the
Peace Beyond ! Born to Suffering, one still can
live in hopes of Sorrow's End ! Row pitiable,
in its ceaseless agony ; how hopeful, in its endless
sacrifice ! Surely a fact so holy and so great, so
suffering and so weak, so not-understanding
and so all-enduring surely it must attain its
End at last, find Life's Beyond, wherein is its
Fruition, the Peace wherein these manifold
conditionings are finished ; where neither Pain,
nor Craving Thirst or Hatred or Delusion,
can enter in again for evermore !
And for the aim, the meaning of this Teach-
ing of the Three Signata, the application of
this Truth to this immediate life we live ? That,
too, grows clear to us as we come to under-
stand. Since we have seen how all in life is
ever-changing, let us, seizing right now upon
the priceless moment ere it for ever flies, cast
from our hearts the Craving Thirst for these
evanescent phantasms of the world's Desires.
THE THREE SIGNATA 177
Understanding how all of it is doomed to
Sorrow wrought of the very warp and woof of
Pain and Suffering and Despair let the divine
emotion of Compassion that wakes in us at the
thought of it kill out all Hatred from our hearts
and ways. Seeing, so far as our small power
permits us, how Life is One, ceaselessly dying,
that new life in us, in all, may live and grow a
little nearer to the Peace, let us live no more
for self's fell phantasy, but for the All that
seeks a G-oal so great ; let us live so that the All,
the One, may be the nobler and the greater for
our life. Or, summing up all in but two
sentences, let us apply to our own lives the
last great message of the All -Wise, All-Loving
Master those words that you have so wisely
taken for your motto, as your guide in life :
Aniccd sankhftrd ; appamddena sampddetha
" Transient are all the elements of being : where-
fore through earnestness seek Liberation ! "
12
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING
WHEN first the King of Truth, the Exalted
Lord whose humble followers we strive to be,
fresh from the victory over self that He had
won beneath the Bodhi Tree for the blessing of
the world, spoke in the hearing of mankind
that message of Hope Attainable which for
so long the great and wise had sought in vain,
it was in terms of the Four Aryan or Noble
Truths. In these He declared the essence of that
Doctrine which since that greatest day of
all the days in the history of human thought
has wrought so greatly for the peace and
progress of our kind. He spoke as then, in
the Deer-garden by Benares Town to
those five erstwhile disciples who had tended
Him during His long essay of the value
of asceticism, those five who had deserted
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 179
Him when He had found the futility of all such
practice, and who now by long association with
Him had come to understand to the full the
value He attached to every single term and
formula He used. Thus it was unnecessary that
He should then, in that first Utterance of the
Law, do more than concisely sum together the
very essence of the Dhamma for one at least
of them to comprehend to the full the meaning
and the utter value of the Insight into life
that He had won. What memories, and
what associations, must each single word He
used have had for those five men, privileged
as they had been to follow, almost from the
beginning of His spiritual progress, the work-
ings of that Master-mind of all humanity !
For they had been accustomed to enter with his
guidance, and to pass with Him through realm
beyond realm of spiritual attainment even to
that ultimate level of cosmic consciousness in
which, till His great achievement, consisted the
180 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
highest wisdom, the greatest attainment known
to man ! Little indeed can we wonder that one of
them, KondaMa, as he heard that so compendi-
ous enunciation of the mystery of being, caught
at The Master's meaning and saw, through the
rending Veil of Nescience, the Light, the
utter Peace Beyond. As we have heard the
Sutta tell us, " in him also arose the Vision of
the Truth, the clear and spotless Insight of the
Law," whereat The Master, seeing and rejoicing,
announced : " Thou verily hast seen It,
KondaMa" so that KondaMa of the Five,
was known as " KondaMa who perceived It,"
from that day forth.
But rare indeed, even amidst millions of
millions of lives, is the Insight of a KondaMa,
who, at the first hearing of it thus succinctly
stated, could win that perfect Vision of
the highest Truth ; insight so clear, or
privilege so blessed, comes but as guerdon and
fruitage of many a truth-seeking holy life.
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 181
We whom the world calls Buddhists often
indeed have heard, often have pondered deeply
on that message of The Master, on that formula
of the Aryan Truths the Greatest of the Aryans
told for the saving of mankind. Yet not for us
arises Truth's clear Vision, redolent of the
Peace that reigns in the Beyond of Life, seeing
that still Avijja, Nescience, rules in our hearts
and minds ; blinding us still to Truth's great
glory, hiding us still from its all-liberating light.
The wording of the Dhamma, that, soothly,
have we heard ; the incomparable surety of
those Four Aryan Truths our minds have seen
and ascertained in all our intercourse with life.
Still, as we ponder on their meaning, deep
after deep of new and surer Truth opens
before the searching of our minds ; yet far off
and unattained lies their more inward meaning ;
and still we look, as to a goal distant by many
a weary life, to the day when at last full
Vision of the Truth shall open for us, when,
182 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
like KondaMa, we shall see, and under-
stand.
For this is just the essence of our Buddhism
that there exists beyond and apart from all
our clearest comprehension, a new, deeper and
surer mode of comprehension than any we as
yet have known. That utter Wisdom, that
clear heart's Vision of the Truth, which, dawn-
ing in a man's life, changes for that one all his
natal Nescience into perfect Understanding ;
which makes of one little-knowing as ourselves
an Arahan, all-comprehending and all-holy
that fashion of knowing is named in our sacred
.language Anna, Insight, or Panna, Wisdom.
That it is and not the sort of intellection
whereby we grasp the purport of one of Euclid's
problems which The Master spoke of when He
taught us : " It is by not-knowing and not-
understanding that we have come to live so
many pain-filled lives." Whoso, of all men
greatest and most fortunate, can win to
EIGHT UNDEESTANDING 183
that Vision of the Truth, that new great
Wisdom, that lucid Insight far beyond our
intellection, wins with it Liberation from the
bondage of Kamma. Free from the clinging
fetters of Self-delusion, of Craving, and of
Hate, he knows that for him the weary cycle
of transmigration is ended and he enters, even
then and there, into Nibbana's never-ending
Peace.
This, then, is Sammaditthi, in its fullest
and highest sense; nothing less than the very
attainment of Arahanship, the very fulfilment
of the purpose of all conscious life in the
dawning of a state beyond all consciousness.
Just as the seed must perish as a seed ere it
can grow to the fuller, more resplendent life
of shoot and stem and bloom, so must the
bundle of life-elements (SahJchdra) that we call
the self perish before the Goal of Life can be
attained. And, just as the first condition of
the seed-growth is the darkness and the
184 THE RELIGION Oi 1 BURMA
confining contact of the moist warm earth
wherein it germinates to newer life, so is Avijja,
Nescience, Ignorance, the limitation of the
self -hood with its Graying and its Passion, the
prime necessity of all we know as life. But
light and the free wide spaciousness of air,
not darkness and restriction, is the need
of the plant which blossoms from the seed's
decay; and so, The Master taught us, a new
state, a State of Light whereinto Nescience no
longer enters, wherein the confines of the self
no more are seen, is the characteristic of that
state of sainthood, that Goal of Arhanship to
which we all aspire.
To this full rendering of Sammaditthi we
may give expression by terming it, in English,
Fullest Insight. But in Buddhist technology
Sammaditthi is often used with narrower
*
meanings, the narrowest of which is the mere
intellectual process of accepting, of regarding
as true, the fundamental formula of the Buddhist
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 185
religion, namely, the Four Noble Truths. It
is thus defined in the Saccavibhahga, as being
the understanding of Sorrow, of Sorrow's Cause,
of Sorrow's Ceasing, and of the Path that
conducts thereto. It is in this restricted sense
only that we are ourselves immediately concern-
ed with it ; for here it may truly be regarded
as being the commencement of the Path; whilst
in its deeper meaning, as " Fullest Insight," it
stands at the end of the Path, and is, indeed,
the means whereby alone that Goal may be
attained.
Here, before going further, it may be as
well , to correct one nofc uncommon error as
regards the Atthangika-magga, the Eightfold
Path. It has not uncommonly been represented,
by writers on Buddhism, that the Eight Members
of the Path Right Understanding, Aspiration,
Speech, Action, and so forth stand for
consecutive stages in the Path of spiritual
progress. There is, indeed, one sense in which
186 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
such a classification in respect of time throws
light on the working of certain of the
mental processes, as when we consider the
arising of a simple idea, comparable to DittM ;
its growth into a desire for action, comparable
to Sankappa; the crystallisation of this mere
desire into approximate action, in speech, Vdca;
and its outcome in that action as Kammanta.
In this series, we do in fact see something very
similar to the first four Members of the Path
occurring consecutively in point of time; but
where the Noble Eightfold Path is spoken of
in Buddhist technology^ the Eight Members
are to be regarded as all of them essential
elements of that. Path just as the banks, the
roadway, the road-metal, the footway, the
avenue of trees, and so forth, may all be
regarded, not as consecutive, but as integral
elements of the road during its whole length.
There is indeed, as pointed out by Buddhaghosa,
a certain element of consecutiveness about the
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 187
eight elements of the Path just as we might
find, in respect of the road we have taken as
our analogy, that at one part of the road the
banks, at another the avenue of trees, were the
most prominent feature of that road. But in
that order, which we may term the Order of
Attainment, to distinguish it from the Order of
Exposition, in which latter we all know it, in
that order of attainment the classification is in
respect of Kdya, Vdca and Oitta : Body, Speech
and Thought ; and in it, therefore, Sammaditthi,
as falling under the head of Citta, comes last,
not first, and thus carries in that connec-
tion the meaning of Fullest Insight which has
been considered above. In general, however,
the Eightfold Path is to be considered not
as consisting of eight successive steps or
stages, but as a rule of conduct eightfold in
character, wherein all the eight Angas or Ele-
ments are severally essential. Each of these
Eight Members has its minor, middle, and major
188 THE BELIGION OF BURMA
aspects ; the position of a given being in
respect of consecutive attainment in progress of
time, being measured by which of these three
divisions of the several Members he has
attained.
Where, then, in our Buddhist studies, we
desire clearly to define the path of progress
towards Nibbana in respect of progress through
time, or through consecutive stages, it is best
to turn, not to the Eightfold, but to the Four-
fold Path. The four elements of this latter
are in fact consecutive ; first the attainment
of the stage of Sotapatti, then that of Sakada-
gami, then Anagami, and finally that of
Arahattam itself. In this resume of the
progress of a being from Life, the ocean
of Saihsara or of the cycle of Transmigration
wherein we all exist, to that Beyond of Life
which we Buddhists term Mbbana we see very
clearly the distinction between two of the
different usages of the word Sammadittbi.
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 189
That Fourfold Path, as you will remember, is
classified in respect of the mental Fetters or
Bondages which have been overcome. Before
a being can enter on the first of those Four
Stages, he must have overcome the first three
out of the Ten Bondages of the mind. First
amongst those three comes Salcdyaditthi, the
belief or opinion that there exists within us any
sort of permanent self or soul, whether great
or small, mean or exalted, gross or subtle.
When a thinking being has broken through
that Bondage (it is like the little stem and
root-fibre that first pierces through the hard
triple cuticle of the germinating seed), and,
together with it, has freed himself from
Vicikiccha (Dubiety or the hesitance between
two courses of action, the doubt as to whether
one's conception of the Dhamma is correct),
and Silabbat-paramdsd (the belief in the
efficacy of rites and rituals and spells and
prayers to effect any real change within his
190 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
being), then he has won to the first of the
Four Stages ; he has become Sotapatti, " He
who has entered on the Stream " that stream
in the ocean of Samsara which sets fair
towards Nibbana's distant shore. Here is
implied another usage of our Sammaditthi ;
one standing, as it were, midway between the
mere intellectual acceptance of the Four Noble
Truths and that widest meaning of the term
which we have designated Fullest Insight.
For the breaking of this Bondage of self-
delusion means far more than the mere holding
of the opinion that " there is no self ". It
means to see, to know that as the Very Truth
and so to live it, for he only truly lives, who
knows.
Standing although it does at the very
beginning of the Path, this middle mode of
Sammaditthi implies a very great advance in
comprehension of the truth about life". It is
said in our Scriptures that whoso has entered
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 191
on the Stream, and in this middle sense
is Sammaditthi, has before him at the most
*
not more than seven lives ; it may be less, but
that is the utmost possible. So we see that in
reality, the gaining of even thus much of this
Right Understanding is a very great achieve-
ment one which few indeed now living have
attained to a position which can be won only
as the outcome of the fruit of many lives of
earnest searching after Truth.
Thus we have before us these Three Modes
or meanings of Sammaditthi. First, the mere
intellectual appreciation of the truth of the
fundamental teaching of the Dhamma an
appreciation which, I hope, we all have
long since attained to. In Ceylon (where
Magadhi, the Mula-bhdsa or sacred language of
Buddhism, is still a spoken language amongst
the learned and the Monks), if you ask a
learned Monk of what religion is such-
and-such a Buddhist, he will reply, not
192 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Buddhdgama "of the Buddhist Religion"
but " Sammaditthi "using this, the nar-
rowest mode or meaning of the term. In English,
indeed, we, speaking of our religion, or spoken
of by others, term ourselves, or are termed,
Buddhists ; but, convenient as it is, the term is
not correct. We are, or should be Sam-
mdditthi, having Right Understanding of the
fundamental facts about life; we cannot truly
claim to be Buddhists, save as a mere measure
of convenience, for the sake of ready comprehen-
sion of our religious principles ; for that term, if
we trace it to its root meaning, would imply
the claim of full enlightenment, seeing that the
root is Bodh, to be Awakened, Illuminated,
"Wise. Even if we take the word Buddhist to
imply a follower of the religious teaching
peculiar to The Buddha, it still involves a
certain amount of misconception; for in fact
much of what the world calls Buddhist
doctrine was well-known in India long before
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 193
The Buddha's day and is thus in no true sense
the special Teaching of The Buddha. To one
who is Sammaditthi, all that pertains to the
deeper Truths about life, whether first enunciat-
ed by The Buddha or no, is part of his religion ;
and we may take this intellectual assent to Truth
as being the determining factor in this, the
Minor Mode of usage of " Sammaditthi ",
Right Understanding, right appreciation of the
Truth, is this mode of Sammaditthi; and this
we trust all have now attained.
Second comes the Middle Mode ; that usage
of the term which, together with the breaking
of the Bondages of Doubt and Ritual-reliance,
involves the " Entering on the Stream," that
great spiritual attainment which constitutes the
First Stage upon the Fourfold Path. And, yet
beyond that, great though to our eyes such
attainment be, far yet beyond that lies the
Major Mode. Therein Sammaditthi means the
final destruction of Avijja, of Nescience, of
13
194 THE BELIGION OF BDEMA
Not-understanding ; the attainment of the posi-
tion of the Saint, the Arahan ; the winning in
the highest degree of that Fullest Insight or
Highest Wisdom which, as has been said, lies
far beyond any mode of mental functioning of
which we now are cognisant. Between the
mere acceptance of Right Views concerning
life, and that supreme Attainment of
the Arahan, lies the whole mass of
Buddhist Teaching; also, the whole long .,
Path of patient culture, of slow growth, of
ever-dawning horizons of wisdom extending,
it may be, over many a following life which
leads from all life's turmoil to the Peace.
It is the hope of every Buddhist that, not
only he, but in the end all living creatures,
will one day travel to the glorious Goal.
Looking thus on the Path as extended between
the two terminal Modes of Sammaditthi Eight
Understanding at one end of it and Fullest
Insight at the other and placing, as we may
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 195
legitimately place, our own mental attitude as
somewhere on that line between the minor and
the median mode, nearer to the former as our
Buddhism is more of a lip-service and less of a
heart-service, two most important facts at once
appear. First, the true spiritual progress,
the best use, if our Buddhism be true, that we
can make of our life, lies only in the passing
from our present position to one yet nearer to
the Middle Mode. Secondly, since the same
fundamental element of Sammaditthi is found
at both ends of the Path, the dimension in
which that Path is extended, its direction, as it
were, in the space of consciousness, lies in
what we may term the attainment of a series of
ever-deepening Modes of Truth, the several points
on our line, each serially giving place to that
beyond it. To make any use at all of our
Buddhism, and, if we take it rightly, there is
naught else in all the Universe so essentially
useful, we have to discover in what direction in
196 THE RELIGION .OF BURMA
OUT lives lies that line of ever-deepening Truth;
and, having found it, to walk therein to the
best of our ability ; for that, surely, is the Holy
Path itself, and save through its ever- deepening
modes of seeing Truth, there is never freedom
to be won from all the sorrow and the change
of life.
Let us try to ascertain what we mean when
thus we speak of ever-deepening Modes of Truth,
and to realise what fashion of falsehood it is
that we must needs avoid that we may rightly
conceive of this our Right Understanding. Let
us at first consider what sort of Understanding
is that which is common to all thinking beings,
and which on that very ground is too component
of Nescience to be of real service to the aspirant
after Truth.
Looking on the world presented to him by
his senses, one fact predominates over all
others in the mind of the ordinary man : the
fact that there exists an es.sential difference
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 197
between that which, for him, is self his
thoughts, words, actions and all the rest of
life, the whole great Universe, which lies
beyond, in the region of the not-self. That
view, that fact ever so apparent to the
unconverted mind, is the first Wrong View ;
the first great Micchddifthi which the All-
Wisdom of our Master has taught us to
avoid. But the ordinary man, taught only by
his natal Nescience, by Avijja, sees in that
illusory distinction between self and the not-
self the fundamental fact of life ; and from it,
as from any start made in the wrong direction,
all the Wrong Views of life depend. It
needed the wisdom of a Copernicus to over-
come, for the mass of civilised humanity, the
delusion that the sun goes daily round the
earth ; and the opponents of Copernican
Astronomy objected that it was the common
daily testimony of the sense of sight of every
being that it did so move. So did it need
198 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
the Wisdom of The Buddha to overcome for us,
His followers, that deepest delusion of the
central self -hood ; and just so, also, is still the
cry of the opponents of His Teaching, that the
daily momentary testimony of our own minds
declares this self -hood as the central fact
of life.
So starting wrongly, the world's philosophies,
of necessity, go further and further from
the Truth they seek. Finding this Self-
hood as the central fact of life, they deduce,
from the phenomena about them, the existence
of other selves besides their own. The savage,
seeing the motion of sun and moon and star
and stream and all the manifold phenomena of
being, hearing the multitudinous sounds of
Nature, attributes to each and all of them a
separate self, a god or spirit using each and
all just as he fancies from his wrong under-
standing about life he uses his various organs
of motion and of speech. And when, later on
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 199
in the course of evolution, the savage comes to
the point where families coalesce into tribes and
clans, and these into nations, ruled over by one
sovereign, so in his mind, grows the religious
idea. The gods of star and earth and forest
slowly take the names of servient angels, with
one Great Self their Ruler, the Soul or Self of
Space, wherein all these lesser beings have
their dwelling-place. So does the religious
consciousness of man, with great periods of
time, pass from polytheism to monotheism or
to pantheism ; till, passed out of savagery, man
grows to mental adolescence ; by which time
we generally find his monotheism or his
pantheism well established, even as now they
are in many directions in the western world.
Another very vital factor in the moulding of
the religious consciousness of mankind (for the
origin of religion is immensely complex, by no
means taking its birth from one set of facts or
theories alone) added its record also to the
200 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
common testimony of all mankind's experience
as to the existence of the Self. It is the factor
of Religious Experience, of the partial
recollection, by saint and seer 9 of the manifold
States of consciousness that exist beyond that
realm of waking life wherein we normally act
and live. More clear-seeing, indeed, in the
greater light of consciousness to which they in
their several Attainments had achieved, the seers
of all times (at least such of their number as
attained to the higher Jhanas, the states of con-
sciousness pertaining to the Formless Worlds)
announced the fact that, with progression up-
wards, element after element of the lower self
was cast aside, till in the ultimate of conscious-
ness they saw, no longer the manifold self-hoods
of our experience, but One Self one highest Self
alone. This Self they, with minds already
cast in the theistic mode by reason of the
religious teaching of their nation, identified
with the Supreme Being who had been
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 201
hypothesised as having made or emanated all
this universal life. Thus, rightly casting out in
the light of their superior experience, the petty
self of man, they yet adhered to a still greater,
because subtler, if far deeper-lying delusion.
The conception grew of an ultimate, enduring,
blissful higher Self -hood, wherefrom all life has
consciously, intentionally been emanated ;
wherein whoso will rightly train his mind may
merge his lesser self-hood, as the drop mixes
with the wide ocean's wave.
Growing side by side with this rich
crop of wrong opinions, sprang up likewise,
intimately connected with it, another group
of misconceptions as to the facts of life, a
group which, in its totality, we may con-
veniently term the Theory of the Joy of Life.
This theory also had many a different factor
in its being ; chief amongst these being the
circumstance of human mental immaturity ;
the fact that all mankind was passing, whilst it
202 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
upsprang, through the childhood of humanity.
Nay, it is even now, and even amongst the
most advanced units of the most civilised of
nations, only just passing from that epoch
into the period of mental adolescence ; and
the sense of the joy of life is perhaps the
acutest sentiment of child-life, the characteristic
of the undeveloped, the immature consciousness
of the little child. Cast back your own minds
to the days of your early childhood, and if the
memory has not altogether faded, you will see
how true this is, you will remember how wonder-
ful and fair and noble and good did all exist-
ence seem ; how joy seemed the reality, and
pain and sorrow only a passing, if dreaded,
shadow to its glorious light. You will recall the
vivid sense of wonder and of pleasure that came
with each new phenomenon of life ; how even
some newly seen insect might arouse a perfect
ecstasy of wonder; how every hour, nay every
moment of the waking life seemed dear and
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 208
pleasant so that even when tired out, you
hated the very thought of sleeping, since that
would mean the deprivation of some few hours
of blissful conscious life. That is the charac-
teristic of the infant consciousness, that sense
of joy in life; and in this, as in so many
ways, our own experience as children but
epitomised the common daily condition of
human consciousness in its early days. For
such is the peculiarity of our growth, that
the human individual, in the process of only a
few years of infancy and childhood, epitomises
in his life and thought the bygone history
of the whole human race whose experience he
inherits. Watch the daily growth of a young
child and you will see the truth of this, you will
see the infant life telling the story of the
development of all humanity, from the tree-
dwelling anthropoid, scarcely yet a man,
through the Stone Age down to the hunting,
fighting, kingdom -organising age which, even
204 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
now, only the most advanced units of our
9 /
kind have outgrown. The child-mind sees
and hears, and finds deep-rooted joy in
mere sight and hearing ; but it does not, till
grown out of childhood's age, think of what it all
must mean. Due to this, and again to the
reproduction of the history of savage man, is
the child's callousness to pain sometimes so
shocking. Wonderful and therefore pleasant in
its eyes are the struggles of some tortured
animal or insect ; just because the sort of
movements executed are new and strange, the
sight of them gives pleasure ; and so, with all
but a small minority of quite exceptional
children, we have to educate the young out of
the savage instinct to kill and torture the
lower forms of life.
This early joy in life, so characteristic of the
young, the mentally immature and thoughtless,
bulking so largely as it still does in human
thought, came, of necessity, to affect profoundly
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 205
the development of religious thought; meaning
by that term, as we have all along implied,
man's way of looking at the deeper things
of life, his attempts to propound an answer
to the riddle of existence. Applying, as
always (in the nescience-working of the mind),
the conditionings of his own life to the greater
life about him, man early came to hold the view
that all in life was essentially good. The joy of life
in his own heart he reflected on the world about
him, and in particular did he attribute joy and
graciousness and goodness to the Supreme Self
whom he later came to conceive as having made
the earth and sky. He himself, for the service of
his daily needs, could fashion out of stone and
wood and earth his implements of hunting,
warring, cooking ; and so again he came to
think that all this Universe, so fair and good
before his mental vision, must likewise have
been fashioned by that great Being. Remem-
bering his own delight in the accomplishment
206 THE BBLIGION OF BTJBMA
of work well-done, the joy of the maker
over some tool or structure well-adapted
to its purpose, he could even conceive the
Deity as resting from his labor of creation,
as looking on the world that he had made,
and saying that it all was " very good J) .
Yet knowledge grows, and with its growth
comes deeper insight and a truer appreciation
of the real nature of the Universe about us and
within. With that growth of mental stature,
the conception of the Deity, this personification
of the ultimate forces of our being, comes of
necessity to take a less and less important
place within the thoughts of men. They see
with growing understanding how much
of utterly useless suffering there is in life;
they learn, if very slowly, that in truth
there is in all life no persona^ no self,
whether the personal or the greater self ;
but only a continuum, a flux of being, a
ceaseless movement of the restless tides of life.
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 207
Slow, indeed, is that coming to mental
adolescence; even still, (by reason of the
influence on our speech of that Wrong View
of life) we say " I think " where rightly we
should say "It thinks". The Indian of The
Buddha's time said " The God rains " where
we should say " It rains ". We have indeed
advanced to the intransitive mood in this
respect; but how long will the self persist
in our speech in respect of human actions?
With this personalisation of life's pheno-
mena, indissolubly connected with it, spring-
ing from the same source, sad Nescience, rises
that other Theory of the Joy of Life ; ideas so
plausibly and so naturally associated in the
lines of that English poet who exclaims :
" Grod's in his heaven : All's well with the
world."
Such are the theories of life termed by the
Buddha Micchdditthi Wrong Views, the sort
of Not-understanding we must sheer avoid, if
208 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
ever we are to merit the title of Sammaditthi*
First, is the Theory of the Self, the conception
that life is enselfed, that there is, within or
behind it, an unchanging vital persona, whether
regarded as ultimately one or many. Secondly,
is the Theory of the Joy of Life, the view that
life is in its fundamental nature blissful, good to
live for the sake of its mere pleasure ; and that,
by any means whatever, we may realise therein,
not the well-known Karmic sequence of the
craving for pleasure bringing ultimately Pain ;
but a never-ending succession of pleasurable
states of consciousness, a permanent Happiness
resulting from the continued gratification of
the desire for experience, for life.
These are the two great root-conceptions,
springing from Avijja, from Nescience, Ig-
norance, the Not-understanding of the real
nature of life, the rejection of which constitutes
the basis of Sammaditthi in its Minor Mode.
Here, before going further, we may well
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 209
pause to consider jvhy these mere theories
about life should constitute, from the Buddhist
point of view, so serious a danger to the well-
being of humanity ; and so grave an obstacle
that the very first step on the Path cannot be
taken till they have been for ever set aside.
Both of them have their roots in the deepest
places of the human heart. It is fair and sweet
and pleasant to a man to think that he the
real "he," as the Attavadin would put it is
immortal, changeless, sure (if he but live
aright) of inheriting a blissful and an eternal
life ; to conceive of all this world as being
made and guided by a Great Person, infinitely
powerful and beneficent, willing and able to
help ; and to look on life as in its essence
blissful, pleasant, good to live. All this being
so, why make the rejection of these theories
the very test of the Buddhist orthodoxy if
we may use the term ; or, how does it happen
that, in a religion so essentially practical as
14
210 THE RELIGION OF BUEMA
Buddhism, the mere intellectual acceptance or
rejection of certain theories should hold so
prominent a place ?
The answer to that question is to one who
Dot yet is Sammaditthi the most terrible in
all the world ; it is an answer which, if it stood
alone, would leave no hope or help or purpose
in our life ; it simply runs : They are untrue.
To the Buddhist, Truth, the search after and
the attainment to Truth, is his religion ;
and no man may hope to win to Truth who
starts out in the wrong direction, who seeks
for Truth whilst laying to his heart the false
if fair solace that these Wrong Views present.
Untrue ! And is Truth, then, worthy of
so great a sacrifice that a man must needs give
up convictions the most deep-rooted and con-
soling for its sake alone ? Answers the
Buddhist : Truth not alone denies the false,
it goes far deeper, it affirms the True. So
great and so inspiring in our lives, and, in its
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING ^ 211
deeper levels so profound, so far beyond our
knowing is Truth, that it has been worthy of all
sacrifice in all the worlds. Truth is greater
than our hopes, nearer and yet dearer, could
we but see and know it, than even our
so cherished Theory of Self-hood, of the
personal immortal life ; wider is Truth than the
heavens, vaster than the abyss of space ; greater
than aught we can compare it to It is so
free and high ! Renunciation ? Surely. Did
ever the seed give being to the flower, shed-
ding its perfume on the morning breeze, but
first, below there in the darkness of the mire,
it gave its own life, that a greater life might
come ? That is why Renunciation is the key-
note of all Buddhist practice ; and that is why
the first step to be taken is the rejection
utterly of all that is not utterly true.
For in Buddhism we are concerned with facts,
not theories. If ever we may make our hearts,
our minds, worthy receptacles of Truth's sweet
212 THE KELIGION OF BUEMA
Amrita, we must first cleanse them of every
trace of the bitter drugs Avijja has to give.
Untrue, these two Wrong Views of life bear in
themselves the seal and proof of their untruth ;
to see this fact, you have but to consider
what has been the fruit of them in the history
of humanity ; to observe their outcome in the
story of the creeds and faiths of all mankind.
The destroying progress of Islam, the tortures
of the Inquisition, the awful period of the Dark
Ages when no man dared to breathe his free
thoughts in the air of a mind -enslaved continent,
and I know not, dare not think, what total
sum of human agony and misdirected human
energy and work these are the fruits of those
Wrong Views of life. It was because men dream-
ed they had immortal souls, destined to per-
sonal immortality of joy (on darker side of it,
to immortality of torture : what charnel-minded
imagination ever first put forth that thought
of horror to taint the mental atmosphere of the
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 213
earth ?) and must placate the Supreme Self as
they, poor grovelling nescience-darkened heartSj
then wanted to placate their lords and kings
that they could kill, burn, torture even the
greatest, noblest minds that ever their race
gave birth to. For what cruelty, what torture
mattered in the noiv, where eternity to-morrow
weighed against it in the other scale ? If
one of the world's greatest epics of religion,
the Bhagavad-Gita, could be marred, utterly
marred it is by that deadly advice of Krishna
to his disciple, who, on the point of plunging
all his kith and kin into suicidal warfare, was
very properly seized with pity-born compunc-
tion, but ordered, in the name of the Soul-
Theory, to go on and kill, seeing that truly the
Self was spiritual, and could not be destroyed.
If such outcomes of the Atta- theory as all
these could make a Shelley rightly cry : " The
name of God hath fenced about all crimes
with holiness," can we not see, not looking
214 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
further, that Truth is absent from . all views
of life, where such sad fruits can follow the
acceptance of those views ?
Why is this ? How is it that these twin ideas
have so imbruted man (ah, pity of it, in the
name of all that should be holiest and best !) as
to have brought more misery and bloodshed on
the earth than any other single cause of human
folly and misdeed ? As our Master taught us, just
because they spring from Nescience, from men's
untrained Desire ; because they are but theories
only ways of seeing things, views, difthis,
things having no foundation in Truth or Fact.
There comes the whole solution of the problem ;
there comes the point in the supreme impor-
tance of Sammdditthi Eight Understanding
of the facts of life. Over facts, whoever fought
or hated or inflicted suffering on life ? No man
/
of all the myriads that have ever lived. But
over views, mere theories, things having no
foundation save in the cobwebs of some pent-up
.'EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 215
Nescience-darkened human mind, over mere
theories, such as no man could ever tell the
truth of (were truth not all too holy a word to :
be employed in such connection), over mere
views men always have quarrelled and ever
will, until at last such follies are for ever set
aside ; and no man shall live so ignorant as to say :
" 1 hold such-and-such a theory, have worked it
out, adopted it as mine ; being my view, I am
ready to fight for it against the world at
large."
Not that in the past alone have these
Wrong Views of life wrought damage to human
progress ; not that now we have so far pro-
gressed that their power for ill-doing has
passed away from the causes of life's unceasing
suffering on earth. Even to-day, in the name
of those twin theories, inconceivable agony is
being inflicted upon life. Even to-day a
hundred thousand altars cast the ill savor
of their sacrifices on the air. Follies, you
216 THE BELIGION OF BURMA
say, committed by barbarians, who, seek*
ing more of joy in this world or the next, seek
to placate their imaginary gods enselved. So
be it. Ignorance it is ; yet not worse evil than
is daily happening in western lands. If , as is
happily the case, no more the cries of human
victims, burnt living in the market-places
of our towns in the name of those two Modes of
Nescience, prove their untruth and potency for
evil in the hearts of men, still, under other
names and forms, are they wreaking untold
woe on all mankind. To the Self-Theory,
as manifested under the form of so-called
patriotism, is due the fact that so large a
proportion of the manhood of the modern
nations, drawn from useful service to mankind
in field or factory, is wasted- worse than
wasted in the study and practice of warfare ;
which, in plain English, is the study and
practice of the most efficient method of achiev-
ing on a wholesale scale the most terrible of all
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 217
human crimes- murder. To the same mani-
festation of Self-delusion is due the fact that
so large a proportion of the wealth -and re-*
sources of the western nations is wasted on this
same folly of armaments. Only because men
will cherish the Self-Theory, they will not under-
stand that we allEnglish, Germans, French
and so forth alike are human beings, fellow-
creatures, brothers ; members of the one great
fraternity of conscious, suffering, living beings,
they would not war like wolves or savages-^
the one upon the other, did but they understand*
It is the Wrong View : " lam English ; glorious
English nationality is mine,, so it behoves me
to fight against persons who have another
sort of Self -Theory, and say : f No, but a
Teuton I.' " It is that Wrong View which now
makes necessary that the bulk of the resources
*/
of every branch of the West-Aryan race is
wasted on armaments of war wasted, when
so much might, in the present state of our
218 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
knowledge, be achieved by man, /were that
great wealth to be expended in combating, not
only physical disease, but also those far more
fatal mental sicknesses, to which so much of
western misery is due.
To the Wrong View of the Joy of Life,
also, how much of our occidental suffering may
be assigned! Believing that in life joy may
somehow be gained, we add and add, instead
of seeking to diminish, the number of the
things we say we " need ". Climatic condi-
tions of necessity add to the number of the
actual necessities of life: as compared with the
simple needs of warmer climates. But beyond
those actual necessities, beyond the needs of
science and of art and literature (civilising
influences all, and so not less true "needs" of
the mind than food-stuffs are of the body)-
beyond our true needs, how much our modern
civilisation now produces just by reason of this
false belief in the Joy of Life; the mere theory
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING . 219
that by much possession we may come to
happiness! To produce that vast array of
things really useless, thousands and hundreds
of thousands of women, men, and even little
children , must live squalid and hopeless lives,
ever in fear of some catastrophe of commerce
that may deprive them of food, warmth, and
shelter ; and how many, alas, of these producers
of the unnecessaries of life are, even now, short
of due food, lacking the barest of human
necessities ?
Thus, looking even into the present-day con-
ditions of our human existence, do we see how
deadly, how full of poison for humanity, are
the two Views or Theories of Life which,
warned by our Master, we who are Samma-
ditthi have come to reject as false and full of
danger and of fear. Heart's poisons in very
truth are they, poisoning the very innermost
lives of men ; and yet, in one after another
of their endless manifestations whether a&
220 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
religious dogmas, as political or national concep-
tions, as militarism, or as commercialism the
minds of men still seize upon them with avidity,
still give them great, high-sounding and heart-
stirring names. Just so, in the old Buddhist
simile, a man, afflicted with a grievous open
sore, from mere fear of thinking of it,
covers it up from sight with piled-up layer
after layer of gold-leaf, since so it seems no long-
er hideous ; yet ah, the corruption that festers
beneath it all! Great names; high-sounding
words; wonderful theories of things that no
man knows the how and why of life ; such
now, as ever, is the gold-leaf this poor suffering
humanity applies to its festering wounds !
How long, how sorrow-laden must it yet be,
ere we shall tear it all away, this glittering
gilding of mere empty and high-sounding terms,
and dare to look on life as in very truth it is;
or have the wit to turn to that All-greatest of
the Heart's Physicians* who, with Truth's
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 221
healing salve, stands ever ready to allay the
growing poison and the fever of our wound ?
That salve, the healing, even with a bitter
seeming balm, is Sammdditfhi, Eight Under-
standing of the facts of life, the comprehen-
sion of the Truth about existencethe pulling-
off of the gold-leaf and examining and recog-
nising the true sources of our pain. To dare to
look on life as it really is: Anicca, Dukkha?
Anatta ; Transient, and Sorrow-laden, and
Devoid of Self that is the first step we must
take. It means the casting-out of all the vain
reliances and theories that ever the mind of
man has spun; the setting-aside, since such
conduce not to our urgent need of healing, of
all such questionings as : How life came to be,
or Whence it is. Whither it shall go- with that
alone we really are concerned; for that, if
we have Eight Understanding, we may some-
what direct, since we- are what ,we really
know of life.
222 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
Speaking of the particular religious aspects
of the two great Wrong Views, I have said
that their casting-off: seems at first sight
a thing most cruel and most terrible; it is
the plucking-off: of the gold-leaf from the
poisoned wound. Some few rash minds indeed
have dared to do that (not knowing, alas for
them, of the Physician and His salve !) and,
seeing what lay beneath it all, these have come
straight to yet another new Wrong View about
it all. Seeing the suffering inseparable from
all life understanding the meaning of the
fact, that^ in the body's evolution, what is now
for us sensation is the direct descendant of the
irritability, the reaction to irritation, of the
primordial protoplasm these have come to
formulate a new Wrong View of Life, and one
which does x not possess the merit even of
looking beautiful, as the old gold-leaf method
did. : That view is now termed Pessimism ;
we may briefly put it thus. There is no Soul,
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 223
no God, but a new sort of eternal self-hood or
principle called Matter alone exists. That
Matter is itself insentient, but somehow, by
mere chance, certain combinations of it occurred
which were so unstable as to involve a constant
molecular change ; a taking-in of new molecules
at one point, and a turning out of old ones on
the other. By virtue of the action of environ-
ment on this primordial life-stuff, it presently
developed into what now we are, living, con-
scious beings, destined to cease at death, and
pass away as uselessly as first we came. In
this view one, happily, held now by but a
few adherents there is no Law in life, that is,
no Law of Life as such, at all : our existence
came by Chance ; and one day, when the earth
grows cold or hot enough, it will similarly
perish. All life. is thus regarded as not merely
full of sorrow and of evil but as uithout a
purpose or a future. Life, wonderful, ever-
miraculous as to the thoughtful man it is, has,
224 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
in this view of it, no origin save Chance and
the workings of the blind Laws of Nature ; no
hope save death, with ail its suffering left
unrewarded; no aim, no end, no purpose, and
no brighter goal.
Few men ever will, we hope, come to
hold that so terrible view of existence, least of
all any Buddhist. But it is mentioned here to
introduce a most important point in Buddhist
Teaching, namely, that this Pessimism is, from
the Buddhist standpoint, just as wrong as the
optimistic and theistic theories which we have
already discussed. For it is characteristic of
that Teaching that it ever pursues the Middle
Way, in this great question of the Good and
Evil of existence as in all other matters. In
the first Sermon of The Buddha, the importance
of avoiding such extremes of view-point was
V f _
emphasised by the terming of the Path the
Middle Way. Preached, as that Sermon was,
to Monks accustomed to regard self-torture as
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 225
the means of liberation from suffering, the
essence of the religious life, the contrast was
drawn between the life of self-torture and the
life of self-indulgence ; and the Middle Way,
the way that leads to Truth, to Fullest Insight
was- announced to lie between these two
extremes. But in our question of life's Good
and 111 also, the same rule applies. While we
must, if Sammaditthi, reject the theories of the
Self and of the Joy of Life ; we must likewise
reject the opposite extreme of view :the
theory I have given above as Pessimism. Life,
then, as the Buddhist sees it, is indeed full of
Suffering ; but it. may be so directed as to lead
us to a Peace Beyond, a state far past our
dim perceptions of its glory, wherein is
Sorrow's End for evermore. Though in our
Hight Understanding- there is no Supreme Self
that made these worlds and by his will upholds
and rules them, yet there is a Power that
moves to righteousness and brings all beings
15
226 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
to the greater Light : the Power of Wisdom,
of that high holy Insight which we have seen
is Sammaditthi's Major Mode of use. Thus,
as much as in the Theist's view of it, life has
for the Buddhist both a Hope and, if you will,
a Purpose. This Eight View declares the
existence of a G-oal so great and high that we
are forbidden even to call it Life, it is Beyond,
and as it were a glory which this self we fancy
now may grow to, to just the very extent to
which it ceases to be component of that Self-
delusionjust as the seed in perishing, and in
perishing alone, gives being to the so-far-
diffierently-conditioned flower.
Yet this great Hope in Buddhism this Goal
without which all life were purposeless, its
long suffering useless and inexcusable this
ideal of the Peace Beyond All Life is no mere
view or empty theory. We Buddhists hold
that hope not, by any means, on faith or
trust, such as must ever form the basis of
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 227
the Theist's hope. It is deduced by us from
life's phenomena ; attested in chief by the
King of Truth, the Great Teacher who first
in our history attained to it (though not the
first, Buddhist tradition declares, who ever
had attained before,) and by the testimony of
the million Great Ones who, since He discovered
the Way thereto, have walked in the Path that
He declared. Lastly, if in far less degree,
it is attested by our own experience, by the
fact that we can see, to just the extent we
strive to follow the Middle Way ourselves,
the utter truth the ever-deepening truth-
of all that noble Aryan Teaching of Truth's
King. Following it as best we can, we
too find the Great Peace growing in our
hearts ; thus to us this ideal of Nibbana is
no mere view, but a reality ever deepen*
ing as our life grows nearer to the Truth,
the Way of Peace that The Master taught and
lived.
228 THE KELIGIOtf OF BURMA
When, growing out of that period of mental
childhood in which all life seems so fair and
pleasant, men come to mental adolescence,
as so many in the western world are
doing at this day, then, with the passing of
their immaturity, passes the keen sense of the
joy of life, for knowledge grows as the mind
of man grows* Man comes to see that, behind
this so fair-seeming mask of life, lies Death ;
he understands that the very law of evolution is
Suffering, and that the species which most can
suffer best survives. No more can one, under-
standing the great and awful suffering involved
in life, regard it as created by an omnipotent
and all-loving Selfhood ; no more can one who
once has sought by clear analysis in his own
heart for that imagined lesser self of man,
conceive of aught within him as eternal, change-
less or secure. Looking deeper and, if he be
fortunate, aided by the Truth The Master left
us, the adolescent man perceives how all there
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING 229
is in life, as now we know it, is of necessity
Changeful; he sees how the great sequences
of the Law of Life, Kamma, make of
Suffering an essential element of all component
being ; he sees that that which formerly he
conceived of as his self, eternal, stable, is but a
wave in life's great ocean. He sees it destined,
not indeed, as in the Pessimist's thought, to utter
annihilation after a little span of such sad
sordid life as living creatures on our planet
know, but to give place, at the end of all its
long cycle of evolving Transmigration (wherein
for no two following hours is it in totality
either " the same " nor yet " another " being) to
a State Beyond all thought and naming the
Peace, the Purpose, the Fruition of all Life.
Not one self-hood of our own, separate from
the other selves of all the Universe, but a
bundle of Sankhdras, of elements of the
common life : that is the idea which is implied.
Just as the elements of the body enter in our
230 - THE RELIGION OF BURMA
food -stream, become for a little while integral
portions of our being, and then, in the ceaseless
flux of form, pass out on their further never-
resting course of life so, in this Buddhist
view, do these Sankharas come, dwell for a
little in our minds, then pass out again ; a never-
ceasing flux of thought. Just as some ele-
ments of our corporeal frames are, as it were,
nobler or of higher import to our life than
others, and some, again, inimical to our
welfare, so is it with the elements of thought.
Here now to-day a whole group of the nobler
of the elements of thought, first set in motion
we know not when, but wrought to their
present form in the Mind of the Great One
whom we strive to follow thoughts which
have echoed down through life for five-and-
twenty centuries -are passing once again
through the medium of the spoken or the printed
word, into your several minds. To-morrow lit,
peradventure, by some new illustration of their
EIGHT UNDERSTANDING 23l
meaning -they will be passing from your minds
into 'yet others, and so on until life shall end
at last in Peace. From this conception of the
flux of thought follow many points of great
importance. One is the need we have of
constantly attending to the thought-food of
our minds, just as we attend to the food- stuffs
of our bodies ; we must reject from our
mental diet the ill thoughts, and definitely
cultivate the assimilation of high and holy ones.
Another, of yet greater moment, is the fact
that, at long last, all conscious life is
one ocean, whereof our several minds are now
the waves; whose force is ever giving rise to
further wavelets, waves not " another " and yet
not "the same". It is the flux which passes:
on and, in its changing, yet in some sense
endures ; it is the totality of that Flowing on
now, at this moment, in us, that we call " our-
selves ". Thus, rightly understanding, life
becomes as One, which we can best help
232 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
onward as we ennoble each though -element
in its passage through our minds ; wherefore,
from the Buddhist view- point, all reformation,
all attempt to help on life, can best be effected
by first reforming our immediate life-kingdom
of the -" self ".
Now, finally, one thought remains to be
considered. We have seen what are the views
and theories which we must fain avoid, if we
will make ourselves worthy of the title "Sam-
maditthi ". We have seen how the Eight View
of Life, teaching as it does Life's Oneness,
makes for Compassion, for endurance, for the
ennobling of all our relations with life. No
more, as in the View of Self -hood, looking on
self and life as two different things, we have
understood them One. We see, too, how we
each may, humble though we be, yet help on
t
life at large ; and how only we can help
life, by making this understanding of our
oneness with it enter, in practice, into all our
BIGHT UNDERSTANDING 283
daily ways as pity and as love. We see how
this Eight View of Life might change the
world to paradise to-morrow ; how all the
bitter pain of life comes only from the follow-
ing of the false, the selfish view. All this is
but the Minor Mode of Sammaditthi, just the
intellectual appreciation of the fundamental
Buddhist Truths. What lies beyond? What
must we do so as to enter upon that
Fourfold Path of Attainment on whose first
step stands, not this Minor s but Sammaditthi's
Middle Mode ? The answer is : Just live that
Understanding. Let it be no mere vain theory
for still a theory it is, until it enters into
practice in our own, our very lives. It means
so to direct the course in life's great ocean of
this our group of elements of life that, with each
thought that passes from us, a little gain will
come to life at large ; it means to suppress, with
constant watchfulness, the evil, selfish thoughts,
and cultivate the nobler, self-renouncing
234 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
ones ; to understand how Sorrow rules in-
alienable to life s and yet because Beyond,
Peace is ever reigning how we may so
restrain our ways that when we die all life will
have become something the nobler and the
nearer to the Peace because we lived and
suffered, and just a little knew. All that, or,
briefly, to live Eight Understanding and not to
make an empty talk of it ; all that it is to come
nearer to that deeper, Middle Mode of Truth
about Right Understanding, the winning of
which means the Entering of the Stream, the
great ancient, holy Stream of deathless Light,
which all the glorious Company of the Great
and Wise follow ; and which passing across
life's ocean brackish with the tears of its
unending pain breaks at last upon Life's
Further Shore ; wherein is Peace, greater
beyond all naming than the life we erst have
known.
THE CULTURE OF MIND
THE religion of the Buddhas is, in the most
eminent sense of the word, a practical philo-
sophy. It is not a collection of dogmas which
are to be accepted and believed with an un-
questioning and unintelligent faith ; but a
series of statements and propositions which, in
the first place, are to be intellectually grasped
and comprehended; secondly, to be applied
to every action of our daily lives, to be practised
and lived, to the fullest extent of our powers.
This fact of the essentially practical nature of
our religion is again and again insisted upon
in the Holy Books. Though one man should
know by heart a thousand stanzas of the Law,
and not practise it, he has not understood the
Bhamma. That man who knows and practises
one stanza of the Law, he has understood the
236 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Dhamma, he is the true follower of The
Buddha. It is the practice of the Dhamma
that constitutes the true Buddhist, not the
mere knowledge of its tenets ; it is the carrying
out of the Five Precepts, and not their repeti-
tion in the Pali tongue. It is the bringing home
into our daily lives of the Great Laws of Love
and Righteousness that marks a man as
Sammdditthis and not the mere appreciation
of the truth of that Dhamma as a beautiful
and poetic statement of Laws which are
too hard to follow. This Dhamma has
to be lived, to be acted up to, to be felt
as the supreme ideal in our hearts, as the
supreme motive of our lives; and he who
does this to the best of his ability is the right
follower of The Master; not he who calls
himself "Buddhist," but whose life is empty
of the love The Buddha taught.
Because betimes our lives are very pain-
ful, because to do right, to follow the Good
THE CULTURE OP MIND 237
Law in all our ways is very difficult, therefore
we should not despair of ever being able to
walk in the way we have learned, and resign
ourselves to living a life full only of worldly
desires and ways. For has not The Master
said : " Let no man think lightly of good,
saying, ' it will not come nigh me ' for even
by the falling of drops, the water-jar is filled.
The wise man becomes full of Good, even if he
gather it little by little " ? He who does his best,
he who strives, albeit failing, to follow what is
good, to eschew what is evil, that man will
grow daily the more powerful for his striving i
and every wrong desire overcome, each loving
and good impulse acted up to, will mightily
increase our power to resist evil, will ever
magnify our power of living the life that i&
right.
Now, the whole of this practice of Buddhism,
the whole of the Good Law which we who call
ourselves Buddhists should strive to follow,
238 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
lias been summed up by the Tathagata in one
single stanza :
"Avoiding the performance of evil actions,
gaining merit by the performance of good
acts, and the purification of all our thoughts :
this- is the Teaching of all the Buddhas"
We who call ourselves Buddhists have
so to live that we may carry out the three
rules here laid down. We all know what
it is to avoid doing evil; we detail the
acts that are ill each time we take Panca
Sila. The taking of life, the taking of what
does not rightly belong to us, living a life of
impurity, speaking what is not true or is
cruel and unkind, and indulging in drugs and
drinks that undermine the mental and moral
faculties- these are the evil actions that we
must avoid. Living in peace and love, return-
ing good for evil, having reverence and patience
and humility these are some part of what we
know for good. And so we can all understand,
THE CULTURE OF MIND 239
we can all try to live up to, tbe first two
clauses of this stanza, and endeavor to put
them into practice in our daily lives. But the
way to purify thought, the way to cultivate
the thoughts that are good, to suppress and
overcome the thoughts that are evil; the
practices by which the mind is to be trained
and cultivated of these things less is known,
they are less practised, and less understood.
The object of this paper is to set forth
what is written in the books of these
methods of cultivating and purifying the mind ;
to set forth how this third rule can be followed
and lived up to ; for in one way it is the most
important of all, it really includes the other
two rules, and is their crown and fruition.
The avoidance of evil, the performance of
good : these things will but increase the merit
of our destinies, will lead but to new lives,
happier, and so more full of temptation, than
that we now enjoy. And after that merit,
240 THE RELIGION OF BUEMA
thus gained, is spent and gone, the whirling
of the great Wheel of Life will bring us
again to evil and unhappy lives ; for not by
the mere storing of merit can freedom be
attained, it is not by mere merit that we can
come to the Great Peace. This merit-gaining
is secondary in importance to the purification
and culture of our thought ; but it is essential,
because only by the practice of Slla, of Right
Conduct, comes the power of Mental Concen-
tration that makes us free.
In order that we may understand how this
final and principal aim of our Buddhist faith
is to be attained, before we can see why
particular practices should thus purify the
mind, it is necessary that we should first
comprehend the nature of this mind itself
this thought that we seek to purify and to
liberate. -
In the marvellous system of psychology
which has been declared to us by our Teacher,
THE CULTURE OF MIND 241
the Citta or thought-stuff is shown to consist of
innumerable elements which are called Dliamma,
or SanJchdm. If we translate Dhamma or
SanlcJiara as used in this context as " Tenden-
cies/' we will probably come nearest to the
English meaning of the word. When a given
act has been performed a number of times ;
when a given thought has arisen in our minds
a number of times there is a definite tendency
to the repetition of that act, a definite tendency
to the recurrence of that thought. Thus each
mental Dhamma, each Sankhara, tends con-
stantly to produce its like, and be in turn
reproduced ; and so, at first sight it would
seem as though there were no possibility of
altering the total composition of one's Sankharas,
no possibility of suppressing the evil
Dhammas, no possibility of augmenting the
states that are good. But, whilst our Master
has taught us of this tendency to reproduce,
that is so characteristic of all mental states,
16
242 THE EEL1GION OF BURMA
He has also shown us how this reproductive
energy of the Sankharas may itself be
employed to the suppression of evil states, and
to the culture of the states that are good. For
if a man has many and powerful Sankharas in
his nature, which tend to make him angry or
cruel, we are taught that he can definitely
overcome those evil Sankharas by the practice
of mental concentration on Sankharas of an
opposite nature ; in practice by devoting a
definite time each day to meditating on thoughts
of pity and of love. Thus he increases the
Sankharas in his mind that tend to make men
loving and pitiful ; and because " Hatred ceaseth
not by hatred at any time, hatred ceaseth by
Love alone," therefore do those evil Sankharas
of his nature, those tendencies to anger and
to cruelty, disappear before the rise of new
good tendencies -of love and of pity, even as
the darkness of the night fades in the glory of
the dawn. Thus we see that one way and
THE CULTURE OF MIND 243
the best way of overcoming bad Sankharas,
is the systematic cultivation, by dint of medita-
tion, of such qualities as are opposed to the
evil tendencies we desire to eliminate; and
in the central and practical feature of the
instance adduced, the practice of definite medi-
tation or mental concentration upon the good
Sankharas, we have the key to the entire
system of the Purification and Culture of the
Mind, which constitutes the practical working
basis of the Buddhist religion.
If we consider the action of a great and
complex engine such a machine as drives
a steamship through the water we shall
see that there is, first and foremost, one central
and all operating source of energy : in this case
the steam which is generated in the boilers.
This energy in itself is neither good nor bad it
is simply Power; and whether. that power does
the useful work of moving the ship, or the bad
work of breaking loose and destroying and
244 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
spoiling the ship, and scalding men to death,
and so on, all depends upon the correct and co-
ordinated operation of all the various parts of
that complex machinery. If the slide-valves
of the great cylinders open a little too soon
and so admit the steam before the proper
time, much power will he lost in overcoming
the resistance of the steam itself. If they
remain open too long, the expansive force of
the steam will be wasted, and so again power
will be lost ; and if they open too late, much of
the momentum of the engine will be used up
in moving uselessly the great mass of
machinery. And so it is with every part of
the engine. In every part the prime mover is
that concentrated expansive energy of the
steam; but that energy must be applied in
each divers piece of mechanism in exactly
the right way 9 at exactly the right time;
otherwise the machine will not work at all,
or much of the energy of the steam will
THE CULTURE OF MIND 245
be wasted in overcoming its own opposing
force.
So it is with this subtle machinery of the
mind a mechanism infinitely more complex,
capable of far more power for good or for
evil, than the most marvellous of man's
mechanical achievements, than the most
powerful engine ever made by human hands.
One great engine, at its worst, exploding, may
destroy a few hundred lives, at its best may
carry a few thousand men, may promote trade
and the comfort of some few hundred lives ; but
who can estimate the power of one human mind,
whether for good or for evil ? One such mind,
the mind of a man like Napoleon, may bring
. about the tortured death of three million men,
may wreck states and religions and dynasties,
and cause untold misery and suffering. Another
mind, employing the same manner of energy,
but rightly using that energy for the benefit
of others, may, like The Buddha, bring hope
246 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
into the hopeless lives of billions upon billions
of human beings, may increase by a thousand-
fold the pity and love of a third of humanity,
may aid innumerable millions of beings to
come to that peace for which we all crave-
that Peace the way to which is so difficult
to find.
But the energy which these two minds
employed is one and the same. That energy
lies hidden in every human brain, it is generat-
ed with every pulsation of every human heart,
it is the prerogative of every being, and the
sole mover in the world of men. There is no
idea or thought, there is no deed, whether good
or bad in this world accomplished, but that
supreme energy, that steam-power of our mental
mechanism is the mover and the cause. It is
by the use of this energy that the child learns
how to speak ; it is by its power that Napoleon
could bring sorrow into thousands of lives ; it
is by this power that The Buddha conquered
THE CULTURE OP MIND 247
the hearts of one-third of the human race ;
it is by that force that so many have followed
Him on the Way which He declared the
Nibbana Magga, the way to the Unutterable
Peace. The name of that power is Mental
Concentration ; and there is nothing in this
world, whether for good or for evil, but is
wrought by its application. It weaves
upon the loom of time the fabric of men's
characters and destinies. Name and form twine
twin-threads with which are blended in the
quick-flying shuttles of that loom, men's good
and evil thoughts and deeds ; and the pattern
of that fabric is the outcome of innumerable
lives.
It is by the power of this Samddhi or Mental
Concentration that the baby learns to walk;
it is by its power that Newton weighed the
suns and worlds. Ifc is the steam-power of
this human organism ; and what it does to make
us great or little, good or bad, is the result of
248 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
the way the mechanism of the mind, all these
complex Sankharas, apply and use that energy.
If the Sankharas act well together, if their vary-
ing functions are well co-ordinated, then that
man has great power, either for good or for evil.
When you see one of weak mind and will,
you may be sure that the actions of his
Sankharas are working one against another;
and so the central power, this power of
Samadhi, is wasted in one part of the mind in
overcoming its own energy in another.
If a skilful engineer, knowing well the
functions of each separate part of an engine,
were to have to deal with a machine whose
parts did not work in unison, and which thus
frittered away the energy supplied to it, he
Would take his engine part by part, adjusting
here a valve and there an eccentric ; he would
observe the effect of his alterations with every
subsequent movement of the whole engine, and
so, little by little, would set all that machinery
THE CULTURE OF MIND 249"
to work together, till the engine was using to
the full the energy supplied to it. And this is what
we have to do with the mechanism of our
minds each one for himself. First, earnestly
to investigate onr component Sankharas, to see
wherein we are lacking, to see wherein our
mental energy is well used and where it runs
to waste ; and then to keep adjusting, little by
little, all these working parts of our mind-
engine, till each is brought to work in the way
that is desired, till the whole vast complex
machinery of our being is all working to one end
the end for which we are working, the goal
which* now lies so far away, yet not so far, but
that we may yet work for and attain it.
But how are we thus to adjust and to alter
the Sankharas of our natures ? If a part of
our mental machinery will use up our energy
wrongly, will let our energy leak into wrong
channels, how are we to cure it ? Let us take
another example from the world of mechanics.
250 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
There is a certain part of a locomotive which
is called the slide-valve. It is a most important
part, because its duty is to admit the steam
to the working parts of the engine : and upon
its accurate performance of this work the
whole efficiency of the locomotive depends.
The great difficulty with this slide-valve
consists in the fact that its face must be per-
fectly, almost mathematically, smooth ; and no
machine has yet been devised that can cut this
valve-face smooth enough. So, what they do
is this : they make use of the very force of the
.steam itself, the very violent action of steam,
to plane down that valve-face to the necessary
smoothness. The valve, made as smooth as
machinery can make it, is put in its place, and
steam is admitted ; so that the valve is made
to work under very great pressure and very
quickly for a time. As it races backwards
and forwards, under this unusually heavy
pressure of steam, the mere friction against the
THE CULTURE OP MIND 251
port-face of the cylinder upon which it moves,
suffices to wear down the little unevennesses
that would otherwise have proved so fertile a
source of leakage. So must we do with our
minds. We must take our good and useful
Sankharas one by one ; must put them under
extra and unusual pressure -by special mental
concentration. By this means those good
Sankharas will be made ten times as efficient ;
there will be no more leakage of energy ; and
our mental mechanism will daily work more
and more harmoniously and powerfully. From
the moment that the Mental Eeflex 1 is
attained, the hindrances (i.e., the action
of opposing Sankharas) are checked, the
leakages (Asa/vas, a word commonly translated
corruptions, means, literally, leakages : i.e.,
leakages through wrong channels of the energy
of the being) are assuaged, and the mind
1 The Mental Reflex, or Nimitta, is the result of the practice of
certain forms of Samaclhi. For a detailed account, see Visuddhi
Magga.
252 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
concentrates itself by the concentration of the
neighborhood degree. 1
Now let us see how these Sankharas, these
working parts of our mental mechanism, first
come into being. Look at a child learning
how to talk. The child hears a sound, and
this sound the child learns to connect by
association with a definite idea. By the power
of its mental concentration, the child seizes on
that sound by its imitative group of Sankharas.
It repeats that sound, and by another effort of
concentration it impresses the idea of that
sound on some cortical cell of its brain, where
it remains as a faint Sankhara 3 ready to be
called up when required. Then, some time
an occasion arises which recalls the idea that
sound represents the child has need to make
that sound in order to get some desired object.
It concentrates its mind with all its power on
1 Visuddhi Magga, iv. There are two degrees of mental con-
centration" Neighborhood-concentration " and " Attainment-con-
centration " respectively.
THE CULTURE OF MIND 258
the memorising cortex of its brain, until that
faint Sankhara, that manner of mind-echo of
the sound that lurks in the little brain-cell, is
discovered, and, like a stretched string played
upon by the wind, the cell yields up to the
mind a faint repetition of the sound-idea which
caused it. By another effort of concentration,
now removed from the memorising area and
shifted to the speaking centre in the brain, the
child's vocal chords tighten in the particular
way requisite to the production of that sound ;
the muscles of lips and throat and tongue
perform the necessary movements ; the breath-
ing apparatus is controlled, so that just the
right quantity of air passes over the vocal
chords ; and the child speaks : it repeats the
word it had formerly learnt to associate with
the object of its present desire. Such is the
process of the formation of a Sankhara. The
more frequently that idea recurs to the child,
the more often does it have to go through the
254 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
processes involved ; the more often, in a word,
has the mind of the child to perform mental
concentration, or Samddhi, upon that particular
series of mental and muscular movements, the
more powerful does the set of Sankharas
involved become, till the child will recall the
necessary sound-idea, will go through all those
complex movements of the organs of speech,
without any appreciable new effort of mental
concentration. In effect, that chain of associa-
tions, that particular co-ordained functioning
of memory and speech, will have established
itself by virtue of the past mental concentra-
tions, as a powerful Sankhara in the being of
the child, and that Sankhara will tend to recur
whenever the needs which led to the original
Samadhi are present, so that the words will
be reproduced automatically, and without fresh
special effort.
Thus we see that Sankharas arise from any
act of mental concentration. The more
THE CULTURE OF MIND 255
powerful, or the more often repeated, is the
act of Samadhi, the more powerful the San-
kharas produced; thus a word in a new
language, for instance, may become a Sankhara t
may be perfectly remembered without further
effort, either by one very considerable effort of
mental concentration, or by many repetitions
of the word, with slight mental concentration.
The practical methods, then, for the culture
and purification of the mind, according to the
method indicated for us by our Master, are
two: first, Samindsati, which is the accurate
reflection upon things in order to ascertain
their nature an investigation or analysis of the
Dhammas of our own nature in this case; and,
secondly, Sammasamddhi 3 or the bringing to
bear upon the mind of the powers of concentra-
tion, to the end that the good states, the good
Dhammas may become powerful Sankharas in
our being. As to the bad states, they are to be
regarded as mere leakages of the central power ;
256 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
and the remedy for them, as for the leaky
locomotive slide-valve, is the powerful practice
upon the good states which are of an opposite
nature. So we have first very accurately to
analyse and observe the states that are present
in us by the power of Sammasati, and then
practise concentration upon the good states,
especially those that tend to overcome our
particular failings. By mental concentration
is meant an intentness of the thoughts, the
thinking for a definite time of only one thought
at a time. This will be found at first to be
very difficult. You sit down to meditate on
love, for instance ; and in half a minute or so
you find you are thinking about what someone
said the day before yesterday. So it always is
at first. The Buddha likened the mind of the
man who was beginning this practice of
Samadhi to a calf that had been used to running
hither and thither in the fields without let or
hindrance, and which has now been tied with a
THE CULTURE OP MIND 257
rope to a post. The rope is the practice of
meditation; the post is the particular sub-
ject selected for meditation. At first the
calf tries to break loose, he runs hither
and thither in every direction ; but is always
brought up sharp at a certain distance from
the post, by the rope to which he is tied. For
a long time, if he is a restless calf, this process
goes on ; but at last the calf becomes more calm,
he sees the futility of struggling, and lies down
by the side of the post. So it is with the mind.
At first, subjected to this discipline of concen-
tration, the mind tries to break away, it runs in
this or that direction ; and if it is an usually
restless mind, it takes a long time to realise the
uselessness of trying to break away. But
always, having gone a certain distance from the
post, having got a certain distance from the
object selected for meditation, the fact that
you have sat down with the definite object of
meditating acts as the rope, and the mind
17
258 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
*
realises that the post was its object, and so-
comes back to it. When the mind, becoming
concentrated and steady, at last lies down bjr
the post, and no longer tries to break away
from the object of meditation, then concentra-
tion is obtained.
But this takes a long time to attain, and
very hard practice; and in order that we
may make this, the most trying part of
the practice, easier, various methods are
suggested. One is, that we can avail ourselves
of the action of certain Sankharas themselves.
You know how we get into habits of doing
things, particularly habits of doing things
at a definite time of day. Thus we get into
the habit of waking up at a definite time
of the morning, and we always tend to wake
up at that same hour of the day. We get into
a habit of eating our dinner at seven o'clock,
and we do n^t-feel hungry till about that time ;
and if we change the times of our meals, at
THE CULTURE OP MIND 259
first we always feel hungry at seven, then,
when we get no dinner, a little after seven that
hunger vanishes, and we presently get used to
the new state of things. In effect the practice
of any act, the persistence of any given set
of ideas, regularly occurring at a set time of the
day, forms within us a very powerful tendency
to the recurrence of those ideas, or to the
practice of that act, at the same time every day.
Now we can make use of this time-habit of
the mind to assist us in our practice of
meditation. Choose a given time of day ; always
practise in that same time, even if it is only for
ten minutes, but always at exactly the same
time of day. In a little while the mind will
have established a habit in this respect, and
you will find it much easier to concentrate the
mind at your usual time than at any other.
We should also consider the effect of our bodily
actions on tjie mind. When we have just eaten
a meal the major part of the spare energy in us
260 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
goes to assist in the work of digestion ; so at
those times the mind is sleepy and sluggish,
and under these circumstances we cannot use
all our energies to concentrate. So choose a
time when the stomach is empty of course
the best time from this point of view is when
we wake up in the morning. Another thing
that you will find very upsetting to your
concentration at first is sound, any sudden,
unexpected sound particularly. So it is best
to choose your time when people are not moving
about, when there is as little noise as possible.
Here again the early morning is indicated, or
else late at night, and, generally speaking, you
will find it easiest to concentrate either just after
rising, or else at night, just before going to sleep.
Another thing very much affects these
Sankharas, and that is place. If you think a
little, you will see how tremendously place
affects the mind. The merchant's mind may
foe full of trouble ; but no sooner does he get
THE CULTURE OF MIND 261
to his office or place of business, than his
trouble goes, and he is all alert a keen, capable
business man. The doctor may be utterly
tired out, and half asleep when he is called up
at night to attend an urgent case ; but no sooner
is he come to his place, the place where he is
wont to exercise his profession, the bed-side of
his patient, than the powerful associations of
the place overcome his weariness and mental
torpor, and he is very wide awake all his
faculties on the alert, his mind working to the
full limits demanded by his very difficult
profession. So it is in all things : the merchant
at his desk, the captain on the bridge of his
ship, the engineer in his engine-room, the
chemist in his laboratory the effect of place
upon the mind is always to awaken a particular
set of Sankharas, the Sankharas associated in
the mind with place.
Also there is perhaps a certain intangible
yet operative atmosphere of thought which
262 THE RELIGION OE BURMA
clings to places in which definite acts have
been done, definite thoughts constantly re-
peated. It is for this reason that we have a
great sense of quiet and peace when we go to a
monastery. The monastery is a place where life is
protected, where men think deeply of the great
mysteries of Life and Death ; it is the home of
those who are devoted to the practice of this
meditation ; it is the centre of the religious life
of the people. When the Burmese people want to
make merry, they have dramatic and singing
entertainments, in their own houses, in the
village ; but when they feel religiously inclined,
then they go to their monastery. So the great
bulk of the thoughts which arise in a monastery
are peaceful, and calm, and holy ; and this
atmosphere of peace and calm and holiness
seems to penetrate and suffuse the whole place,
till the walls and roof and flooring nay, more,
the very ground of the sacred enclosure seem
soaked with this atmosphere of holiness, like
THE CULTURE OF MIND 263
some faint distant perfume that can hardly
be scented, and yet that one can feel. It may
be that some impalpable yet grosser portion of
the thought-stuff thus clings to the very
walls of a place ; we cannot tell, but certain it
is that if you blindfold a sensitive man and take
him to a temple, he will tell you it is a peaceful
and holy place ; whilst if you take him to the
shambles, he will feel uncomfortable or fearful.
And so we should choose for our practice of
meditation a place which is suited to the work
we have to do. It is a great aid, of course,
owing to the very specialised set of place-
Sankharas so obtained, if we can have a special
place in which nothing but these practices are
done, and where no one but oneself goes ; but,
for a layman especially, this is very difficult to
secure. Instructions are given on this point in
the Visuddhi Magga how the priest who is
practising Kammatthdna is to select some place
-a little away from the monastery, where people
264 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
do not come and walk about either a cave or
a cleft in the rocks. Or else he is to make or
get made a little hut, which he alone uses.
But as this perfect retirement is not easy to a
layman, he must choose whatever place is most
suitable some place where, at the time of his
practice, he will be as little disturbed as possible ;:
and, if he is able, this place should not be the
place where he sleeps, as the Sankharas of such
a place would tend, so soon as he tried ta
reduce the number of his thoughts down to one r
to make him go to sleep, which is one of the
chief things to be guarded against.
Time and place being once chosen, it is
important, until the faculty of concentration is
strongly established, not to alter them. Then
bodily posture is to be considered. If we stand
up to meditate, then a good deal of energy goes
to maintain the standing posture. Lying down
is also not good, because it is associated in our
minds with going to sleep. Therefore the sitting
THE CULTURE OF MIND 26 &
posture is best. If you can sit cross-legged, as
Buddha-rupas sit, that is best; because this
position has many good Sankharas associated-
with it in the minds of Buddhist people.
Now comes the all-important question of
what we are to meditate upon. The subjects
of meditation are classified in the books under
forty heads. In the old days a man wishing
to practise Kammatthana would go to some-
great man who had practised long, and had so>
attained to great spiritual knowledge ; and by
virtue of his spiritual knowledge that Arahan
could tell which of the forty categories would
best suit the aspirant. Nowadays this i&
hardly possible, as so few practise this Kammat-
thana ; and so it is next to impossible to find
anyone with this spiritual insight. So the best
thing to do will be to practise those forms of
meditation which will most certainly increase
the highest qualities in us, the qualities of
Love, and Pity, and Sympathy, and Indifference
266 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
to worldly life and cares ; those forms of
Sammasati which will give us an accurate
perception of our own nature, and the Sorrow,
Transitoriness, and Soullessness of all things
on the Wheel of Samsara; and those forms
which will best calm our minds by making us
think of holy and beautiful things, such as the
life of The Buddha, the liberating nature of
the Dhamma He taught, and the pure life which
is followed by His Bhikkhus.
We have seen how a powerful Sankhara is
to be formed in one of two ways : either by
one tremendous effort of concentration, or by
many slight ones. As it is difficult for a
beginner to make a tremendous effort, it will
be found simplest to take one idea which can
be expressed in a few words, and repeat
those words silently over and over again.
The reason for the use of a formula of
words is that, owing to the complexity of
the brain actions involved in the production
THE CULTURE OF MIND 267
of words, very powerful Sankharas are
formed by this habit of silent repetition ; the
words serve as a very powerful mechanical aid
in constantly evoking the idea they represent.
In order to keep count of the number of times
the formula has been repeated, Buddhist people
use a rosary of a hundred and eight beads, and
this will be found a very convenient aid. Thus
one formulates to oneself the ideal of the Great
Teacher ; one reflects upon His Love and
Compassion, on that great life of His devoted
to the spiritual assistance of all beings ; one
formulates in the mind the image of The Master,
trying to imagine Him as He taught that
Dhamma which has brought liberation to so
many ; and every time the mental image fades,
one murmurs Buddhanussati " he reflects upon
The Buddha"' each time of repetition pass-
ing over one of the beads of the rosary. And
so with the Dharnma, and the Sangha which-
ever one prefers to reflect upon.
268 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
But perhaps fche best of all the various
meditations upon the ideal, are what are known
as the Four Sublime States Oattdro Bralima-
vihdra. These meditations calm and concentrate
the Oitta in a very powerful and effective way ;
and besides this they tend to increase in us
those very qualities of the mind which are the
best. One sits down facing east, preferably ; and
after reflecting on the virtues of the Ti-ratana,
as set forth in the formulas Iti pi so Bhagava,
etc., one concentrates one's thought upon ideas
of Love ; one imagines a ray of love going out
from one's heart, and embracing all beings in
the Eastern Quarter of the World, and one
repeats this formula : " And he lets his mind
pervade the Eastern Quarter of the World with
thoughts of Love- with Heart of love grown
great, and mighty, and beyond all measure
till there is not one being in all the Eastern
Quarter of the World whom he has passed over,
whom he has not suffused with thoughts
THE CULTURE OP MIND 269
of Love, with Heart of Love grown great,
and mighty, and far-reaching beyond all
measure." As you say these words you
imagine your love going forth to the east,
like a great spreading ray of light ; and
first you think of all your friends, those
whom you love, and suffuse them with your
thoughts of love. Then you reflect upon all
those innumerable beings in that Eastern
Quarter whom you know not, to whom you are
indifferent, but whom you should love ; and you
suffuse them also with the ray of your love.
And lastly you reflect upon all those who are
opposed to you, who are your enemies, who
have done you wrong; and these too, by an
effort of will, you suffuse with your love " till
there is not one being in all that Eastern
Quarter of the Earth whom you have passed
over, whom you have not suffused with thoughts
of Love, with Heart of Love grown great, and
mighty, and beyond all measure". Again
270 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
you imagine a similar ray of love issuing
from your heart in the direction of your right
hand ; and you mentally repeat the same
formula, substituting the word " Southern " for
" Eastern," and you go through the same series
of reflections in that direction. And so to the
west, and so to the north, till all around you y
in the four directions, you have penetrated all
beings with these thoughts of Love. And then
you imagine your thought as striking downwards,
and embracing and including all beings beneath
you, repeating the same formula, and lastly as
going upwards, and suffusing with the warmth
of your love all beings in the worlds above.
Thus you will have meditated upon all beings
with thoughts of love, in all the six directions
of space ; and you have finished the meditation
on Love.
In the same way, using the same formula,
do you proceed, with the other three Sublime
States. Thinking of all beings who are
THE CULTURE OF MIND 271
involved in the Wheel of Samsara involved in
the endless sorrow of existence thinking
especially of those in whom at this moment
sorrow is especially manifested, thinking of the
weak, the unhappy, the sick, and those who are
fallen ; you send out a ray of pity and
compassion towards them in the six directions
of space. And so suffusing all beings with
thoughts of Compassion, you pass on to the
meditation on Happiness. You meditate on all
beings who are happy, from the lowest happiness
of earthly love to the highest, the happiness
of those who are freed from all defect, the
unutterable happiness of those who have
attained the Mbbana Dhamma. You seek to
feel with all those happy ones in their happiness*
to enter into the bliss of their hearts and lives,
and to augment it ; and so you pervade all six
directions with thoughts of happiness, with
this feeling of sympathy with all that is happy,
and fair, and good.
:272 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
Then, finally, reflecting on all that is evil and
cruel and bad in the world, reflecting on the
things which tempt men away from the holy
life, you assume to all evil beings thoughts of
indifference understanding that all the evil in
those beings arises from ignorance ; from the
Jisavas, the leakages of mental power into
wrong channels. You understand concerning
them that it is not your duty to condemn, or
revile, but only to be indifferent to them ; and
when you have finished this meditation on
Indifference, you have completed the meditation
on the Four Sublime States on Love, and
Pity, and Happiness, and Indifference. The
meditation on Love will overcome in you all
liatred and wrath; the meditation on Pity
will overcome your Sankharas of cruelty
and unkindness; the .meditation on Happi-
ness will do away with all feelings of envy
and malice ; and the meditation on Indifference
take from you all sympathy with evil
THE CULTURE OF MIND 273
ways and thoughts. And if you diligently
practise these Four Sublime States, you will
find yourself becoming daily more and more
loving and pitiful, and happy with the highest
happiness, and indifferent to personal misfor-
tune and to evil. So very powerful is this
method of meditation, that a very short
practice will give results results that you will
find working in your life and thoughts, bring-
ing peace and happiness to you, and to all
around you.
Then there is the very important work of
Sammdsati, the analysis of the nature of things
which leads men to realise how in the Circle
of Samsara all is characterised by the three
characteristics of Sorrow, and Transitoriness,
and Soullessness ; how there is nought that is
free from these three characteristics ; and how
only right reflection and right meditation can
free you from them, and can open for you
the way to Peace. Because men afe very
18
274 THE -RELIGION- OF BURMA
much involved in the affairs of the world ;
because so much of our lives is made up of our
little hates and loves and hopes and fears ; be-
cause we think so much of our wealth, and of
those we love with earthly love s and of our
enemies, and of all the little concerns of our
daily life therefore is this right perception
very difficult to come by, very difficult to realise
as absolute truth in the depth of our hearts*
We think we have but one life and one body ; so
these we guard with very great attention and
care, wasting useful mental energy upon these
ephemeral things. We think , we have but one
state in life ; and so we think very much of
how to better our positions, how to increase
our fortune. :
"I have these sons, mine is this wealth
thus the foolish man is thinking : he himself
hath not. a self ; how sons,; how wealth ? " But
if we could; look back over the vast stairway
of our, innumerable lives, .if we could see how
THE CULTURE OP MIND 275
formerly we had held all various positions, had
had countless fortunes, countless children,
innumerable loves and wives ; if we could so
look back, and see the constant and inevitable
misery of all those lives, could understand our
ever-changing minds and wills, and the whole
mighty phantasmagoria of the illusion that we
deem so real ; if we could do this, then indeed
we might realise the utter misery and futility
of all this earthly life, might understand and
grasp those three characteristics of all existent
things. Then indeed would our desire to escape
from this perpetual round of sorrow be
augmented, so that we would work with all our
power unto Liberation.
There is one form of Sati meditation which is
very helpful, the more so as it is not necessarily
confined to any one particular time of the day,
but can be done always, whenever we have a
moment in which our mind is not engaged.
This is the Mahasatipatthana-, or Grreat
276 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Reflection. Whatever you are doing, just observe
and make a mental note of it, being careful to
understand of what you see that it is possessed
of the three characteristics of Sorrow,
Impermanence, and lack of an Immortal
Principle or soul. Think of the action you
<are performing, the thought you are thinking,
the sensation you are feeling, as relating to
some exterior person; take care not to think
4e l am doing so-and-so" but "There exists
such-and-such a state of action ". Thus take
bodily actions. When you go walking, just
^concentrate the whole of your attention upon
what you are doing, in an impersonal kind of
way. Think : " Now he is raising his left foot,"
or, better : " There is an action of the lifting of
a left foot." " Now there is a raising of the
right foot; now the body leans a little for-
wards s and so advances; now it turns to the
right; and now it stands still." In this way,
just practise concentrating the mind in observing
THE CULTURE OF MIND 277
all the actions that you perform, all the
sensations that arise in your body, all the
thoughts that arise in your mind ; and always
analyse each concentration object as in the
case cited above of the bodily action of walk-
ing. " What is it that walks ? " and by accurate
>
analysis you reflect that there is no person or
soul within the body that walks, but that there
is particular collection of chemical elements,
united and held together by the result of certain
categories of forces, as cohesion, chemical
attraction, and the like. These acting in
unison, owing to a definite state of co-ordina*
tion, appear to walk, move this way and that,
and so on, owing to, and concurrent with, the
occurrence of certain chemical decompositions
going on in brain and nerve and muscle
and blood ; this state of co-ordination
which renders such complex actions possible is
the resultant of the forces of innumerable
similar states of co-ordination; and the
278 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
resultant of all these past states of co-ordination
acting together constitute what is called
a living human being. Thus owing to
certain other decompositions and movements of
the fine particles composing the brain, the idea
arises "I am walking," but really there is no
*' I " to walk or go, but only an ever-changing
mass of decomposing chemical compounds.
Such a decomposing mass of chemical com-
pounds has in it nothing that is permanent,
but is, on the other hand, subject to pain and
grief and weariness of body and mind ; its
principal tendency is to form new sets of co-
ordinated forces of a similar naturenew
Sankharas which in their turn will cause new
similar combinations of chemical elements to
arise thus making an endless chain of beings
subject to the miseries of birth, disease, decay,
old age, and death. And the only way of
escape from this perpetual round of existences
is the following of the Noble Eightfold Path
THE CULTURE OF MIND 279
declared by the Sammasambuddha ; it is
only by diligent practice of His Precepts
that we can obtain the necessary energy for
the performance of Concentration ; by Sam-
masati and Sammasamadhi alone the final
release from all this suffering is to be obtained.
By practising earnestly all these reflec-
tions and meditations the way to liberation
will be opened for us even the way which
leads to Mbbana, the State of Changeless
Peace. Thus do you constantly reflect, alike
on the Body, Sensations, Ideas, Sankhara,s,
and the Consciousness.
Such is a little part of the way of meditation,
the way whereby the mind and heart may be
purified and cultivated. And now for a few
final remarks.
It must first be remembered that no amount
of reading or talking about these things is
worth a , single moment's practice of them.
These are things to be done, not speculated
280 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
upon ; and only he who practises can obtain
the fruits of meditation.
There is one other thing to be said, and that
is concerning the importance of Slla, of Right
Conduct, of Moral Behavior. It has been said
that Sila alone cannot conduct to the Mbbana
Dhamma ; but, nevertheless, this Sila is of the
most vital importance, for there is no Samddhi,
no Mental Concentration without Sila,
without Right Conduct. And why ? Because, re-
verting to our simile of the steam-engine, while
Samddhi, Mental Concentration, is the steam
power of this human machine the fire that heats
the water, the fire that makes that steam and
maintains it at high pressure, is the power of
Sila. A man who breaks Sila is putting out
his fire ; and sooner or later, according to his
reserve stock of Sila fuel, he will have little or
no more energy at his disposal. And so, this
Sila is of eminent importance ; we must avoid
evil, we must fulfil all good, for only in this
THE CULTURE OF MIND 281
way can we obtain energy to practise and apply
our Buddhist philosophy ; only in this way can
we carry into effect that third rule of the
stanza which has been our text ; only thus can
we really follow in our Master's footsteps, and
carry into effect His rule for the purification
of the mind. Only by this way, and by con-
stantly bearing in mind and living up to his
final utterance " Athakho, bhikkhave, amenta-
ydmi vo ; vayadhammd sanlchdrd, dppamddena
sampadetha " for there is no Samadhi, no Mental
Concentration, without Sila> 9 without Right
Conduct.
" Lo ! now. Oh Brothers, I exhort ye ! Decay
is inherent in all the Tendencies ; therefore,,
.deliver ye yourselves by earnest effort."
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT
IN BUDDHISM
WHEN, in the magic crystal of imagination we
evoke the mental imagery of our earlier child-
hood's years, and recall how then we saw and
lieard and felt and thought ; how life appeared,
appealed, and called to us, then fresh from
its re-making, one feature stands out clear
and vivid. Even amidst our dimmest memories
of those bygone days there dominates each
pictured recollection the all-pervading, ever-
present sense of the keen wonder of it all ; that
wonder in which the noble thinker of ancient
{rreece perceived the root and source of all
our human wisdom.
Later in life, indeed, we may encounter
things more seeming new and strange. We
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 288
may travel into distant lands and live amidst
*/
conditions utterly different from all that we
have grown accustomed to. But never, if we
make exception of a man's first penetration
into the interior spiritual realm, never after
those first early years can aught that life brings
us so move our hearts to wonder, so thrill our
very being to the core, as did the common
sights and sounds that life brought us in our
arly childhood. In those days the mere scent
of flowers in the springtime, the sight of some
familiar scene by moonlight, the voice of a
singing bird in summer woods, could call forth
an answer in a very passion of wonder, till the
veil of tbe visible seemed trembling to the
point of rending. The veil of matter seemed
about to part to make clear the way for childish
feet and eager, opened arms to reach forth
into a world of never-ending glamor, into the
faery realm where all is marvellous and
beautiful beyond dreaming, into the land
284 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
of undying Youth, where there is joy for
evermore.
Such is childhood's dream, the leaping and
the laughter of the little stream new sprung
from the dark confinement of the earth,
rejoicing in the freedom of its careless move-
ment, each fall and turning of its way the
harbinger of new joys, new wonders yet to
come. As we have learned during this past
few generations, wherein so vast a field of
knowledge has opened to the gaze of man, the
child but recapitulates, and in its smaller scale
epitomises, all the great common story of the
growth of the whole human race. So the babe
of a few days' growth, so helpless and weak-
seeming, can yet support its weight and will
cling to and hang from the stick we place
within its grip. Thus he enacts the story of
its half -simian and arboreal ancestry : reverting
to the age when the forerunner of the human
species was compelled in infancy to cling to
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 285
boughs of trees, or to its shaggy mother's
breast as she bore it through the woods. So
the healthy boy of a later age delights in
woodcraft, in playing the Red Indian, in mimic
warfare. So, too, the younger child delights
in playing with stones, in dim race-memory of
the palaeolithic age. Thus all young children
love to mould the clay into some dim resem-
blance to man's earliest attempts at pottery.
Every natural child finds fascination in a sea-
shell, earliest adornment of mankind, and listens
with wonder, as his remote adult forbear
listened, to the murmuring voice within the
shell, telling of the music of the waves it never
can forget.
Thus, then, we learn that that keen sense of
wonder, that thrilling sense of imminent,
marvellous happenings, of inner doors about to
open on a world of fantasy and of enchantment
which we have seen so dominating all our
earlier life, must have surely been the common
286 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
feeling, the common attitude, even of adult
humanity in the ages that have passed away.
Even lacking other evidence, we should know
it must have been so. But in fact there is
evidence enough and to spare to just that same
effect. The earliest of human literatures that
have come down to us, all tell this selfsame
story of an all-pervading wonderment at life ;
of marvellous happenings; of wholesale
miracles and magic powers. If one can see the
wonder in the world, that life is full of mystery,
then there are " miracles " enough and to spare I
Here we do not wish to be misunderstood to
imply that, either then or now, there were or
are no marvellous happenings ; or that the
bulk of the strange marvels that the old books
record happened really only in the imaginations
of those peoples -of the childhood of our race.
All the wonders of the Thousand Nights and
One fade into insignificance before the daily >
momentarily repeated .mystery of life^ of
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 287
growth .; to say nothing of the utter miracle of
consciousness, that one is conscious. The more
we learn of the nature of the mind of man,
little as yet we know of it, the more do we see
how all those ancient miracles might have
happened, even if they did not happen in quite
the way that their recorders thought they did*
If it comes to that, what now happens exactly
as the wisest of us moderns think it does ? Till
man has no more to learn, he will never fully
understand, or rightly see, the least and
commonest of happenings in his daily life.
There is a very interesting theory which
has of late years been put forward to explain
the undoubted fact that animals, and even
insects, are able to communicate intelligence,
even of happenings that, to their undeveloped
minds, must seem quite complicated. It is
supposed that the method of communication,
common to the animal world and to; humanity
before the development of language, lies in
288 THE BELIGION OF BURMA
telepathy : in the direct transmission of ideas
from mind, to mind. Mankind also, it is
suggested, was sensitive to mental images,
till the growing use of speech, and its
substitution for the earlier method of com-
munication, superseded this more direct, but
less certain, telepathic communication. By
disuse this telepathy grew slowly atrophied,
except, perhaps, in rare cases of reversion, or
amongst very primitive communities, or under
unusual conditions such as special training or
the like.
This hypothesis, as has been said, was
brought forward to explain certain undoubted
facts. Into those facts, beyond the bare
generalisation of animal communication, as
into certain curious collateral evidence which
goes far to lend support to the idea, it is
unnecessary here to enter. The theory is only
introduced at this point because, in connection
with what we know of the subliminal self, the
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 289
hypothesis casts a very illuminating sidelight
on this subject of marvellous happenings.
The work of the more modern psychologists
has demonstrated the fact that, besides the
ordinary active and self-conscious mental
faculties, of which we are all aware, and with
which we now are functioning, there exists in
each one of us a whole vast realm of mental
functions. To these, since normally they
remain, at our present stage of mental
development, below the threshold of
consciousness, the name of the Subliminal Self
is given. With the normal human being in
this age, this extensive realm of mental faculties
(faculties which in some respects transcend by
far those of the normal waking mind) remains
as it were asleep, or inactive, during waking life.
It is only when the normal waking life is
temporarily suspended, as may occur in ordinary
sleep, in dreams, in somnambulism, and most no-
tably in the hypnotic state, that these underlying
19
290 THE BELIGION OP BUEMA
powers of the subliminal self are active
and dominant. When this occurs, during the
temporary abeyance of the normal waking mind,
an entirely new and in many respects a most
remarkable set of mental phenomena is found to
occur. Take, for example, the faculty of
memory. This, as we all know only too well,
is in waking life a very imperfect and often
unreliable faculty. It is, indeed, just when we
most need to recall some particular event,
name or idea, that it completely eludes our
groping search. The memory of the subliminal
self, on the other hand, appears almost
miraculously perfect. It would appear as
though no single impression of sense, no
faintest conception of an idea, ever entered,
even unconsciously, into the waking mind,
into the content of our experience, but that it
is promptly and perfectly registered in the sub-
liminal realm. Thence it may be, recovered when
this subliminal self is in possession. If, for
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 291
example, we have forgotten some important
word or idea, our best way to recover it is, not to
continue groping after it in the conscious mind,
but simply to go to sleep whilst thinking of
its associated ideas.
A better example, however, of this
perfect memory of the subliminal mind
is to be found in the old classic case
of the woman who, when hypnotised,
would recite with perfect accent and intonation
the Hebrew text of various of the Psalms. As
this woman was of the working class, and
quite illiterate even in her own language, this
appeared to the thinkers of that time (it hap-
pened about a century ago, before the nature
of the subliminal self was known at all) well-
nigh a miracle, until, on going into the past
history of that woman, it was discovered that she
had formerly been maidservant to a clergyman,
a great Hebrew scholar. He was in the habit
of walking about his study and declaiming the
!292 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
text of various favorite Psalms! The
maidservant, of course, could not understand a
single syllable. If asked what her master
was reciting she would probably have answered :
" Oh, some old gibberish or other ! " Naturally,
in her normal mental state she could not have
reproduced a single word of those, to her,
unintelligible utterances. But every syllable
and tone and accent of it all was perfectly
recorded, perfectly registered by the subliminal
mind ; and so, when in later years it happened,
through hypnosis, that this subliminal mind
was in possession, the whole of that un-
consciously stored knowledge could be tapped.
Another most remarkable faculty of the
subliminal mind is its seemingly perfect sense
of the lapse of time. All who have studied
accounts of modern experiments in hypnotism
will be well aware that if, to a hypnotised
subject, the hypnotiser makes a post-hypnotie
suggestion for a determinate time, for example.
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 29 B
that the patient shall, after he or she is awake,
perform such an action at precisely 1,567
seconds after being wakened, that patient, in
nine cases out of ten, will carry out the
suggestion exactly at the moment thus
precisely designated. Needless to say, without
constant reference to a very accurate clock,
such a feat would be impossible to any ordinary
person in the waking state.
This brings us to the point we wish to draw
attention to. If we can, so to speak, give a
command to this subliminal self whilst it is in a
condition to hear us, that command will, even
after a return to the ordinary mental state, be
carried out. It is as though the subliminal
mind had the power, as it were, of dramatising
an idea impressed upon it into an actual and
seeming objective happening. Suggest to a
hypnotised person that, after awakening, he
will see on some blank sheet of paper some
definite design, and his wakened mind will see
294 . THE RELIGION OF BDHMA
it. More remarkable still, if you, say, trace on
the patient's arm a cross with cold metal rod,
having suggested that the simple figure so
traced out will appear in a few hours as if the
mark were branded, then, somehow or other,
the very flesh of the body will obey the com-
mand in the designated time. This will happen
long after the patient, utterly unaware of the
command, has awakened, and that design will
duly appear. Here the phenomenon is not
merely subjective, but it actually objectivises.
No doubt exists as to the possibility of this
phenomenon. It has been produced hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of times within the last
few years.
To connect up what has been said concerning
the subliminal mind with what has gone before*
it. may be pointed out that there is every
reason for supposing that it is this sublimi-
nal mind which is concerned in telepathy ;
even as, in rather rare cases, that mind
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 295
seems capable of sheer clairvoyance and even
foresight.
There is, however, every reason for suppos-
ing that this great group of powers of the
mind which we now, for the reason that has
been mentioned, term the subliminal self or
mind, was far more active, entered far more
completely into the normal waking mental life
of mankind, in bygone ages than it does in our
present times. Perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that that realm of mental action
was nearer to the threshold of consciousness
then than now ; it was more readily susceptible
of being evoked. To take one only of the
many facts which point in this direction. We
have seen how the mind of the child tends to
a constant state of what we may term expectancy.
It is ever ready to suppose itself on the verge
of some great and marvellous happening. Now
this state o expectancy, as those who have
studied modern hypnotism well know, is just
296 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
one of the conditions which predispose to the
sudden lowering of the threshold to the inclu-
sion of more or less of the subliminal realm. It
has been noted that any condition which may
characterise modern childhood is probably a
reminder 3 a recapitulation, of the state in
which the human adult of a thousand years or
more ago commonly lived during his lifetime.
So this tendency of childhood to expectancy,
with its implication of ready suggestibility t
must have been the normal state of mind some
thousands of years ago.
Why is it, then, that when we make some
suggestion involving the marvellous, the
unusual or unexpected, to the normal adult
developed mind as it is now, that suggestion al-
together fails of its effect ? Partly, no doubt,
because the readily suggestible subliminal mind
is then, the person being awake, dormant or
partly inactive. But mainly it is because the
awake mind, aware of the unusualness of the
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 297
suggestion, strongly inhibits that idea from
seizing hold upon the consciousness. If, then,
we could by any means make our suggestion
in such a fashion that it reached the subliminal
self without reaching the awake mind with its
, sane tendency to veto the unusual, then we
might be able to get our suggestion dramatised
into subjective, or even objective fact, just as
we now can with a hypnotised person.
But there is only one way now known to us
of doing this, of speaking, as it were, to the
subliminal mind direct, without the knowledge
or the intervention of the waking mind. That
means is by telepathic communication of the
suggestion direct from mind to mind. We
have seen how it is partly at least the sublimi-
nal mind that is concerned in such telepathy as
now is possible, both in respect of the trans-
mitter and the receiver of the idea. Bearing^
then, in mind the fact that those ancient
peoples lived, so to speak, far more in the
298 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
subliminal realm than is now the case, we can
at once come to see why it was that what we
may term the miraculous was so much more
common than it is now. Again we must not
foe misunderstood to imply that the so-called
miracles did not happen, or rather that they
happened only in the imagination of those
childlike peoples. For we must remember how,
even with the very little that we now know of
the powers of the subliminal region, it is pos-
sible under proper conditions to produce actual
objective happenings, like the appearance of
the brand-mark on a person's skin. Once
grant that the subliminal was in those early
ages nearer to the surface than it now is, and
we can understand how widely this opens the
door for the relatively frequent occurrence of
what are commonly termed miracles.
It was not, then, in respect of faulty
observation, or the pure imagination, of
these strange phenomena that most of
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 299
the ancient peoples went so far astray.
The case, indeed, was closely comparable
to that of modern so-called spiritualistic
phenomena. The miracles, we may quite
comfortably with our modern knowledge grant,
did happen ; just as (apart from cases of
fraudulent " mediums ") the modern phenomena
of the seance-room do occur. One must, however,
admit these to be very feeble beside the effects
of the old-time workers of marvels. It was,
then as now, in respect of the interpretation
placed upon those events that men made the
profoundest error. Then, the common mis-
apprehension was that the miracle-worker
produced his effects through the agency,
compelled or voluntary, of the gods just as
now the common error of the modern spiritualist
is to imagine the phenomena of the seance-room
to be the work of spirits of the dead. And
most of the marvel-workers, then, themselves
believed in. and attributed their wonders to
' 9
800 : THE RELIGION OF BURMA
tfieir gods -just as now most mediums believe
in, and attribute their phenomena to, their
so-called " spirit guides ".
And, since those ancient peoples naturally
attributed to their gods the possession in an
enhanced degree of all their own higher mental
characters, they fell into a far more profound
and more far-reaching error in respect of the
marvels of which they deemed them the prime
movers. In the gods, they thought, was the
spirit of Truth. The marvels were the direct
work of the gods. Therefore they were the
proof of the truth of whatever doctrine the
gods' servant, the visible miracle-worker, gave
utterance to.
Here, of course, we moderns, with our
logically trained minds, altogether part company
with those old-time thinkers. If a man should
come to us, and perform some seemingly
marvellous feat before our eyes, we should, if
we were seized of the scientific spirit, be
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 301
intensely interested in the phenomena. But
however many, and however great and
wonderful, were the phenomena, we should not
on that account be in the least inclined to
accept as true whatever doctrine that wonder-
worker might be pleased to teach. We should,
indeed, regard the claim, that because he could
work wonders, therefore his teaching was true,
as wholly illogical and absurd. But it was far
otherwise with the ancients. To them, the
proof of true doctrine lay in good, sound
miracles. The proof that a man had real
knowledge of the nature of the deeper things
of life lay in his capacity to produce these
wonders, So much so, that with most of the
old-time religions, like Christianity, the marvels
were adduced in proof of the divine mission
und true doctrine of the Founder. Even
modern Christians, for example, would, we
think, agree in admitting that, if the crowning
miracle of the resurrection of their Founder did
302 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
not happen as an historical fact, then Christian
teaching loses its claim to being inspired Truth,
In ancient India, the very home of high
spiritual development, and of the most
wonderful of miracles, this wrong view of the
value of the miracle as a proof of doctrine was
of course most widely spread. So much so,
that we find in our Buddhist Scriptures many a
tale of how this or that religious teacher (in
one celebrated case a whole body of such
teachers) came to The Buddha to propose a sort
of contest in miracle-working, as a proof of
the superiority of their respective doctrines, be
it understood.
As might be expected from what has already
been said in connection with the underlying
mental faculties, it is a part of Buddhist
Teaching that a person can gain control over
the .hidden forces of his own mind as they
develop, and the power to affect the minds of
others in various ways. Certain of these would
THE MIRACDLOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 80S
distinctly come under the heading of the
so-called miraculous. But although these
powers over the minds of others, and even over
what we should term objective phenomena, are
said to come naturally to most in the normal
course of their interior development towards
Arahanship, it must not be supposed that^
according to Buddhist Teaching, the possession
of these powers, or their exercise, proves a man
to be of high and spiritual development^ Rather^
indeed, in some ways it is the opposite. To the
aspirant himself, the development of these
powers is regarded as a possible snare, because
he may become so interested in them, and in
the new worlds which their possession opens to
his investigation, as to forget tbe higher
teaching, and to neglect his training for
the Path itself. On the other hand (these
powers being simply powers, and therefore,
like all powers, capable of being put to ends
either good or bad) they may be developed by
304 THE EELIGION OF BDEMA .
-quite selfish and worldly persons. Thus their
possession proves nothing at all save a certain
degree of mastery over one's own mind, and
over the forces of Nature.
This brings us to what is the most remark-
able circumstance of all : namely, that whilst
Buddhism, like all ancient teachings, declared
the existence of these mental powers, and
indeed used them in its own curriculum of
interior development, it yet put them exactly
in the place that the modern scientific and
logical mind would put them. It denied
that they proved anything at all as to
the truth or otherwise of the doctrine
that might accompany them. The Buddha
Himself, indeed, was said to possess (as would
naturally follow from their connection with
interior mental control) these powers in a more
exalted degree than any other saint or sage.
We are told how, on one occasion, a whole
foody of fire- worship ping ascetics challenged
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 305
the Great Teacher to one of those contests in
the miraculous which have been referred to,
with the usual illogical object of proving, by
their superior miracles, the superiority of their
doctrine over His. The Master accepted
the challenge, wishing, once and for all, to put
an end to these continued and unreasoning
claims, and to place, by a supreme object-
lesson, this matter of miracles in its proper
place.
So, tradition tells us, the contest was held,
in the presence of a vast concourse of people,
attracted by the very human desire to see who
would get the best of it. As the challenging
party, the fire-worshippers, whose piece de
resistance was making the fire of sacrifice
kindle by their magical mastery over the fire-
element, first took the field. But the far
greater power of The Buddha altogether pre-
vented, or even reversed, the effect that they
were wont easily to produce. And then, after
20
306 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
an altogether unparalleled display of marvels, so
wonderful that even the fire-worshipping
ascetics themselves became His followers, the
Great Teacher preached a sermon to the assem-
bled multitude on the Wrong Marvel and the
Eight. He showed how all these marvels were
beside the point of true Religion, of Right
Understanding ; how they proved nothing for
or against the truth of any body of teaching.
Such things, He said, were mere worldly
powers, which anyone who chose to take the
needful trouble could acquire. What, then,
He asked, was the Right Miracle ? It lay, He
said, in the incomparable power of Truth itself,
which, apart from any really unconnected
display of wonders, could so seize upon and
move men's hearts as to make them altogether
change their lives. That was the Right Marvel,
as He saw it : just the power of Truth to
endure, to triumph in men's hearts and live for
ever, even when all these worlds, that are in
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 307
themselves such miracles 9 will have perished
utterly.
Such, then, is the attitude which Buddhism
(in this, as in many other respects, so
singularly modern in its outlook upon life)
takes up towards the question of the miraculous.
The Buddhist sacred books, like all other
ancient literature, teem, indeed, with tales of
the miraculous and marvellous. But, according
to the understanding of even the most unen-
lightened of Buddhists, it relies in no least
degree upon these wonders for its own support.
Take away, if you care to do so, every marvel
recorded in the Buddhist books, and in The
Teacher's own words, the greatest miracle of
all will yet remain the miracle of the power
of Truth to conquer falsehood ; even when the
Truth is hard to bear, when the falsehood
appeals to every hope and passion in our hearts.
Fundamentally, of course, here as in
other contexts where this word Dhamma,
308 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
which I have translated Truth, is concerned,
it is rather the great spiritual power which,
reigning behind all ^consciousness, lies at the
back of every form of progress. At its highest
it is manifested in the Path of Attainment ; in
its lowest aspect, perhaps it is responsible
even for physical evolution. But, in a
secondary degree, it means just what we
moderns mean^by Truth a body of knowledge
which is in harmony with the facts of life.
And how great a wonder is even that lower,
manifested Dhamma, all the story of humanity
but goes to prove. Looking back on the
history of our own civilisation, we see that dim
reflection of the Truth Supernal conquer in
face of all the hopes and fancies and desires
of man. We see it, in the Middle Ages,
dammed back, crushed down by every power
of Church and State, yet conquering in the
end, in spite of all that Church and State
could do. Against the very hopes, the keen
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN BUDDHISM 309
desires of man, we see it triumph even over
rack and stake. It is that great miracle of
Truth which here to-day has emptied and is
emptying the Churches which preach a creed
whose very sanction lies in that old error that
a miracle proves Truth.
JSTot so indeed. As an ancient Buddhist
saying has it : " Truth verily is deathless speech."
Deathless and unconquerable, whether it has
sprung from intensest interior spiritual attain-
ment, or from the patient study of the Universe
which our outer senses present, Truth will
spread and grow amongst the hearts of men,
till all our ignorances, our errors, shall have
passed away ; until at last, after all this weary
round of cyclic transmigration, it shall come
home to each one of us in its highest, holiest
form. Whoso wins that Highest Truth
knows that he has no more to do ; that the
hidden purpose of his being is fulfilled at
last ; that for him there is no more of living as
310 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
we know it. For, as The Master said, it is
only " By not-knowing and not~under standing
that we have come to live so many pain-filled
lives"
THE EULE OF THE INNER KINGDOM
IN Burma there is one of the lesser lessons
which The Master taught us, that still survives,
ages of torpor notwithstanding. That lesson
is the lesson of Charitv, one of the mere minor
ts '
lessons of our faith, namely, that as compas-
sion, or thought for others is noblest of all
human sentiments and ideals, therefore one
who .would call himself in truth a Buddhist,
should give of his worldly goods to the
poor or to religion. That is one Buddhist
lesson that Burma's race -has learned; you
know the fruits of it ; you know how far
your fellow-men live up to it ; it is indeed
your proudest title to the name of followers of
Him who once was called Vessantara the King.
You know how large a part of all this nation's
wealth is spent for purposes of religion; a
312 THE EELIGION OF J3UEMA
vastly larger moiety of the national wealth
for religion than any other race on earth can
boast of! Now, indeed, for want of comprehen-
sion of the real meaning of our motto, " The
gift of Truth outweighs all other gifts," most
of that wealth goes in what we may term
" brick-and-mortar " harity; but still is the
lesser lesson learned, and, what is more to the
point, it bears fruit in every Burman's life.
Teach your new, higher rendering of that
lesson ; teach, as The Master taught, that greater
than these so quickly ruined clay -gifts is the
Truth itself, the Law you seek hereby to
follow ; teach that indeed the gift of Truth is
nobler, greater than all other gifts ; and in years
to come, what could not this single race
achieve in these days of facile transit
and of the printing-press with two-thirds
of humanity that so far has not heard The
Master's Law ? Turn but a tithe, but the
hundredth part, of that so generous tide of
THE EULE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 313
Charity to water the fallow fields of a true
wakening of Buddhist life, of Buddhist
propaganda ; turn but a fraction of your bricks
to books ; a fraction of your Monks again, as in
the ancient glorious days, to teachers of the
Way in other lands ; and you shall see, here in
this actual moving world and not in dreams of
heavenly future life, the Immediate Fruit
Sanditthihiphalam of The Master's Teaching.
You will fulfil the purpose of His Law, and
bring His Light to multitudes still waiting in
the darkness, and watching still the eastern
sky for signs of dawn.
Even so did He behold it, when, making
clear His Heavenly Vision, He looked upon the
Triple World, and watched the presage of the
day to come : The hearts of countless myriads
of beings plunged in Samsara's wave, like
lotuses unnumbered ; and each the symbol of
the miracle and mystery of a life, such miracle
as men so often live and die uncomprehending ;
314 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
heirs of infinitudes unnumbered, yet wasteful of
the swift-winged hours, plunged in the three-
fold tide of Craving, Hatred, and Illusion,
unseen, even to themselves, by reason of
Avijja's night ; many, alas, still clinging to the
mire they sprang from ; yet many another
striving upwards through the clearer waters ;
some even well-nigh to the surface, waiting in
the gloom with hearts unopened, in a world
wherein as yet Truth's glory had not dawned.
Such was His Vision of the world to come,
and so did He, the Wisest, figure what other-
wise might not be conceived of ; the mystery
of universal life, slowly moulded from prime-
val Chaos, as the lotus by life's alchemy
transmutes dead clay to root, to leaf, and final
bloom. So, with the Buddha- vision He beheld
it, and perceived : " Many there are now, and
shall follow in the ages yet to come, hearts well-
nigh free from all these three floods, who,
if the Truth's great sun should dawn, would
THE RULE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 815
open to reflect his rays " ; and, so knowing, did
He then decide to set on foot the Kingdom of
Righteousness, so that in the hearts of men that
light of Truth might come.
To take a part in that great work, however
humble, to live and strive for that great
realisation, how high a task ! yet it is within the
reach of all of us, howsoever little be his earthly
lot ; a task indeed ever bearing for the gathering
its Immediate Fruit the harvest of the
Dhamma, Inviting, Timeless, Sure !
Such is in fact a part of the possibilities life
has for us here in this outer world, the world
wherein our fellows live and strive. Yet, for
each one of us, there is yet another Kingdom
which we may help to enlighten ; a Kingdom
indeed near, necessary, vital to us, if in the outer
realm our work shall prosper and attain.
In the outer world our words, our work,
our life has influence ; wider and wider
we mav kindle in our comrades 5 hearts the
316 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
ancient spirit of our Buddhist faith ; but here
we have the power of influence only. In the
inner kingdom, it is we who are at once the
ruler and the ruled ; as in the face of Yama,
Death's Great King, all men and all beings of
the Threefold World stand equal, even so
stand we all in respect of conquest or failure
in this inner empire. "Without, our lot, our
power for good, is as our bygone actions
made it ; within, our only present possession is
the kingdom of the heart, where none can
gainsay us or thwart the hope we have.
Now, then, in this our empire indeed the
throne of power may be . usurped either by
passion or hate or folly, rightly not our ruler
but our slave, to whom betimes we foolishly
bow. How in this kingdom of the mind
should we so rightly order all our ways,
that we may become indeed the ruler of
that inalienable realm, Lords of Self's
Sovereignty, and walk therein as did Asoka in
THE BULK OF THE INNER KINGDOM 317
the world? It is our great ideal to spread
through the kingdoms of the earth the over-
lordship of the King of Truth. How should we
live and work that for a surety one realm at
least may own His sway, as outcome, as visible
Immediate Fruit of our ideal " Live so as to
merit the name of Buddhist "and win there-
by the inner power which alone can make our
words and deeds influence our comrades
in the outer world, the world of men ?
The answer to this vital question is the
simplest in the world, so far as words go;
most difficult of all things, when it comes to
real achievement. Let us consider the words
of it, even as spoken by The Buddha Himself.
Under the great twin Sala-tree by Mallian
Kusinara the Lion of the Sakya Clan lies nigh
to death ; the life that changed and still
throughout the centuries is changing all the
history of humanity is now swiftly drawing to
its end. About Him kneel a mighty company
318 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
of the Brethren, such a company, indeed, as
now I fear the visible Sangha of the world
could never furnish ; for all of them save
Ananda have won to Life's Supremest Goal,
Arahans, ever beholding, face to face, Nibbana's
glory ; the Three Great Floods for them crossed
over ; their course towards the Eternal finished ;
passed, gone over to the Further Shore.
Now at that time, the story in the Sutta
tells us, Beings innumerable from all the
Heavens above gathered to Kusinara's grove
to pay what seemed a fitting reverence to Him
who was Teacher both of gods and men, even
the laws of .Nature changing, so that these
might have their will. All out of season the
Sala-tree brake into blossom, and the flowers
scattered and sprinkled themselves over the
body of the Tathagata, out of reverence for
the Successor of the Buddhas of Old. And
heavenly Mandarava-flowers came falling from
the skies, and these also scattered and sprinkled
THE BULB OF THE INNER KINGDOM 319
themselves all over the body of the Tathagata,
out of reverence for the Successor of the
Buddhas of Old. And heavenly perfumes fell
from the skies, and these scattered and sprinkled
themselves over the body of the Tathagata, out
of reverence for the Successor of the Buddhas
of Old. And the sound of the voices of the
gods, singing the Triumph of The Teacher, and
heavenly music, came floating on the breeze,
out of reverence for the Successor of the
Buddhas of Old ; till on that moonlit night
in Kusinara's grove it seemed as though. all
Nature and the gods themselves had united
to offer fitting reverence and fitting worship to
Him who lay there ; waiting for Death's last
boon. But The Teacher spoke, and all the gods
were silent : " It is not thus, Ananda, that
the Tatkdgatas are rightly worshipped, rightly
reverenced, rightly borne in mind. But whoso,
Ananda, whether Bhikkhu or BhiWiuni, Updmka
or Upasilcd, shall walk according to the Teaching
320 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
I have given> by such an one am I rightly
worshipped, rightly reverenced, rightly borne
in mind !"
So is our answer. The true worship of the
Buddhas is not even in divinest-seeming outer
offering or praise ; rightly that one shall be
called a follower of The Buddha, rightly will he
merit the name of Buddhist, who walks the Way
The Buddha found ; that is, the Way, that He,
the Master of Compassion, walked first Himself,
twenty-five centuries ago in India.
To be a Buddhist, then to rule as Cakkavatti
king over this our personal heart's empire
means no outer act of worship, no lip-
testimony of Buddhism; but only walking
in such wise as all our powers make possible,
in just that Way the Buddhas walked of old .
It means to set before us, not sometimes
only, but through every hour of our lives, and
to the utmost of our powers, the ideals by which
the Buddhas shape their lives ; to aspire as they
THE RULE OP THE INNER KINGDOM 321
aspired ; to live and walk in such high hopes as
the Bodhisattas, the Buddhas-to-be, have lived.
Nor is this unattainable, remote, impossible ;
for you must always remember that the Way
of the Buddhas is not the Way they walk in
that last life on earth wherein the Final
Enlightenment is won ; the Bodhisattas begin
to walk in that Way from the far distant day
in which their great resolve is taken. But the
Bodhisattas save only for the special Ideal,
ever-growing as they win to height after
height of that Path are men such as ourselves,
perchance taking even lower birth according to
their deeds. So that, if, as indeed is true, we
cannot achieve such a life as that which in
this last birth The Buddha led, still, if we
shape our lives by the ideal which from the
beginning inspires the Bodhisatta, we, to some
small extent and in some humble manner, can
even now enter, immeasurably distant though
the Goal may be, on that one Path whereon to
21
322 TEE RELIGION OP BURMA
walk is to be truly worthy of the name we
claim.
The work we have to do, then, that we may
make this our heart's empire Buddhist, is,
primarily, to strive after one definite ideal.
Whatever else we may do, whatever special
virtue we may strive for, whatever discipline
we may practise, whatever religious exercises we
may use, it must be with that one aim in view ;
the aim that characterises the Way the Buddhas
go, even though five hundred lives may lie
between us and the Great Attainment.
What that especial ideal is, all Buddhists
know full well ; its keyword is Renunciation ;
its hope is the attainment of the higher
Wisdom ; its aim is the relief of somewhat of
the world's great suffering, the winning of
enlightenment and power, not that oneself may
profit by it, but that benefit may come to all
the living world. This is the special purpose,
the sublime ideal, characterising the Way the
THE KULE OF THE INNEK KINGDOM 323
Buddhas walk ; it is to have, and to live up to
that ideal, far off and humbly though it be,
thus to work and strive and suffer, so that
thereby all life may find the Way of Peace.
Hear how The Master Himself describes, in
the Patisambhida-magga, the nature of that
ideal. We must remember, of course, that here
it is no humble follower that is speaking, there-
fore it is no aspiration such as we might frame*
nor language we might use; but the final
blossoming of that ideal of the Great
Compassion, in the language of One who had
attained finished His work, and won the Goal
and possessed of the power which comes to
him who life after life has walked Renuncia-
tion's Way.
"On fire are all the habitations of the
world, so seeing, the Great Compassion for
living things descends into the Hearts of the
Buddhas, the Exalted Ones ! Fallen into an evil
way . . . without a shelter . . . without a
324 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
refuge . . . inflated, unsoothed, so seeing, the
Great Compassion for all living things descends
into the Hearts of the Buddhas, the Exalted
Ones ! Pierced is the world with many darts 3
and there is none to draw them out but 1 1
Flung into a cage of corruption, enwrapped with,
the gloom of ignorance, and there is none can
make it to see light but I ! None but Myself is
able to put out the fires of lust and misery.
I crossed over, I can make them cross; freed,
I can make them free ; so seeing, the Great
Compassion descends into the Hearts of the
Buddhas, the Exalted Ones."
Such is The Master's own expression of the
Great Ideal. Surely we indeed are very
very far from that glad realisation" Freed,
I can make them free " far indeed from that
perfection of Pity, outcome of many a life
spent on the Way of all the Buddhas, which in
the Text is called the Great Compassion ; still,
in our lesser way we can fill our lives and light
THE RULE OP THE INNER KINGDOM 325
our hearts with that ideal. That it is, truly, to
"rightly worship, rightly reverence, rightly
bear in mind " the Greatest of the wide world's
Teachers, to follow in the Path He went, to
live according to His Law.
Who, indeed, in this our life with all
its petty trials, has not, in an immediate
and obvious way, countless opportunities to
rule his kingdom after that ideal ? Chiefly,
of course, living after that ideal means an
ordering of the inner kingdom of the mind, the
constant resumption of the thought : " I will live
and work and strive only that the sorrow in the
hearts of all. may thereby be diminished " ; that,
and the constant watchful suppression of every
thought for self as it may arise. But, apart
from the heart's kingdom, in relation to the
outer world about us, how much benefit we
could confer on those who live about us by
ever striving to bring forth fruits of our ideal
in the little multitudinous relations with our
326 THE EELIGION OF BURMA
fellows that make up our lives ! Slowly, alas !
even with rigidest constant rule, may we
perceive the fruits, in ever-growing love and
understanding, of the attempt to win this in-
terior empire to the Way of the Buddhas ;
quickly, on the other hand, do we perceive the
welcome fruit of this our golden rule put into
practice in the outer world ! To bear sorrow
silently, and present a smiling face to the
world without, lest the visible tokens of our
grief should bring suffering to the hearts of
others ; to avoid sharp-spoken words ; to abhor
as our great enemy each least act fraught
with another's pain ; to count as gain each help-
ful word spoken or deed done for those about
us- how soon, of all such sowings of our
great ideal, may we not see the fruits in our
comrades' lives ! Far we may be, and far
indeed we are, from being able even to conceive
the nature of the Great Compassion that the
Buddhas, the Awakened, feel; like so many a
THE RULE OP THE INNER KINGDOM 827
term used in the Buddhavacanam, this stands
for a state of consciousness not to be attained
save as the outcome of many an arduous life.
But if the Pity of the Buddhas now lies far
beyond our grasp, our very thought, its seed,
the Pity of Mankind may still be sown, and its
harvest gathered, be ever so small the world
wherein we live and move.
One thing essential to the ordering of the
inner kingdom is the daily practice of definite
mental culture, Bhavana, to that end. Sllci
and Dana, practice of Virtue and of Charity,
are the common bases of all the great religions ;
of themselves they are quite unable to bring
anything more than happier and freer lives ;
their fruit is in the future, rarely visible now
in this earthly life. But the practice of
Bhavana alone can lead us to the Holy Path ;
its fruits are immediate, visible in our hearts
and ways. It is as the Royal Edicts, carved on
rock and stone, wherewith, like the emperor
328 THE RELIGION OF BUKMA
Asoka, we may make known the purpose of
our rule to every subject of the inner empire.
In Burma there are many works dealing
with the details of the various practices
of Bhavana ; here, in connection with the
special ideal which should inspire the would-be
Buddhist, I can indicate the barest outline of
but one. Choosing some time when we can be
alone each day (the times of dawn and sunset
are the best, but any time will do so long as it
is always the same time), sitting alone after our
daily religious exercises, we call to mind the
words of The Buddha treating of the meditation
on Compassion. " And he lets his mind
pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts
of Compassion, and so the second, so the third,
and so the fourth ; so that the whole wide
world, above, around, below, and everywhere,
does he continue to pervade with thoughts of
Compassion ; with Heart of Compassion grown
great, mighty and far-reaching and beyond all
THE RULE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 329
measure. Just as, Vasettha, a mighty trumpeter ,.
makes himself heard, and that without difficulty,
in all the Four Directions, even so of all beings
that have form or life there is not one that he
passes by, but regards all with mind set free,
with deep Compassion," Bearing in mind this
or some similar utterance of The Teacher, we
endeavor, with the greatest intensity of
mental effort of which we are capable, to hold
our thoughts upon the meaning of the passage ;
to waken in ourself , as represented therein, the
thrill of pity that naturally arises when we see
some fellow-life in pain. That thrill of pity
once awakened, directed as in our passage to
the multitudinous beings caught in the surging
whirlpool of Craving, Passion, and Illusion, is
to be dwelt on, magnified, purified in our
thoughts, always with our ideal as its substratum,
with the idea that this definite cultivation of an
emotion otherwise only occasional, will open for
us the entrance to the Path the path that
330 THE RELLGION OF BURMA
leads to power to help relieve the sorrow of
the world ; and so, each day we meditate, always
at the same time, for such a duration as we are
able. At first we find the words employed
important; also we find that our ability
to awaken the thrilling feeling of pity (which
is in this case the first Nimitta) varies very
much on different days ; sometimes it will seem
to come almost without an effort, and yet on
other occasions we may never get as far as its
awakening at all. Another of the invariable
effects on the beginner is the arising of a
definite distaste for the practice we are engaged
in ; we find that a very strong persuasion
arises that the whole thing is useless ; we
want at the selected time to do anything else
but meditate ; we find a tendency to leave off
the practice altogether, or to leave it alone till
it becomes welcome to our minds once more.
When these opposing thoughts are uppermost,
moreover, our mind will wander, the Nimitta
THE RULE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 331
will not easily arise, perhaps not at all ; we
feel convinced that we have not the right
method, or the right sort of mind for
meditation practices.
Now it is just at the point when, by the
arising of these opposing ideas, our progress
seems altogether stopped, that we are
despite the difficulty and despite the apparent
lack of result able to do most in the way of
overcoming those Five Hindrances which
always oppose any attempt to meditate. This
is why it is so important always to practise at
our chosen time, to let no feeling or condition
of our affairs interfere ; at such times it is
better even merely to say the words, were it for
a few minutes only, than to give up or to miss
the practice of one day.
How long it takes to win to the next stage,
the stage in which the Immediate Fruit of our
meditation becomes apparent, depends in the
first place on the energy and determination with
332 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
which we go into and sustain the practice;
also on our Kaimna 5 health, and many other
things. If, winning to nothing, we give it up
at the first appearance of obstacles, letting
our fickle minds wander whithersoever they
will, then, trying to meditate now and again
by fits and starts, we shall never accomplish
anything in the matter at all. But if, with
silent, brave determination we understand that
all our difficulties are only questions that time
and determined will can overcome ; if we
persevere against all obstacles and, even if
it take us years, press ever onwards, under-
standing these obstacles as but the outcome
of our bygone lives ; if we keep on, then, one
day or other, the first real step upon the actual
Path will be made. Suddenly, some time when
we have awakened and magnified to our utmost
that internal overpowering sensation or thrill
of pity, suddenly and without a warning our
first Immediate Fruit will come; and for,
THE ROLE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 333
perhaps an instant only as our minds count
time, we shall enter and dwell in the state of
the First Jhana.
Then we shall know, and for the first
time understand the truth of what we have
read, as words and words only in the
sacred books, but never have seen or
known. As from the heart of a dark thunder-
loud at night time when nought or but a
little of earth or heaven can be seen, suddenly
the lightning flashes, and for an instant the
unseen world gleams forth in instantaneous
light, light penetrating every darkest corner,
flushing the clouded sky with momentary
glory so then, at that great moment, will
come the realisation of all our toil. No words,
no similes, no highest thought of ours can
adequately convey that mighty realisation ; but
then, at that time, we shall know and see;
we shall realise that all our life has changed of
a sudden, that what of yore we deemed
334 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Compassion what of old we deemed the
utmost attainment that the mind or the life of
man can compass th?*t is ours at last; we
have won, achieved, and entered into the Path
of which mere words can never tell. As is
deep sleep to sudden wakening to day's bright
consciousness ; as sight's coming to the man born
blind ; as life from death itself so, in that
instant, dawns for us the moment of attain-
ment. As a flash lighting up the darkest corners
of our mental kingdom, revealing, clear and
luminous, the wide unconquered empire of
the mind, so comes for the aspirant the glorious
moment of attainment. Living, as we cannot
think of life, yet still with the feeling of self-
conscious being, of identity with that one who
lived and strove ; with mind still reasoning, dis-
cerning, he who has attained understands : " At
last I have attained." With that knowledge,
just as all the heavens start forth into momen-
tary glory at the lightning flash, so is his being
THE BOLE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 835
flushed, illumined with an ecstasy of joy past
mortal speech or thought. But for an instant
only, yet that instant's light even if never
again he could achieve that instant's light
suffices to make new his life, to illumine for
him all his future ways. For ever after, he
who has so attained sees life with other eyes
than heretofore ; he knows that, ignorant and
uncomprehending as he now still is, once his
mind's Vision saw the very meaning and the
purpose of existence ; for him no more the vain
and purposeless wandering here and there,
seeking for this or that new object of the
sense or thought. He knows there is a meaning
and a purpose, vaster than thinking mind can
hold, behind, beyond, this petty dream of lif e ;
no more can foolish doubt assail him ; the Path
is his, the Way is opened, the Way that leads
to that great Goal once seen afar.
You know how once the king Ajatasattu
came to the Exalted One, asking for an answer
336 THE RELIGION OF BDEMA
to his question as to the Immediate Fruit.
Here in this world, he said, men follow many
a different worldly way 9 in this trade or the
other, earning their livelihood by this or that
profession. Now in all these ways of life,
the king maintained, there is for the worker an
Immediate Fruit -visible, obvious, dear to him ;
the wealth that makes him able to live, give
help, betimes, to others, win what may be
of his heart's desires, maintain his family and
parents, dwell in happiness amongst his fellow-
men. But of this Religious Life, the king
declared, no such Immediate Fruit, pleasant and
dear to man, fulfilling his purified desires,
<5ould be perceived. Where then, he asked The
Teacher, where is the Immediate Fruit of this
Beligious Life, for the sake of which men in
the world live according to the precepts of
religion, for the sake of which the Samana
leaves house and home and devotes himself
to the harder Precepts of the Bhikkhu,
THE RULE OF THE INNEB KINGDOM 337
and to the fulfilment of the duties of the
Higher Life ?
And The Teacher answered him : " Yes, there
truly is many a Fruit, immediate and visible
to him who wins it, of this Religious Life " ;
and some of these He taught the king. First
the mere loMka advantages ; the happiness
which comes to him who keeps the Ways of
Righteousness, who lives in accordance with
the Precepts, the peace and the calm joy
which spring within him as he sees : " Formerly
I lived s unrestrained in appetite, craving for
this and that, yet never satisfied ; now do I
live, by practising this Sila, calm, restrained,
at peace within ; this it is well and noble to
have done." But, continued The Buddha, there
are other, higher, nobler Fruits of the Holy
Life ; visible, satisfying, to be realised by him
who strives ; Immediate Fruits of the Higher
Life, dearer and sweeter than any fruit of
worldly or of virtue's ways. Of those Higher
22
338 THE RELIGION OF BUEMA
Fruits the first is. the attainment of the First
Great Ecstasy ; happy is he, in this world and
the next, who has attained so far, be it only an
instant's seizing on the Fruits of but the First
Attainment.
All this so real-seeming life we lead,
this earth we walk on, men about us, or the
containing Heavens above ; all this, and whatso-
ever we may see, feel, hear or know, is but the
phantom, the puppet-show, enacted, as a dream
is, by the deep mystery that we term the Mind.
He who would free himself from this Illusion ;
who with clear-seeing Wisdom's eye would rule,
and understand, and help he first must rule in
his inner kingdom ; he must guide and develop
it till he no longer is slave of its desires, but
emperor of them all. And he indeed who seeks to
make his life worthy of the name of Buddhist ;
who seeks to follow in the "Way The Master
walked and taught of old ; who seeks to gain
the power that comes with Understanding, that
THE RULE OF THE INNER KINGDOM 339
lie may in Ms humble way bring joy, not sorrow
to the worldthat one, like Dhammasoka in the
olden days, first has to conquer these usurping
enemies, the Five Great Hindrances, the
passions, follies, and weaknesses within. Then,
that his rule may be established, like as Asoka
; engraved on pillar and on rock and cave the
Royal Edicts, so must he, on his heart of hearts,
inscribe in deep -cut characters his great ideals,
If we can do but this ; if for The Buddha's Law
we will subject our own inalienable empire
then with the certainty of success we may send
forth our Sasana over the whole wide world.
Each one of us who weakens in the task is
weakening the religion ; each one who overcomes
the tests brings strength and light to it from far
beyond Illusion's Veil. By such sustained,
enduring, arduous toil, shall we accomplish this
first and greatest of our aims ; we shall light, in
this sleeping land, the old ideal once more, kindle
to new and greater vigor the ancient pitying
340 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
fervor of our faith. Greater than all other
tasks is this, its fruits immediate, timeless,
sure ; leading not us alone but all- who may
thereby hereafter follow the Hidden Way
The Buddhas have trodden and have taught
from life and death's unending circle, over
the trackless wastes of dire Avrjja's ocean,
safe, safe, safe, on to the Other Shore !
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM
THERE are few circumstances more surprising
to the student of comparative religion than the
fact that, in the pure Buddhism of the
Theravdda, which constitutes the national
religion of Burma, he finds exhibited, both in
the scriptural sources of the religion, and in
the lives of the people who follow it, an all-
pervading spirit of intense devotion a spirit of
loving adoration, directed to The Buddha, His
Teaching and His Brotherhood of Monks, such
as is hardly to be equalled, and certainly not to
be excelled, in any of the world's theistic creeds.
To one, especially, who has been brought up
in the modern western environment, this
earnest devotion, this spirit of adoration, seems
almost the last feature he would expect to find
in a religion so intellectually and so logically
342 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
sound as this our Buddhist faith. He has
been accustomed to regard this deep emotion
of adoration, as the peculiar prerogative of the
Godhead of whatever forms of religion he has
studied. So to find it in so marked a degree,
in so predominant a measure, in a creed from
which all concept of an animistic Deity is
absent, appears as well-nigh the most remark-
able, as it was the most unexpected feature, of
the many strange and novel characteristics of
this altogether unique form of religious
teaching. That trusting worship, that self-
abnegating spirit of devotion in which, in the
rest of the great world -religions, the devotee
loses himself in thoughts of the glory, power,
and love of the Supreme Being of whom they
teach, so far from being absent here, whence
all thought of such a Being is banished, actual-
ly exists in a most superlative degree. It is
lavished, indeed, on no hypothesis, on no Being
whom none has ever known or seen, but on the
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 348
thought of a man, not altogether different from
ourselves, who once lived without a doubt on
this our earth, and on the Truth He taught,
and on the Brotherhood He founded for the Ton-
tinuance of that Dhamma, and for the finding
of that Peace whereto He showed the Way.
. Wherever else you find that spirit of devo-
tion, it will always be associated with blind
faith ; with that trusting mental attitude which
is characteristic of the earlier stages of our
mind's development, the unquestioning faith
and love a little child exhibits towards those
elders who constitute its small restricted world.
To the dawning infantile intelligence, the chief
feature of the life, in which it so far can
scarcely distinguish betwixt self and not-self,
is its own absolute dependence on mother or
nurse for the food that constitutes almost its
sole desire; to that central all-bestowing
figure of its narrow horizon it looks for every *
thing ; it deems nurse or mother the omnipotent
344 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
dispenser of all human blessings, so far as it
can come to aught approaching abstract
generalised thought. Then, later, as the ever-
recurring marvel of the growth of Mind out of
this mere mass of sentiency is enacted, as these
early days pass on to childhood, and thought,
marshalled to the tune of speech, begins to
raise the budding life above the purely animal
horizon, the same depending, trusting, all-
relying attitude supervenes, directed now to all
those elders who form the environment of the
dawning mental life. If the moon seem a
bright and glorious plaything, the child will ask
it for his own, never doubting but that the
omnipotent elder could grant the boon if he or
she were so disposed. All the child learns is
thus assimilated by faith and faith alone ; and
that indeed is well for us, seeing that without
that blind dependence we at that age, lacking
the power of spontaneous thinking, could
assimilate no thought at all.
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 345
This faith or blind devotion, then, constitutes
an essential feature of mind-growth; by
it, and not by reasoning, by judgment, or
discernment, are our earlier concepts moulded.
By it do we acquire all our earlier ideas of
life, of right and wrong action, of the nature
of the world in which we live; by it alone we
lay the foundation-stones of the future structure
of our mental life. This structure, indeed, is
likely to become either a temple, a great and
glorious palace, or a sordid hovel, the abode
and haunt of ignorance and crime, according
as these faith-moulded corner-stones accord the
more with truth and understanding, or with
false views and the dictates of our elders 5
ignorance. In that early stage, all that comes
must be accepted without thought of question-
ing; and the mere attestation of an elder
suffices to assure the childish mind of the truth
of any folly or superstition, howsoever great
it may be.
346 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
Now the growth of all mankind, of races
and of nations, only repeats, on the wider
platform of human, racial, or national life,
the microcosmic play of the individual develop?
ment. Bather, perhaps, the truth might better
be approximated by exactly the inversion of
this statement, that the individual life follows
the universal, since our Dhamma teaches us
that in reality all life is one, and therefore the
true prototype, the real unit, lies not in the
individual, but the whole of life at large.
However that may be, certain it is that in*
dividual and racial life both pass through
stages so similar as to be obviously in some way
connected ; and, just as some human children
are more backward than others, and thus much
later pass out of this early era of faith-founded
knowledge, so is it also with the nations and
races of mankind. The further you go back
in the history of human civilisation, the more
clearly do you see on every hand how, in those
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 847
days, what we now term reasoned knowledge
was simply unknown, undreamed of by the
great masses of mankind ; it was achieved only
by such few individuals as were wiser and far
more developed than their fellows. It is as
though our forefathers never passed at all out
of this early age of simple-hearted faith, knew
naught of questionings, comparisons, decisions,,
as to right and wrong, truth or falsehood, save
what they learned by national and racial tradi-
tion, - For them, blind faith took that
position which now, for us who are grown nearer
to human adolescence, is occupied by Wisdom*
Knowledge, Understanding, the fruit and
heritage of years of questioning search and of
earnest investigation of the facts of life,
For that, of course, is the special feature of
the next stage of mental growth which follows
mental childhood, the period of adolescence*
when, if we rightly win to its attainment, all
those earlier faith-laid corner-stones of our
348 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
mental fabric are subjected to keenest scrutiny,
to most careful testing of their soundness and
their strength. Still the great mass of our
humanity, of course, never reaches even to this,
which is but the second stage of mental
growth ; most men are still content to take
life as they find it, its philosophies and faiths
just as their fathers held. But, in our modern
age, in our new civilisation of but a hundred
years, swiftly indeed those old conditions
vanish ; year after year more and more men
pass from the ranks of human childhood, of
the Age of Faith, into those of human adoles-
cence, of the Age of Investigation. Some
few, perhaps, already, are passing yet
beyond this limit, here and there ; in this or
that department of our mental life are draw-
ing nearer to full Understanding ; to that
goal of full mental development, which our
Buddhism sets before us as the ultimate ideal
of life.
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 349
This, then, is the reason why the occidental
student in particular, one born and bred at the
very heart of this new era of transition which
even in Burma is already so swiftly changing
all the old sanctions and the ways of life finds
with surprise this strong element of devotion
in the Buddhist Teaching ; and he finds it, still
more vivid and manifest in Burma's daily life.
For him, at first sight, it seems almost a token
of degeneration, an instance of atavism, of throw-
ing backwards to an earlier stage of religious
development than that most modern, most
advanced position to which it is so clearly, so
uniquely entitled, by virtue of the logical, the
reasoned basis of all its prominent and funda-
mental Teachings.
If the student has really gained a grasp
of the true significance of Buddhism in human
thought and development, as also of its place
in human history, he will have understood that
here in very truth exists a body of religious
350 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
teaching not at all like the theistic creeds. For,
unlike them, it is suited not only to the Age of
Faith, the era of human mental childhood, bat
&lso to this new Age of questioning, of Investi-
gation, of mental adolescence, into which at the
present day the more cultured members of
modern civilisation are entering and have
entered. Studying to gain a right perspective
and a correct appreciation of the significance of
Buddhism, he must needs have studied the
conditions amidst which Buddhism had its
foirth in India twenty-five centuries ago, he
will have grasped the fact that Buddhism,
alike in its internal evidence and structure,
and in the history of its origin, takes a
place amongst the great world-religions, not
unlike that which is held by the whole
body of modern science as compared with the
logomachies of the Middle Ages in Europe.
Historically it takes this unique position,
inasmuch as we find in it the admitted ultimate
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 351
of Aryan religious thought. For that eastern
branch of the great Aryan Race which gave
it birth, had reached, even before the days of
The Buddha, to heights of religious experience,
to depths of religious philosophy and world-
view, such as even now is far from being
attained by any race amongst the several
nations into which the western branch has
differentiated. For this fact the reason is not
far to seek, for true religion, and most of all
the deeper, subtler levels of religious philosophy,
is the fruit and outcome only of a life set free
from worldly cares ; it can only arrive at such
great heights, as it had then attained in India^
under conditions in which great opportunity
for protracted thought and meditation is present ;
in brief, like all true science, it is rather the
offspring of human leisure than of a life of
human toil. The climatic environment in
which the eastern Aryans found themselveSj
once they had fairly established their colonies
352 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
in the fair and fertile plains of middle India,
offered opportunities for leisured thought, such
as were utterly denied to their northward- and
westward-tending kinsmen of the European
branch, in their harsher climate and wolf-
haunted forests. And this circumstance, com-
bined doubtless with the fact that the
eastern Aryans, in their genial climate, grew
far more quickly to maturity in the mental
sphere, even as they earlier attained to physical
fulness of ^growth, had already, even before The
Buddha's time, resulted in a stage of religious
development such as far transcended aught
that any western race as yet can show. In
matters of material development, indeed, the
Indian Arvans were little more advanced
*/
than are their descendants now; but in the
deeper things Tof life, which go together to
make up religion, they had travelled further
than any race iof which our human history
tells.
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 358
We have seen, in the incomparable
achievements of western science and its
applications daring the past hundred years,
what marvellous heights can be attained by the
Aryan mind, when once it emerges from the
Age of Faith, of mental childhood, and grows
to mental youth in an Age of Investigation.
In all our records there is nothing like it, the
achievement in so short a period of a body of
knowledge and power so great. "What that
wonderful instrument of the keen, clear Aryan
mind, thus lately grown to the stature of the
manhood in the West, has of late years
accomplished in the sphere of the material
sciences, all that, and more indeed, had the
Aryans of the Gangetic valley accomplished
in the vaster, wider empire of religious
experience and life.
To all that long era of immense religious
activity, to all the long glorious line of Indian
sage and saint, The Buddha came as the crown
23
354 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
and greatest glory ; His Teaching, as the last
achievement of Aryan religious thought and
life. Thus it happened, as has been said
above, that the student of* Buddhist origins
finds how the very historical circum-
stances of the birth of Buddhism mark it
at once as the one religion, so far known
on earth, which is the offspring, not of the
Age of Faith, but of the Age of Under-
standing; the sole religion known so far,
which is stated in the terminology of mental
and intellectual, rather than emotional life. What
this external evidence of history teaches us
concerning it, that also is no less manifest from
the internal witness of the Teachings set forth
in its sacred sources, the wonderful philosophy,
so true and obvious when once we know it,
which we find The Master's word expounds.
Here is no teaching of blind faith, no shutting
of our eyes to the pain, the cruelty, the
changefulness of life; no setting aside of the
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 355
great problem of suffering as a mystery into
which, we must not seek to penetrate; no fond
and fair belief that all of it is somehow for the
best, in that it all was made and still is guided
by some great mystic Being whom none has
ever known or seen.
In the place of all that fare for human
mental infancy, we have the harder and
yet strength-building food of adult man ; the
problem of evil nobly faced and met, with the
one Wisdom that can avail to end it. Sorrow
exists, is very shadow to all life enselfed ; its
Cause lies in not-understanding; whence
springs Desire ; its Cure lies in the undermin-
ing of desire, in letting go the love of self
for the nobler, greater love of all. What made
it? That is in the dark; we do not know,
we cannot understand. Why is it so ? That
question must be met by noble silence only.
We do not know, we cannot understand ; and
when men try to put in words that which
356 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
transcends our human knowledge, such words
are in reality all meaningless, they bring
no help to us; over such mere views men
ever are at war. What then avails ? To
realise the Truth ; to see how Sorrow reigns, in
that our hearts are slave to self ; to put an end
to all this suffering ; to seek the Peace which
reigns where Sorrow cannot come. How can
this be ? How, bound in self -wrought pain, in
the transition and illusion of our life, can we,
in Ignorance enmeshed, hope to find the Peace
Beyond ? Because the processes which we
describe as " Life," occur in conformity with
the Law of Cause-Effect; and so, by ceasing to
do evil, to inflict pain on life ; by doing good,
helping to relieve life's pain; by purifying
heart and life, learning the great lesson of its
Oneness and our part in it, surely must we
presently find Peace, find Sorrow's End even
in this sad world most surely, since Causation
obtains everywhere throughout its entire realm.
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 357
That is the Truth which The Master taught .
us : so simple and yet so profound ; so cutting
at the very roots of pain, and wrath, and
ignorance ; so clear when we have learned it,
yet it was so hidden from the searching thought
of all the world's great Holy Ones save
One. Because Causation reigns ; because the
Sequence is inevitable ; because Good grows to
Better, the good seed to further golden
crop ; because Causation reigns, so must there
be that Way of Peace within our very hearts ;
sure as Causation itself, shines this clear
lamp of Hope through Ignorance's night.
That is our Truth. No dream of poet ; no
imaginary Power that made this aching world
of life and yet is merciful ; demand for faith
we cannot have when once our minds have
outgrown infancy. Wisdom for Faith our
Dhamma offers us, the knowledge of the
incomparable surety of Nibbana's Peace, if
we can turn our hearts from love of self to
858 TEEBELIGION OF BURMA
love for all. That is our Dhamma, nobly facing
all life's facts, and never hiding in a veil of
transcendent mystery ; certain, sequent, stable,
sure ; surer its truth than our own life is, for
we have dreamed before, and even this our life
may be in truth another dream. But that is
true and sure, that Dhamma of our Master;
truer and surer the more rightly do we com-
prehend it ; our Hope therein is sure, seeing.
Causation reigns.
Surer than Life It is, since life is but a
seeming and becoming; surer than Death It
is, for the seed, cabined in earth's close
darkness, dies but to live again in greater, sweet-
er life of leaf, and bud, and bloom, unfolding in
the wide, free air and glorious sunlight ; and is
the life that now is, thrilling in our hearts as
this transcendent miracle of thought, the less of
life, that it should perish where that seed-
spark of life endures ? Deeper and yet deeper,
as our minds can attain to measure It, we find
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 859
the surety of It grow for us and in us ; the
deeper our understanding of It, still the surer
grows Its Very Truth; and, even then, when
with our thought grown deepest, we essay
to plumb sheer to Its utter depths, to learn the
fulness of It, to attain Its final Truth, even then
ever open new gulfs of depth and width past all
our fathoming, past all our reach of It, so great
is It, so deep, so wide.
- The student knows that Buddhism is first
and above all else a G-nosis, a Wisdom, a
Religion of Understanding, showing the Way
of Peace, the Path of Liberation and Salvation,
as lying through selfless Love and Knowledge,
twin aspects of the same great, final Truth of
Life. So, at the first sight of it, that attitude
of Faith and of Devotion, which we have seen
to be the characteristic of the earlier stages of
mental growth, seems to the student to be out
of place ; and its undoubted presence, both in
the Teaching of The Master and in the modern
360 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
practice, to approach at least to a reversion to
the methods and weaknesses of an earlier
mental stage. He reads, perchance, the
beautiful, ancient Pali hymn :
Ye ca Buddha afcita ca,
Ye ca Buddha anagata,
Paeeuppanna ca ye Buddha
Aham vandami sabfoada!
N'atthi me Saranam afinam ;
Buddho me Saranam varam
Etena saccavajjena
Hotu me Jayamangalam !
" To all the Buddhas of the ancient days ;
To all the Buddhas of all future time ; To all
the Buddhas of the present age, I offer
adoration evermore.
" For me there is no other Refuge ; the Buddha
is my Refuge He, the Best ! By power of the
Truth in these my words, may I attain the
Glorious Victory ! "
And if, further, he has the priceless oppor-
tunity of prosecuting his studies of the Dhamma
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 361
not in those western lands where he can learn
but from books alone, and where, accordingly,
its Teachings seem far off, remote alike in space
and time, but in a Buddhist land like Burma,
where it becomes, for one who has the wit to
understand it, a living power, a supreme reality
that sways the lives and ways of multitudes of
men then once again, perhaps, the same
feature stands out most prominently, is manifest-
ed in the very life of the people before his eyes.
He sees how the religious life of the nation
centres around the Monastery and round such
great religious shrines as the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda ; he sees, at some great Pagoda Festival,
the worshipping crowds kneeling at the feet of
The Master's Image, offering their incense and
lights, heaping great piles of tropic flowers
before His shrine, and each and all prefacing
every act of meditation and of worship with the
Formula of the Salutation : Namo Tassa
Bhagavato, Arahato, Sammdsambuddhassa I
362 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
"Glory unto Him, The Exalted Lord, The Holy
One, The Utterly Awakened I "
" What, then," he asks himself, " is the
meaning of this so obviously fervent and true-
hearted Buddhist devotion, whether as found
in salutation or in hymn ; or, more manifestly
yet, in this adoring praise and worship of what
is without doubt the truest Buddhist nation
in the world ? Is it indeed an instance of
reversion to an earlier type of religious develop-
ment, a thing adopted bodily from earlier
Indian religious thought -adopted as it stood
without that changed significance which The
Buddha stamped on so many of the old beliefs
and thoughts ? Or is it, again, a recrudescent
growth of later introduction into Buddhism, an
instance of that slow but sure decay of the
pristine purity of the religion,. such as we find
so common in all the long-lived religions, but
from which, so far, the Theravdda seems so
wonderfully to have escaped ? "
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 863
The answer to these questions, as further
study of the Dhamma teaches him, pursues, as
is ever the case with Buddhist thought, the
Middle Way between the two extremes. Devo-
tion has in very fact a definite and indeed
a prominent place in Buddhist life ; and it
consists of two widely different emotions, a,
lower and a higher, of which the latter alone may
be regarded as the exclusively and charac-
teristically Buddhist type. The first, and of
necessity the most prevailing form of it, is just
that same emotion of dependence and reliance,
on an unseen G-uide, of the heart that entertains
it; and it finds a place, a very humble one in-
deed, but still a certain and defined position in the
body of Buddhist Teaching as a whole. This is
that same unquestioning faith in some being
living, the blind belief in some great Power
or Person able to hear and aid, which, as we
have seen, is typical of the dawning intellectual
growth of man. Seeing that this lower form
364 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
of devotion constitutes, not only a stage, but an
essential stage in a man's mental development ;
and seeing that the Dhamma was expounded,
not only for the more advanced units of human-
ity who have transcended mental childhood,
but for mankind at large, for every class of
mind this lower type of devotion is also to be
found in it as well as in all the other great
religions of the world. But in the Teaching of
The Buddha we find that this devotion, in-
stead of taking the foremost place amongst
religious ideals and inculcated practices, instead
of acting as the cloak of manifold mysteries,
as an excuse for the incompatibility of the
facts of life with others of the Teachings of the
religion, holds only that position to which it is
entitled as an indispensable feature of the earlier
stages of human mental growth.
As such, we find it in the beautiful Story of
MaUakundali, the traditional exposition at
length of the Teaching summarised in brief in
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 365
the second stanza of the Dhammapada. Re-
cording the old traditional exposition of this
stanza, current in his days in the then centre
of all Buddhist learning, the monasteries of
Ceylon, the great Commentator tells us how
The Master was accustomed, on each morning
of His life, to search with inner higher vision
over the length and breadth of all the land, to
see what human hearts were nigh to grace or
insight, so that they needed for their helping
only such aid as one who knows the "Way can
sometimes render to some humbler, lowlier
fellow-man, And it thus befell that on a
day, as the Commentator with oriental
imagery finely puts it, casting the net of His
Compassion over the waters of life's ocean,
He found therein poor Mattakundali, son of a
wealthy but miserly Brahmana, nigh to the
gates of death by reason of his Kamma, but,
by that same reason, in the state to profit by a
helping hand. The story we all well know,
366 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
and here we are concerned in but the point of
how, to the dying child, The Master made
manifest a glorious apparitional image of
Himself; and how the boy, dying there in
solitude, turned to this Form with wondering,
with unquestioning devotion, losing all sense
of fear and suffering in the thought, that surely
this Holy One could aid him and bring him
peace. With that assurance in his heart, the
potent life-determining dying thought grew
calm, so that Mattakundali, dying on the earth,
came to rebirth amidst the heavenly glories-
was reborn in one of the bright Heavens of
Form although the immediate cause of such
high happiness was but a single act of adoration,
namely the child's reliance on the Master's
power to help.
This little story is an excellent example of
the place held by the lower, common form of
devotion in Buddhism ; excellent as indicating
at the same time both the power ascribed to
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 367
this type of devotion, and the close limitations
Buddhist Teaching sets on its power to help us
and to change our destinies. For, be it noted,
.that act of worship was, as it were, only the
determining, the immediate, cause of that
fortunate rebirth, in that the overwhelming
flood of adoring thought could calm the
usually trembling death-consciousness, and so,
as it were, pave the immediate way for the
operation of past meritorious Doing, the latter
being the remoter, and yet more real cause.
But, as we all know, the aim and goal that
Buddhist Teaching lays before us is by no
means the gaining of such heavenly birth as
Mattakundali attained. Such birth may be
regarded and in the case in hand the view
applies as a nursery for the child-intelligence ;
a life of peace and happiness, in the midst
of which the dawning mind grows to greater
heights of spiritual strength which enables
it, in later lives on earth, better to face the
368 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
pain and suffering which are at once so
characteristic of our human life, and as such,
sure guides or rather goads, to bring us to seek
out the Path of Peace. But so rich in joy
those heavenly mental realms are, and so great
the length of life therein, that few amongst
their denizens ever can win the comprehension
of the Sorrow, or yet the Changefulness or
Illusion dominant in life. So that in them is
little opportunity for realising the truly
Buddhist aim, the finding of the Path of
Selflessness, whereof the first step lies in
abnegation of all such personal desire, as the
heavenly birth promotes.
Thus we may define this lower species of
devotion, this mere blind faith in what is high
and holy, as able, indeed, when it finds support
in Meritorious Doing (but not otherwise)., to
conduce to lives of heavenly or earthly happi-
ness, to afford, as it were, a period of rest and
leisure for the growing but still undeveloped
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 369
mind. Why this should be the case we well
can see, who understand the teaching of
Causation, as that second stanza of the
Dhammapada calls to mind. In the devoted
heart as in the mental child-life, there is firm
and never- wavering assurance of the power of
that devotion's object to give aid to us, to
render grace and help. " All that we are"
to quote our Dhammapada stanza, " All that we
are is the result of what we have thought ; it is
founded on our thought, made up of our
thought : If a man speaks or acts with holy
thought, then Joy shall follow him, sure as his
shadow, never leaving him. " The world in
which we find ourselves, that is, our world is
but the wrought and moulded outcome of our
thought in bygone lives. Given the moving
power of Meritorious Act behind it, it will build
for us lives filled with joy and happiness, but
shaped and moulded just as our thought
dictated. The dream, the ideal of heaven,
24
370 THE RELIGION OF BUEMA
creates for us the very heaven whereof we
dreamed, if behind the thought there be
sufficient Punna, the life-giving Doing, the
Good Kamma, which alone can thrill the
dream to vivid life.
Such is the power, and such the limitation,
of devotion of this lower type. It can, in
brief, bring happiness if vitalised by Eighteous
Doing, but it is impotent to help us to enter and
walk upon the Way of Peace. And if, because
the Dhamma was enounced for the benefit
of all humanity, of whom the majority are still
in the childhood of mental growth, if in its
lower, earlier Teaching we find that devotion
still holds a place, we still can see how even
that very usage of it is designed to pave the
way for greater, nobler thought. Throughout
The Master's Teaching, we find everywhere the
same idea presented ; the idea, namely, that
only our own Eight Act can serve to help us in
the end; the constant attempt to wean the
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 871
growing mind, from the dependence of that
earlier stage of childhood, to the realisation
that our Hope, our Light, our Way, lies in
reality within ourself. We may hear, indeed,
the words of the Teaching of a Very Buddha ;
but they can avail us only to the extent
to which we follow their advice. "Be ye
Lamps unto yourselves ; look for Refuge to
yourselves, seeking no other Refuge."
The thought that Refuge lies in Truth
alone, is the fundamental dictum of The
Master to whomsoever seeks to put an end to
all this Cycle of Becoming and of Suffering
and to find the Way of Peace.
And thus we come to the second, the higher
and peculiarly Buddhist thought and attitude,
to which the name Devotion can be applied.
As the child grows older, Thought begins to
take the place of Faith. No longer accepting
with perfect trustfulness, all that the elders or
parents tell it 5 it begins to question things, to
372 THE RELIGION OF BTJflMA
endeavor to investigate ; it begins, in short, to
think its own thoughts, rather than, as
heretofore, to take all its concepts ready-made.
With the dawning comprehension of life
resulting from this changed attitude, it ceases
to be naught but a mental mirror wherein the
thoughts of its environment are reflected.
Beginning to think for itself, it passes into
the period of mental adolescence ; and with
this 'awakening of independent thought the old
blind faith soon disappears, at least with those
more progressed individuals who in past lives
have already gone through the childhood
stage.
Here, for our present human development,
the parallelism which so far has obtained
between the individual and the racial develop-
ment appears to cease ; for there always exist
some few rare minds already far ahead of the
general development. Such pass onwards,
individually, from this stage of mental youth,
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 373
this Age of Questioning, to the final stage of
full maturity, the Age of Wisdom, of full
Understanding. But as yet the mass of even
the most civilised of races can scarcely be said
to have advanced even to adolescence.
To that full stage of mental growth, in
matters of worldly knowledge, we may regard
the greatest of mankind as having more or
less completely attained. In the world of
literature a Shakespeare, in the sphere of
science a Newton, a Spencer, and a Maxwell,
have reached so far in one or more of the
departments of mental life. Of such are
the master-minds of all humanity, the leaders
of civilisation; and in our present era of
transition the number of these great thinking
ones is being added to each day. Such
progress at present is abnormal, is indeed far
beyond the growth and the attainment of the
body of mankind, who, as we have seen, are
lagging still, even in the most progressed of
874 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
races, on the verge of mental infancy, are but
slowly passing from the Age of Faith. So,
such attainments as a Newton or a Spencer
have reached can, in our present age, be won
only by the hardest work and the intensest
application; and, even then, such mental
manhood, such maturity as these may have
reached are found, as has been said, only in one,
or in a few departments of mental action.
But, from our Buddhist point of view, we
may regard all these attainments, in respect
of merely worldly art and science, as being
simply side-shows, specialised realms of know-
ledge only collaterally connected with the
real advancement, the true maturity, that is,
maturity of general development ; maturity in
respect of those deeper things of life which
we sum up in the one word Religion.
True progress, basic to the whole field of mental
life, is what we Buddhists term attainment of
the Paths ; and this because the more worldly
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 375
knowledge, the specialised attainment in respect
of some one, or some few mental kingdoms only,
dies with the death of the individual who has
attained to it, so far, at least, as he himself is
concerned therewith. Truly, its results,
especially in this age when the general wisdom
has so far advanced that the wise publish their
discoveries broadcast throughout the world,
remain for the benefit of mankind at large ; this
is the special virtue and the boon such sort of
mental achievement wins. None of us are
Newtons, even in process of becoming, of that
we mav be sure, at least so far as this life is
/ *
concerned. None of us, therefore; to touch but
one department of the many that that master-
mind was master in could of our own
intelligence infer from an apple's fall the Law
of Gravitation. But, ^ince the actual Newton
not only made that great inference and the
consequent application, but published his dis-
covery for the benefit of all, the merest tyro
376 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
amongst us can apply, ean use the principle he
discovered; thus, if lost for Newton as a being,
the knowledge still remains to benefit mankind.
But the deeper, the more spiritual
attainment summed up in the word Eeligion,
the attainment of growth upon the holy Path
leading to Insight, Understanding, to the Peace,
to Sorrow's End, or that Higher Wisdom, is
no mere side-show ; it is basic to the whole
great field of life itself, of that no smallest gain
is ever lost to the being that wins it, or, for that
matter s is ever lost to life at large. Such
growth is fundamental, basic* it implies the
fulfilment of the very Hope, the meaning of
our life. In respect of that deep wisdom, we
to-day may fairly place ourselves as having
passed out of the Age of Faith ; as standing
now somewhere within the limits of the Age of
Investigation ; and our great hope now lies in
being able a little to move forwards in our
present life; to attain, in the life that lies
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 877
before us, a little nearer to the full maturity of
life. We in the Buddhist term are 8ekha,
students or learners, trying so to understand
and to apply to our own lives the greatest
body of the deeper wisdom ever given to
the world, that the life of which we form an
integral part may come a little nearer to the
Peace.
What, then, is the manner of devotion that,
for us thus situated in respect of the deeper
growth, can serve to help us further on the
Path? This is the specifically Buddhist form of
it. We have seen how the earlier form consists
in blind faith only ; we have seen how necessary
that is to the undeveloped mind ; but, since to-
day we are endeavoring to investigate, to think
for ourselves and to apply our thought to life,
we obviously have passed beyond the age when
mere blind faith could help us ; such, for us,
who have reached adolescence, would be a
retrogression, not an advance.
378 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
We are here concerned with finding, with
progressing on, the Inward Path ; and, as we all
know, that sort of progress has been well
summed up as " making pure the Mind ". How
can devotion help in that direction ? and, if not
the old type, mere blind devoted Faith, what
fashion of it here can help us as we stand ?
To take the latter question first, the Buddhist
answer is that it is not Faith indeed, so far as faith
is blind, unreasoning, based on no principle or
fact in life, but only on our hope and our desire.
Bather it is the maturer Love, the devotion that
comes in the train of Understanding ; the true
heart's adoration that springs from within us
when we have gained a little self-mastery ; when,
this delusion of the self seeming no longer all
our hope in being, we begin to understand the
value of self-sacrifice, when we attain some
glimpse of the tremendous meaning of the Love
that has for us resulted in the knowledge of the
Law we have.
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM
So long as self alone seems of importance, it
appears to us of little value that another should
have given all His life, even the all of many-
lives, for the sake of helping life at large
to find the Peace. Then, when self rules
supreme, it seems derogatory to its glory that we
should kneel in adoration of whatever greatest
being has existed, whether on earth or in the
heavens beyond. But, with the progress of
our heart's cleansing, understanding how in
that thought of self lies the root-cause of all
the pain of life which now we seek to help to
end, with that progression comes the under-
standing of the utter worthlessness, nay, more^
the very evil of the self -thought ; and yet, to
each of us, how difficult the least poor act of self-
renunciation seems ! Knowing that, and setting
beside our knowledge of the sacrifice which
this discovery of the Path involved for One, the
holiest and greatest of our human kind, our
paltry efforts in that same direction, we turn
880 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
with shame from the thought of it, so mean and
poor do our greatest efforts seem when so
compared.
Thus the devotion we should cultivate springs
from no less significant a thought than that of
our own true place in life's progression ; as
compared with the heights of selflessness
won by the Holy and the Great of old.
Seeing, by the clear logic of the Law, how self
is the cause of all the pain of life ; seeing how
difficult for us is each poor feeblest act of
sacrifice of self, our hearts are filled with wonder
and with love at the thought of one who could
give all that men hold dear, not in the sure
knowledge of success, but only in the Hope of
finding a Way of Peace for all. That is the
sort of Faith, of Love, of Devotion, that
can help us on, and why ? Because it means
another conquest over self -hood ; a further
achievement of the deeper, vaster, universal
Love.
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 881
Without it, without this reasoned sure devo*
tion to the Hope that now is guiding our life's
ship over the darkling waters of the ocean of
existence, we can never win the fire, the
power, the earnestness which alone can for-
ward our high aim. Brightly on our mental
horizon, and more brightly yet s as one by one the
mists of self -hood roll aside, shines the beacon-
light upon the Further Shore ; the reasoned
Understanding : " Once has One achieved, and
still on earth His Light is shining, to guide
the lives of all that lift up eyes to see." Athwart
the darkling waters of life's ocean, marking
the Path that each must travel to the Peacej
gleams clear the Way that that beacon-fire
shows. By Understanding of the Truth He left
to us, by comprehension of Causation's Law, we
may guide indeed our bark of life, straight and
sure on the gleaming roadway marked on the
waves by that still distant beacon-fire. But
all the guidance of our intellect applied, aided
382 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
albeit by all our knowledge of that very
Truth, the Law The Master found for usit
all were useless, unless we could find the motive
power to drive our ship. That power, that
fire within the furnace of our hearts, is Devo-
tion which we must cultivate. We know how,
if we wish for bodily strength, we must practise
lifting heavy weights, or in some way using
the set of muscles that we wish to strengthen.
Just so with Thought. It is not enough once
to have seen that "such-and-such thought
is good, beneficent, tending to ease the bitter
agony of life," and, having so seen, to set aside
the potent thought, or never think of it again.
We must use it, practise thinking it, make, in
respect of it, Sankharas more and more potent
till it has become truly a living fire within us,
certain, all-overcoming, sure. Therefore it is
not alone those lowly hearts who, yet in
mental childhood, find in blind faith new
mental strength, that need to kneel before The
DEVOTION IN BUDDHISM 383
Master's shrine, to offer humble gifts of light,
and flower, and scent. We, too, need that, not
less than those our humbler human brethren,
but vastly more ; for the power of self is still
upon us, and only a right grasp of our ideal
can antidote its poison in our hearts. We, too,
need recitation of the Namaskara; but our
adoration must be paid, not to a Person, for in
truth all personality is but a dream, but to
our Heart's Ideal. We, too, can find ever new
strength in kneeling at The Master's shrine ;
but we must understand our worship rightly,
and build a fitting shrine in our own lives,
cleansing our hearts till they are worthy to
bear that Image in their inmost sanctuary of
love. And, lastly, we also need to offer gifts
upon that altar daily ; but gifts, not of these
swiftly waning lights, these dying flowers of earth
or evanescent incense-scents. Our gifts must be
in deeds of love ; of sacrifice and self-surrender
to those about us must be our daily offerings
884 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
in worship of the Exalted Lord. Making His
life our pattern, our ideal, we must strive to
be His followers not in name alone, but must
so rule our hearts and lives that men may
understand the meaning of that noblest holiest
life that ever human being lived ; how it
has the power to call us and to conquer, until
Love's Empire shall have spread through all
the world.
BUDDHIST SELF-GULTUEB
THE teaching of the higher evolution set
forth by The Buddha has as its chief character-
istic the pursuance of what is termed in
Buddhist phraseology the Middle Way, or, as
we might otherwise express it, the golden mean
between all extremest views. The Middle
Way itself is indeed concerned only with fixing
the standard of life for the follower of The
Buddha ; it consists in the avoidance, on the
one hand, of the extreme of self "torture, of
unnecessarily ascetic practices; and on the
other, of the life of the worldly man, altogether
given over to self-indulgence and the seeking
after pleasures of the senses. But all through
that Teaching we find everywhere the same
principle of the Middle Way ; and nowhere is
25
386 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
this more marked than in the Buddhist attitude
to the question of predestination or free will.
Teaching as it does that the character and
destiny of any being are, with one exception,
absolutely determined for any given moment,
and are the necessary resultants of the long
line of mental doings which constitute his whole
past, Buddhism appears at first sight to teach
fatalism, determinism, pure and simple. But
it is an equally prominent part of Buddhist
doctrine that, however determinate, for the
present moment, is the Kamma, the character
and destiny of a given being, yet that being
may, if he has but wisdom and knows how to
utilise it, alter his whole future in whatever
direction pleases him. In other words an
intelligent being, such as man, is, for the
immediate moment, ruled by his destiny ; he is
bound by all the forces of his past to react in a
definite fashion to any given set of circum-
stances that may arise. But over the future
BUDDHIST SELF-COLTURE 387
he is himself ruler within very wide limits
indeed ; he can, if he have knowledge, so pro-
foundly alter, by dint of culture, his own
character, as to produce results obviously
manifest even in the short span of this life.
This circumstance is, of course, at the root of
all education; and the life of a George Stephen-
son is a living example of the profound effect
on character and destiny which a man can bring
about by dint of mental culture.
Thus we may put the Buddhist position as
to the free will or predestination discussion by
saying that a man is determined for the
immediate present, but that he has choice as to
his way in life as regards the future.
Now all Buddhism is simply a system of
culture, directed to the one end of lessening
the suffering of life. According to this religion,
all evil, all suffering, all that opposes our free
progress towards the Peace beyond All Life,
lies only in Avijja, in Nescience ; or, to put it in
388 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
terms of the human life, the true source of evil
lies in Ignorance in not knowing, not under-
standing, the nature or the meaning of life.
In us this Nescience is said to have three great
manifestations Craving, Hatred, and Self-
delusion ; of these we may regard the latter as
the most fundamental, the others being merely
necessary outcomes of it. It is because we
look not on life, as being what in fact it is, one
great unity, but as divided into self and the
not-self, that we entertain thoughts of Craving
and of Hate. So Buddhism, going to the root
of the matter, directs our attention to the
undermining of this fundamental delusion of
the permanent self -hood ; and all its long course
of self-discipline is simply directed to this one
end.
That course of discipline is conveniently
divided into three sequent steps : the Discipline
in SUa or Conduct ; in Samddhi, or Mental
Attainment ; and in Panna, the Higher
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 389
"Wisdom. The first of these, Sila, includes
both the active and the negative sides of moral
culture ; the negative being the five prohibitions
not to kill, steal, commit impurity, lie, or use
intoxicants; the positive being Charity or
universal love. This Sila, simple though it
may sound in words, and well though we all
know the nature of its injunctions, is the
essential preliminary ; there is no Samddhi, no
mental Oneness, to be obtained without it. And
for those who are weak in it to undertake the
practices of mental culture leading to Samadhi,
in the case of most of them, would involve a
serious risk of grave mental alienation. Similar-
ly, it is only by Samadhi rightly directed and
used that Panna, the Higher "Wisdom, Insight,
may be gained.
I propose to set before you a rough outline
of certain of the practices whereby this Samadhi
is to be won, and must therefore first endeavor
to make clear the meaning of the word. There
390 THE EBLIGION OP BURMA
is, unfortunately, no one word in English which
conveys the meaning, the fact being that in
western countries the practices which create
the link whereby its attainment is registered in
the mind are but little known. The word has
been variously translated Mental Concentration,
Meditation, Ecstasy, and so forth ; the last,
Ecstasy, being perhaps the most nearly accurate
rendering of the meaning. But, whilst the
conscious recollection of the attainment of
Samadhi is rare in the West, we are of course
not to understand that the attainment itself is
lacking. In one direction many varieties of
what is called " Religious Experience " the
attainment of a more or less high Samadhi is
not only relatively common, but also leaves
behind it a more or less distorted memory of
some great happening ; whilst what we call the
inspiration of genius is in very many cases the
direct outcome in thought of an attainment of
Samadhi itself forgotten. Even in the more
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 391
active functioning of the mind in this our waking
state, Samadhi in a sense may be said to exist 9
but, in this case, its continuance is for exceed-
ingly short periods of time only.
Perhaps the best way of explaining what
Samadhi is will be to use the familiar Buddhist
simile of the lamp flame. The mind or thought
is said in Buddhist phrase to be Pabhassara
having the nature of light, or, as we should
put it, it is a radiant form of energy. Likening,
then, the mind of man as a source of this
.radiant thought to the flame of a lamp, we are
taught by Buddhist psychology that, in the
ordinary man, the flame is not steadily burning
not even for the duration of a single second
of our time. The emission of the thought-
energy is said to alternate between the full
flaming of the lamp and well-nigh complete
extinction, as though the lamp were flickering ;
and this flickering is said to occur at a
very great rate indeed the time-terms are
392 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
unfortunately very vaguely expressed, but the
rate must be of the order of millions per second
so that what we call a single thought in reality
consists of an exceedingly large effort of
consciousness, each alternated with a lapse into
almost complete unconsciousness. Apart from
the rapid flickering of the flame, the flame may
be regarded still in the ordinary manas
being constantly blown about as a whole ; every
incoming sense-impression, each wave of sense
or of emotion or interest that passes through
us, is like a wind which blows about the flame
of our mind.
Now it is just to continue our simile by
this light of the mind that we live and
know. It naturally follows that, the more our
flame is blown about by the winds of sense and
passion and interest, and the more profound is
the plunge into unconsciousness between the
flickers of the lamp, the less accurate will be the
view which we shall obtain of the world
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 393
revealed to us by this so intermittent light.
Before we can truly judge the nature of the
world, the light, the mind's light by which we
see that world, must be brought to burn steadily ;
else we must always continue to see distorted
shadows cast by the flickering flame and wind-
blown light, and never catch a glimpse of the
reality about us.
And this Samadhi this steady burning of
the flame of life and all the practices that
lead thereto, are designed to the sheltering,
even though it be but momentary, of the
flickering flame ; it is only in its steady-burning
ardor that the higher wisdom, the true under-
standing of the Oneness of Life that makes for
Peace, can be won. Just as we may use an earthly
light to aid us in the doing of good deeds, so is
the acquirement of high and holy knowledge ; or,
on the other hand, just as we employ it for the
commission of crime, or the perversion of our
minds by studying foolish literature, so can the
394 THE RELIGION OP BUEMA
light of Samadhi itself be employed either for
good or for evil ; it is just here that the danger
lies for one who gains Samadhi without first
submitting himself to a long and careful moral
and mental training.
There are two chief methods by which
Samadhi may be won : these are Samatlia and
Vipassana, what we may term Quietism, and
Insight, Penetration. In the first, the attention
is aroused to the utmost stretch of tension
possible, but it is directed, not towards the
outer world, but inwards on the mind itself.
The idea is to keep intensely watchful, and to
beat down, as it begins to arise, every incoming
message of sense, every wave of recollection or
emotion ; just to watch and wait, permitting
yourself to entertain no thought but watchful-
ness. If Samatha happens to be the best
method for you, then one day, when you are
doing this practice, you will suddenly, as it
were, wake up -wake to a mental state
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 395:
indefinitely more intense and active than that
in which we normally function. That is
obtaining Samadhi by means of Quietude.
The other method, Vipassana, Insight or
Penetration, is exactly the opposite. Here^
instead of keeping the mind fixed in attention
onlyj and suppressing every thought of the
outer, the objective world, you fix your
attention upon some thought itself, and keep it
so fixed as long as possible, bringing it back,,
every time it breaks away, to the particular
subject you have chosen as your mind's
dwelling-place. Of the two methods this latter
is much the easier for the occidental mind ; for
the simple reason that all our mental training
is on lines pertaining to Vipassana, that
complete mental quietude of the other method
is exceedingly difficult for us "Westerns to attain.
The fruits also are in a sense different : in
Quietude, what we are doing is, as it were,,
just sheltering our lamp, and accordingly when
396 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
it burns steady its light will be of one or other
nature, accordingly as the fuel fed to it in our
past lives has been of one sort or another ; in
Insight the Samadhi attained will be the complete
and clear understanding of the underlying law,
the inherent nature of the particular object of
our meditation. A Newton, watching the
fall of his apple, gets Samadhi on the fact
of its falling ; he himself, very likely, has no
clear recollection, on his return to normal con-
sciousness, of having attained to any beyond
the normal mental state. That is, for lack of
a, bridge, of a path between the two realms of
consciousness, the waking mind is simply
unable to remember anything of that experience
itself, just as a man, newly fallen asleep, cannot
in his dream remember the more vivid con-
sciousness of the waking state. But what he
does carry over from that state is the resultant
in the mind ; and so we have the discovery of
gravitation. For this is the nature of Samadhi
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTTJBE 397
when directed to any fact, that the mind
attaining it perceives ultimately, not the fact,
but the law, the truth underlying that fact.
It is as though by Samadhi on a thing you
could become that thing itself, and hence see
clearly the interior nature of it.
Now it is only, as has been implied, the
right use of this power of Samadhi that can
lead to the goal of the Buddhist life. If we
can attain Samadhi in respect of either the
transitoriness, the suffering, or the absence of
reality in all that we know as life, the fruits of
that sort of Samadhi are Bight Ecstasy, the
Higher Wisdom which leads to Peace. As
we have seen, it is in the end to the delusion of
separateness the belief in an immortal in-
dividual self within us, apart from other life-
that Buddhism attributes all the evil in the
world. But it unfortunately happens that it is
just this sort of Samadhi which is the most
difficult to obtain, for the simple reason that
398 THE RELIGION OF BUEMA
most of our mental elements have, in
arising, been contaminated by one or other
of the Three Forms of Nescience Graying,
Hatred, Self-delusion. If, for example, a
*
man unprepared by long training stumbles,
as it were, into Samadhi, so vast is the
mental universe in which he finds him-
self, so intense and clear, in comparison
to what we know of thought, is his mental
functioning, that he is liable to become alto-
gether unbalanced ; to imagine that he is God,
or to become in some direction or other intense-
ly vain and self -laudatory. And so attaining,
so doing Samadhi on his own greatness^ eternity.,
or what not, is indefinitely worse for that being
than never attaining Samadhi at all. For
Kamma, the reproductive force which exists in
thought, whereby our minds and worlds are
builded, is the more intense that is the more
active the nearer to Samadhi the mind is,
which sets it in motion. As it is the I-making
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 399
faculty in thought which is the principal element
in earth-binding Kamma, it is better, from the
point of view of the Buddhist, who seeks
liberation from this Kamma, never to attain
Samadhi at all than to attain it in respect of
the self-hood ; as the rebirth-causing Kamma
produced by even a moment of Samadhi is as
potent as that which, in our vastly less active
normal waking state, could be made by the
selfish thought of whole years of life,
As the bulk of our mental elements from past
lives are so largely component of self -hood, it
becomes of prime importance that before
starting on the practices leading to Samadhi,
we should undertake some form of mental
culture which leads to the subversion of the
I -making elements. To this end the Buddhist,
before attempting to attain Samadhi itself,
enters on a preliminary training known
as Eight Recollectedness (Sammdsati). The
object of this practice is twofold- first, to
400 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
suppress the existent self -forming elements in
the mind ; and, secondly, to link up in a more
or less continuous stream the divers items of
his mental life. This practice is protective, it
can be done at all times, and in fact greatly
enhances one's powers of memory and observa-
tion, and it is therefore perfectly safe and most
advantageous for anyone to do. It consists of
sitting, as it were, alert and watchful at the
mind-door, watching every sensation, percep-
tion, memory, or thought as it arises, and inhibit-
ing the self -idea from seizing on that particular
thought. You watch, and you record on your
mind; and you do not permit the ideas of
craving, hatred, self -hood to come in. Suppose,
for example, you are walking ; you think :
" There is a lifting of the right foot, a leaning
forward of the body, the foot is set to the
ground," and so on, letting only quite impersonal
thoughts arise, but carefully watching and
making a mental record of what you are doing*
BTJDDHIST SELF-OULTURE 401
To put it in other words, you concentrate
your whole Attention on whatever .act, bodily
or mental, that you happen to be engaged in,
but as though the being's actions you are
considering were no more of yourself than are
those of any other man. Each time you make
a slip and that, at first, is very frequently
you pull up; recall the thought about which
you thought " I," or "mine," and think of the
associated action or thing : This is not I, this
is. not mine, there is no self herein. Thus .you
produce, in respect of that particular thought,
very powerful associated thoughts which tend
to neutralise it.
Very much of the Buddhist mental training
depends on the power we have of altering
certain classes of thoughts by producing in
respect of them powerful .associated tendencies
in a new direction. Suppose, for example,
a man is irritable, easily vexed over trifling
matters. That is the form of Ignorance called
26
402 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
Hatred ; it is a great obstacle to all high
attainment. The man so troubled, if he be a
Buddhist, sets out to overcome that failing by
producing, in respect of the objects which
commonly arouse his irritability, powerful
associated thoughts of Love the mental
opposite. Say certain persons commonly irritate
him ; it will generally be found that their mental
images are associated in the mind with some
careless or foolish action towards him on the
part of those persons. As there exists this
powerful tendency of thought to make links, to
form large groups in which all the associations
are connected on to the central image, whenever
the mere image, whether physical or mental, of
those persons rises in the mind, there rise also
those ideas of irritation, of all the causes for
irritation that person has given him. Taking,
then, the image of those selfsame persons who
annoy him, the irritable man, when each
day he commences his day's mental practice,
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 403
directs, with the whole intensity of intention
at his disposal, thoughts of love towards that
image. Thus he makes a very powerful set of
mental elements of Tendencies, full of thoughts
of well-wishing and love, associated with the
image of those persons. Then, next time that
image arises, there rise, as before, the associated
thought-elements of hatred into consciousness ;
but there also arise those powerful tendencies
of love which the meditation built up ; one
cannot entertain simultaneously thoughts both
of hatred and of love towards the same image ;
so, before long, the practitioner masters his
irritability by love.
The method of Sati of watching and record-
ing may also be applied to the same problem.
For, think why it is that we entertain thoughts
of hatred, of annoyance, of dislike. It is really
only because we imagine that the object of our
dislike is a being essentially other and apart
from and opposed to ourselves. Suppose, for
404 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
instance, you are in a boat on a river, and you
see another boat coming down the stream and
threatening to collide with you and upset you.
If you see another man in that boat you at
once get very angry with him ; not improbably
you waste precious time and energy in stating
your opinion of him ; you abuse him for his
Carelessness in thus risking both your lives.
But if there is no person there ; if the boat is
empty ? Then you do not get angry at all ; it
is only children and the mentally unsound who
get angry with things. You realise that it is
the force, the flow of the river, that causes the
threatened collision ; that it depends on your
efforts, and yours alone, to get out of danger ;
and the energy you might have wasted in being
angry and saying things if there were a person
ip the other , boat you now spend on securing
your safety.
Now, once you arrive at the mental position
aimed at by the Right Recollectedness practice,
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 405
it is just as in tlie latter case that -you look
on all the world. In the light of the higher
wisdom there is no such thing as a true persona
at all; the boats of life are empty, every one.
Bach is but a given set of mental tendencies,
urged by a given portion of the life-stream
through a myriad lives. "When, then, a person
falls athwart of your life> threatening danger,
you do not get angry with him ; you recognise
.that there is really no "him" to get angry
with; but that the forces that built up your
respective lives are now in train for a disaster.
You keep your temper, and so have the more
strength to avoid the threatened collision.
On similar lines, just another such applica-
tion of Eight Recollectedtiess, runs the method
prescribed by The Master to a certain monk
who was angered with another, and came to
Him to complain of that intractable one's abuse.
"With what, Brother, art thou angered?"
asks The Buddha. "Is it the hair of that one's
406 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
head" and so ... through, the thirty -two com-
ponent structures of the Form-group" or
with his sensations, his perception, memories,
thoughts ? " So soon as you begin to apply the
Sati-analysis, you find there is nowhere any-
thing to get angry with.
When a man has for some time practised this
Right Recollectedness, he finds he has acquired
a state of mental poise, of firmness of balance,
that is not to be obtained in any other way.
Then, and not till then, is it safe for him to go
.on to those other practices which lead to
Samadhi in the various wider realms of thought
to which reference has been made.
* In conclusion I would wish to impress upon
you that you must not confuse progress into
the more active states of consciousness with
progress on the Path that leads to Peace.
Samadhi, rightly directed to the transitoriness
and so forth of life, may indeed bring us that
Higher Wisdom which constitutes progress on
BUDDHIST SELF-CULTURE 407
the Path ; but the direction, as it were, of that
Path lies not in the plane of our life at all it
is as though at right angles to it ; a new
direction altogether. The true path-making
consciousnesses are those that tend to the re-
cognition of the great fact that Life is One ;
that there is no separation between us and our
fellows save what our own ignorance makes.
We may indeed, through Samadhi, win, even
in this life, to wider and more glorious realms
of being, levels of consciousness, than here we
know ; but, if such attainment should result in
the exaltation of our self -hood, the magnification
of our " I, " then we have done harm far
greater than many lives of worldly ignorance
could result in. And, on the other hand, every
least act, here in this our world, which tends to
abnegation of the self each deed of love and
pity and helpfulness we do is another stepping-
stone we have laid in the shallows of life, over
which we may presently pass to life's Further
408 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
Shore of Peace. ; To give up living for this
false mirage of the self; to understand our
life as but a part of all life's unity ; to live
as far as we may, for the practical realisation
of that unity that is the real object of all
Buddhist Culture, whether it fall under the
head of Conduct, or Samadhi or the Higher
Wisdom. To realise the Oneness of life, and
live accordingly that is the aim of every
practice of the Buddhist Culture of the Mind. :
KAMMA
Before beginning and without an end,
As space eternal, and as surety sure,
Is fixed a power divine which moves to good -\
Only Its laws endure.
ONE of the most important of the doctrines of
the Buddhist religion is that which relates to
the Law of Kamma; the teaching, namely,
that the lives and destinies of men, and of all
living creatures, are fashioned in accordance
with a definite law of Nature, and are the
outcome only of causes set in motion in the
past by the being who experiences these effects.
It is a doctrine of especial importance for us
to consider, first, because the purport of this
doctrine of Kamma is largely misunderstood
here in Burma-^a misapprehension which has
given rise to many a weakness in the national
character ; and ; secondly, because the right
410 THE RELIGION OP BURMA
comprehension of that Law is one of the keys
to all success in life.
The misapprehension to which I have
referred, lies in the wholly incorrect assumption
that a man's life on earth is as it were
predetermined for him by the Kamma which
he inherits from his bygone lives ; and that no
man has the power to depart, even by a hair's
breadth, from the path in life which his past
has prepared for him. It is owing to it also,
and to the wrong view of life that results from
it, that so much of Burmese energy is frittered
away in the foolishness of astrology and of
magic, in attempts to lift the veil of futurity,
to change one's luck by spells, or to dis-
cover hidden treasure by similar means. So
it is that when some sudden misfortune falls
upon a Burman, he, deeming that he is now
reaping the inevitable penalty of bygone mis-
deeds, abandons at once that vigorous effort
which alone could save him; and thereafter,
KAMMA 411
*
instead of setting to work to build again his
fallen fortunes, lives idly hoping that his
destiny may change again, for the good
this time. So also is it with many a noble
movement set on foot in Burma, as the
hundreds of ephemeral Societies founded for
this or that good purpose, and collapsing ere
a year has passed, bear witness. At first, vast
interest and excitement : strenuous effort on
the part of the promoters to carry out their
objects; and then so soon as those obstacles
which exist in every walk in life appear, that
good work is abandoned by the very promoters
themselves. The times do not appear to them
to be ripe for the movement; and all these
obstacles, instead of spurring them to new and
greater efforts, seem to your countrymen
clearly to demonstrate that Fate itself is
opposing their endeavors ; and so they
abandon that good work, even though it be on
the very threshold of success. It is the chief
412 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
difficulty that you will find here in this work to
which you have set yourselves, the chief
obstacle in the way of every conceivable
reform in Burma. And yet it is not only a
belief altogether at variance with the Buddhist
doctrine of Kamma, but one specially pointed
out in the Buddhist Scriptures as a false belief.
For Kamma is indeed the power which
makes or mars the life, the works, the destinies
of man. It is true that every living being
save the Arahan himself lives as the Law of
Kamma shall determine ; and in each moment
of his life he follows the good or evil way, works
or is idle, lives happily or in sorrow, as his
destiny determines. But this necessitarian
view is only half the truth ; and as we all
know, a half-truth is often more powerful for
evil than deliberate falsehood, for the half-truth
lives by virtue of the truth it contains, while
falsehood is by its very nature destined to a
speedy end.
KAMMA
It is, then, to the complementary part of
this half -truth that we need specially to devote
attention ; and to do this, we need only consider
the very derivation .of the word itself. For
this Kamma, looked upon in Burma as Nemesis,
as an inevitable necessity from which no man
may escape, comes from the Pali root karck,
the Sanskrit kri, both meaning action, work;
and as it is used in Buddhist technicology>
the word means at once Doing and the Thing
Done, and thence, the power whereby an action
is performed. And this Doing is to be regarded,
not as the physical function which may accom-
pany or result from a mental act, but as the
mental act itself.
Kamma in Buddhist philosophy therefore
means three things, according to the moment
at which we regard it. It means, first, the
performance of a, mental action, whether
that gives rise to external movement or to
speech, or not. Secondly, it is applied to the
414 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
effects of past action 3 as, in producing a definite
mental state or environment. And thirdly, it
means that force whereby the past action,
regarded as a cause, gives rise to the state in
question, which is its effect. To make this clear
by the common analogy of the physical text-
books exhibiting the transmission of energy, in
which a number of billiard balls are placed in a
groove, touching one another : A light blow on
a ball at the end of the line, after a definite
short period of time, results in the motion of
one at the other end, whilst the intervening
balls do not perceptibly move. The blow is
comparable to the mental act. The resultant
movement of the terminal ball corresponds to
the effect of this act in producing a definite
change in the position of that ball. And the
energy transmitted without apparent effect on
the intervening balls, corresponds to Kamma
regarded as the force whereby the ultimate
effect is produced.
KAMMA 415
It must here be borne in mind that the whole
sequence covered by the term Kamma is purely
a sequence of mental f unctionings ; or, in
other words, this doctrine of Kamma is the
application to the mental and moral worlds of
the Law of the Conservation of Energy. At the
same time, however, it must be remembered
that, from the Buddhist point of view, all that
we are and know and perceive is also only the
outcome of our mental state. If a man, after
partaking of indigestible food, goes to sleep,
he will in the majority of cases be afflicted
with terrible dreams ; that is to say, by
reason of the wrong action of overeating, his
mind will create about him a horrible environ-
ment, so that in his dream he may imagine
himself to be pursued by some fearful spectre,
or to be falling from a precipice, or some
similar unpleasant thing. So long as the
nightmare lasts, it will appear to him that the
world he is in that is to say, the state of his
416 THE BBLiaiON OF BURMA
environment is a thing apart from him, a
world external over which he has no control.
But, as soon as he is awakened, he sees
clearly that the whole of his dream, spectre
or precipice, and the time and spatial extension
of his universe, the fear he suffered, the;
attempts he made to escape from whatever
terrified him he sees that all these things,
once he is wakened out of his dream, then fall
into their right perspective as merely function-
ings of his own mind.
And the Buddhist teaching, the Buddhist
view of this Universe wherein we live our wak-
ing lives, is that this also is a dream; that
this also is the outcome of our past action,,
even as the nightmare is understood by the
awakened man to be but the natural effect of the
food he has taken. All life is but a dream-
a. dream more intense, more seeming-lasting,
if you will, than any. vision of the night; but
still a dreaming, an illusion, wherein all that
KAMMA 417
appears, this wide space and the duration
of time, and sun and moon and star and all
the manifold conditionings of life, are outcome
of our character, the total of the outcome of
our bygone thoughts, words, deeds ; a Uni-
verse builded by ourselves and for ourselves
alone, fruit of the heritage of immemorial lives.
It is indeed the aim and hope of every
Buddhist to awaken out of all this dream of life,
to enter into that state which, The Master
(He whom we call The Buddha, the Awakened)
has taught us, lives and reigns beyond this
ever-changing and conditioned life. That last
awakening, the attainment of Nibbana, is, as
it were, the very reason of our Buddhist faith.
For the present, in following out the operations
of Kamma, we must turn to the life we
have and live, remembering always that if in
the highest philosophy it is but a dream, it is
the dream wherein just now our lives are cast.
And the great question now before us is : Can
27
418 THE RELIGION .OF BURMA
we mould the life we have so as to make to-
morrow's vision nobler, greater, and truer
than the life we lead to-day ?
It is in the answer to this question that the
complement to the half -truth of which I have
spoken appears the understanding so lacking
in this Buddhist land, which changes this
fatality of Kamma into a power whereby each
man may change, not his own destiny alone>
but even, in less degree, that of all the world,
For that answer is in the affirmative. We
may, the Dhamma tells us, so far modify the
cause of this our life, the power of Kamma
itself, that even in this existence our destiny,
our environment may all be changed. " It is,"
The Master tells us in the Pitaka, " it is
through not-knowing and not-understanding
that we have lived so long in this great ocean
of existence, both you and I." And if " not
knowing and not understanding" be indeed
the source of all this suffering life, then, by
KAMMA 419
Bight Knowledge and Eight Understanding we
may in all things change the life we live. The
change is, not only substituting a brighter,
nobler, grander life for the petty path we
tread, but even passing beyond the veil which
hides from us the Light Eternal, and entering
into the Truth which reigns beyond all life.
Only by knowing and by understanding ! In
all our life we see how true it is, this Teaching
of The Master; by knowing and by under-
standing, if but rightly we apply our
knowledge, we may command whatever power
we in ignorance obeyed; we may turn every
force of Nature to our service ; and we may find
in each universal law the means to escape from
its domination. Men of all ages knew that
all things unsupported fell upon the earth,
but of the How or Why of this phenomenon
they knew naught at all. Then, with Newton's
great discovery of universal gravitation came
not indeed the understanding, the knowledge of
420 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
the Why of gravitation, but somewhat at least
of the knowledge of the How. For long, even
after Newton's discovery of the nature of this
law, it still seemed an impossibility for man to
rise above the surface of the earth ; until at
last it was discovered that gravitation acted
also on the air about us, and that it acted
=less on hydrogen and other gaseous bodies.
Once that knowledge was arrived at, it soon
was possible to apply it; so that now, by
making use of this one piece of knowledge, we
can rise by virtue of that very Law of Gravi-
tation as far as there is air enough to balance
our apparatus and to sustain our life. For it
is the same force of gravitation which pulls the
stone towards the earth, that, when directed
by right understanding, pushes the balloon
away from it. And, as it is in this simple
instance, so is it with all right comprehension
of each universal law. By knowing and by
understanding we may use the very powers
KAMMA 421
of Nature to produce results seemingly opposite
to those they commonly effect. :
So is it also with this Law of Kamma
which directs our lives. We may employ the
very power which conditions us to free ourselves
from these conditionings, if we but rightly
understand how to apply our knowledge. We
know that the chief outcome of that law is that
as a man sows, even so shall he reap that
good thoughts and words and deeds bring
forth conditions of happiness, and evil ones
the reverse. Whilst it is true that at any
given moment a man is bound to act only as his
character dictates to choose either good or
evil according as the total of the myriad forces
of his lives shall compel it is equally true that
he is able, even now and in this life,
profoundly to modify by the production of new
Kamma and its right application, that very
character itself. So that, if we but will and
understand, we may alter the very destiny
422 THE BBLIGION OP BURMA
wherewith we are born alter and change it s
whether for better or for worse, at every
moment of our lives.
This, then, is the other half of the Teaching
about Kamma which is so neglected in Burma
at the present day. True, a man's destiny
is the inevitable outcome of his bygone action.
But even here and now we may alter the very
nature of that destiny itself, by hard work,
by diligence, by application ; we may alter
it by applying the knowledge that we have
gathered from the Teaching of The Buddha-
He whose last words were : Appamddena
Sampddetka. Sometimes you see two men
on whom a similar calamity say, the loss
of all their wealth falls, and one of them sits
down saying : " This is Kamma, my destiny
has altered for the bad, it is of no use to strive
or work to overcome it " ; and the other
when that trouble comes, sets once again to
work, and by earnest effort builds up a greater
EAMMA 423
fortune than he had before. Know then that
of these two, the former has completely missed
the meaning of the Law of .Kamma ; while the
latter has understood it, and knowing thus that
Kamma is the fruit of work and of work alone,
has made that very affliction the source of new
and greater wealth.
And understand full well that this is no
unusual case, no special application of the
knowledge of what Kamma means. If you
are in college, you are even now carrying out
this principle into effect ; for, as you well
know, on your present diligence depends
the whole course of your future lives. It is
by virtue of the knowledge that you now are
gaining that later on you will be able to enter
the professions ; and if, for any one of you the
future shall bring success, that success will be
the outcome mainly of your present work. You,
even now, are making the destiny of your lives ;
and as you now sow, so shall you later reap.
424 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
You know how, when a new subject of study:
comes before you, how hard it is at first to
apply your minds to it, how great is the effort
needed to understand it. It is as though each
novel matter needed the making of a new
pathway in the brain ; and all the difficulty
of study, all the difficulty of every function of
our lives, depends only on what one may term
the inertia of the brain, its opposition to this
making of new paths. But if at first you
make clear, by hard and careful application, the
pathways of a given sort of thought, later it will
be always easy for your mind to follow that path
so that at last a given mental process, full at
first of all manner of difficulties, becomes
so easy that one is scarcely aware of any effort
in the doing.
Now in this making of the mental pathways,
one thing is noticeable above all others, namely,
that the more difficult the process is at
first or, in other words, the more effort
KAMMA 425-
you have to employ at first in clearing away
the obstacles the easier it is later to repeat
the process ; or, as we say, the better one
has learned the thing. So it is also in life*
The greater the obstacle to any given thing*
as, for example, to such a movement as that to
which you have set yourselves, the greater
effort, it is true, is needed at first to do it. Bufe
if you can but bring yourselves to make that
effort, to overcome those obstacles, the success
of your work in later life when, leaving this
college you go forth into the world to put
your principles into action, will be the greater
in exact proportion to the very strength of the
difficulties you have overcome.
There is a word that is used in medical
science which very aptly applies to the two
great classes of Kamma -the Kamma coming
from our past lives, and the Kamma that we
even now are making whereby, as we have
seen, the old-time Kamma may, if we but work
426 THE EBLIGION OF BURMA
hard enough, be altogether changed. That
word is diathesis. Suppose a man is born of
consumptive parents. That man may be
said to have the consumptive diathesis.
He has not the disease itself, but some
condition of his physical structure pre-
disposes him to contract that disease. Take
the man with the consumptive diathesis, and
another, born of non-consumptive parents ;
expose both to the same chance of infection by
the bacteria of that disease ; and the man with
the consumptive diathesis will most likely get
consumption and die of it ; whilst the other,
equally invaded by the same bacteria, will
have sufficient resistance to their invasion
not even to get ill at all. But on the other
hand, if the man with the consumptive
diathesis, knowing his heritage, takes great
care to avoid all those causes (supposing he
knew them) whereby he may be exposed
to the invasion of the bacteria, then he may
' KAMMA 427
pass through his whole life without any sign
of that disease.
Now, as those of you will know who may have
studied the valuable article on the Forces of
Character by Maung Shwe Zan Aung in Bud-
dhism, there are two very important divisions
of Kamma s in respect of the way in which
it operates, which are respectively termed
Eeproductive and Supportive. Reproductive
Kamma may be roughly described as that where-
with a man is born, his destiny or fate. This it
is which in accordance with his bygone mental
action, determines whether he is born rich or
poor, noble or base, of great mental capacity
or weak of wit ; and this Eeproductive Kamma
corresponds exactly to our medical term
diathesis. Setting aside the Supportive Kamma
of the past life, and considering only that
Supportive Kamma which is built up in the
present existence, this latter will correspond to
the circumstances under which the actual
428 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
contagion of the disease may enter the man*
Then, as we have seen, if there is already
the diathesis, Reproductive Kamma of the
right sort, the result will be that, just as
the man in the illustration would have his
consumptive diathesis developed into actual
disease, so do we, by the Supportive Kamma
we now are forming, develop those character-
istics whether good or bad, with which we are
born. Take a child with the most magnificent
brain-development possible; place him on an
island attended only by savages ; and the great
possibilities latent in him will remain latent ;
he will grow up into a savage but little more
advanced than those who have nurtured him.
Here we have Reproductive Kamma strong
for good; but there is no Supportive Kamma
present, and thereby the great possibilities are
never realised. On the other hand, place the
same child at school, and in the learning he
there acquires, he will form Supportive Kamma
KAMMA 429
whereby his birthright may be developed into
being; and thus it is always with operations of
Kamma in general. JSTow, in the period of
youth, you are making the Supportive Kamma
which alone can nurture into life the dormant
mental powers wherewith you were born.
To the measure that you can by dint of
application and hard work bring to fruitage
the dormant powers of your Kammic
heredity, to that measure your lives on
arth will be great or petty, rich or poor 9
powerful or weak. Your success will be only-
according as you yourselves in this period when
the powers of your several minds are being
ripened by the sun of knowledge to the harvest-
time of life shall work well in the fallow fields
of your own hearts and minds, tending the
growing seed with diligence, and uprooting
the weeds of idleness, of passion, and of sin.
So lies before each human heart; in this
life's springtide, the potentiality of all that is
430 THE EELIGION OF BHEMA
to come. Kamma is not your ruler, or the
blind arbiter of your destinies or ways ; it is
your very selves ; it is the force which even now
you are applying to the making or the marring
of a human life. Bow down to it, and you
will fall to the state of slavery, slavery to your
own ignorance, your own idleness, your folly
and despair. You will fall to the living of
ignoble lives lives lived as the life of the
brutes unlit by the privilege of reason
whereby comes power to win to all things
high. So long as you wrongly think : " Fate
is greater than my will," so long shall you
remain in servitude to fate, weak, helpless^
useless to your fellows, the prey of all those
follies of astrology and magic which at this day
are one of the most fruitful sources of the lack
of stamina and stability of the Burmese race.
But say, but realise in your hearts the Truth.
Say : " I am the maker of my life, and builder
of my destiny. It is my will to live greatly
KAMMA 431
and nobly in this world of men ; to bring
forth happiness where now is suffering ; to
help the fallen and support the weak. I am
lord of this my life, the arbiter of all that life
shall bring to me " ; and saying thus, work
hard to make it true. And so you shall win
throughout in the hard battlefield of being. So
you shall overcome all obstacles, gaining new
strength from each fond weakness set aside.
So, most of all 9 as nearest to your hearts and
to the welfare of your race, you shall win
the power from Fate to mould the destinies
of Burma, to bring new strength to this
your nation; the power to carry out the
multitudinous reforms among your countrymen
which may yet be the salvation of Burma;
whereof the foremost in importance stands
the right apprehension of all that is involved
in the meaning and the application of this
Buddhist doctrine of Kamma.
APPENDIX
THE LATE ME. ALLAN BENNETT
BY CASSIUS PEKEIRA
WITH the death of Mr. Allan Bennett, (better known in
Ceylon and Burma as the Bhikkhu Ananda Maitriya) on
the 9th of March, in London, the Buddhist world loses
one of its foremost protagonists of late years.
Mr. Bennett was only 50 years old, having been born
in London in 1872. He was educated at Bath. His
father, a Civil and Electrical Engineer, dying early, the
boy was adopted by a Mr. McGregor, whose name the
lad took till the former died some years ago. From his
childhood a keen student of science, Allan Bennett took
up the profession of an Analytical Chemist. He had
also done much electrical work, which was just coming
to fruition, when his health broke down, and he decided,
on medical advice, to go " out East ". Always a lover of
the East, the forced holiday was not displeasing. He
had already become a Buddhist, about his 18th year, his
introduction to Buddhism being Sir Edwin Arnold's
masterpiece, The "Lighi of Asia.
He came put to Ceylon in 1900, and with an introduc-
tion from the late Mr. J. E, Richard Pereira, went to
Kamburugamuwa, where he studied Pali, for some six
28
434 THE RELIGION OF BURMA
months, under the "Ven. Revata Thera, and extended
his knowledge of Buddhism. Such was the brilliance of
his intellect that, at the end of this short period, he had
mastered the ancient Pali sufficiently to converse fluently
in that sacred tongue. He made many close friends
amongst the Buddhists of Ceylon, who gave him much
assistance in every way.
In July, 1901, he delivered his first Buddhist address, an
absorbingly interesting one on the " Pour Noble Truths,"
before the Hope Lodge of the Theosophical Society,
Colombo. He then decided to enter the Buddhist
Order, and as he wished to be ordained in Burma,
he left for that country and " renounced the world " at
Akyab, in 1901, on his birthday, the 8th of December, as a
Samanera, or novice, under the name of Arianda Maitriya.
At Akyab he continued his studies, being supported by
Dr. Tha HU of that town, and on 21st May, 1902, the
Wesak day, he received the higher Upasampada ordina-
tion under the Yen. Shwe Bya Sayadaw.
Going to Rangoon, where the philanthropical Mrs. Hla
Oung was his chief supporter, Ananda Maitriya in-
augurated the Buddhasasana Samagama, or International
Buddhist Society, whose high-class illustrated quarterly
magazine Buddhism, which he edited, was a credit to all
the Bast.
He visited Ceylon again, and delivered several inspir-
ing addresses at the Maitriya Hall, Colombo, which was
named after him.
APPENDIX 435
In 1908, on a visit to England, he helped in launching
the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland. On his
return to Burma, his health which was always very poor
began to fail rapidly. Gall-stone trouble was superadded
to the chronic asthma, which first sent him to the East.
He was operated on twice, and on the urgent advice of his
doctors, he reluctantly decided to leave the Order where
he had now attained the seniority of Them, or Elder.
He returned to England just before the Great War
began, and was too ill to proceed to the healthful climate
of California, as he intended doing. For some time he
was extremely ill, but he recovered enough to resume his
self-appointed life-work, in London, with the generous
help of Mr. Clifford Bax. The Great War had
disorganised the Buddhist Society there, but with the
help of Mr. W. Arthur de Silva, it was reorganised, and
its journal The Buddhist Review was restarted with
Allan Bennett as editor.
The work, however, was no sinecure. Some assistance
was nobly given from Ceylon, Burma and the Anagarika
Dharmapala ; but Mr. Bennett's health remained preca-
rious, and the position of the Buddhist Society was again
getting insecure when Dr. Hewavitarne's munificence,
when he visited England last year, again set things
right, and ensured regular support for Mr. Bennett.
Advance copies of his latest work, The Wisdom of the
Aryas, reached Ceylon just three days before his death.
And now the worker has, for this life, laid aside his
burden. One feels more glad than otherwise, for he was
tired ; his broken body could no longer keep pace with
436 THE RELIGION OF BTJBMA
his soaring mind. The work he began, that of introduc-
ing Buddhism to the West, he pushed with enthusiastic
vigor in pamphlet, journal and lecture, all masterly,
all stimulating thought, all in his own inimitably graceful
style. And the results are not disappointing, to those
who know. Operi&gretiu'ni est.
y
(From The Buddhist, Colombo, Ceylon,
of 28th April, 1923.)
BUDDH A-EOOD AS AN OFFICE
By ANANDA METTEYYA
WITH regard to The Buddha of the Tisarana, etc., refer-
ring to the office rather than to the person, perhaps we
should approximate the meaning of the Pali better if we
read it : " I go for Refuge or Guidance to Buddha-
hood." ...
An important point is, that if a modern Christian
apologist in like case were to say that " the Christ," the
Bedeemer, etc., does not mean the historical person, but
the " risen Christ," the redemption-miracle in the
heart of the converted man, he would be giving a real
twist to the clear meaning of the various passages in his
Scriptures. In the Gospels, we nowhere find it
stated by Christ save by the widest stretches of the
imagination, and inferentially- that there have existed,
or do, or will, exist, other " Chrisfcs " besides himself ;
while the parallel statement is over and over again made
by The Buddha in the Pitakas, often with detailed
reference to a Buddha of such and such a name. This
conception, then, of The Buddha in the technical sense
being not a person, but a power, an office of Enlightenment
is no new reading or interpretation of mine. (How, to
one who has realised the Anatta-doctrine, could The
Buddha, of all Teachers of Humanity, have appeared as
representing the finality, the ultimate Guide and Refuge,
438 THE RELIGION OP BUBMA
as that personality which He so consistently stated was
an illusion P) It is no Buddhist apologetic, a twist of the
meaning of the Text to make some statement or idea
more palatable and acceptable to the modern mind, but
an idea which is over and over again detailed in the
Buddhist Scriptures. We could hardly, therefore, be
fairly accused, even by the most critical of minds, of
attaching a meaning to this term which it did not originally
possess. Just the contrary, in fact ! For The Buddha but
seldom spoke of Himself as The Buddha save in the
passages where the whole of the Buddha- concept is detailed
in the various characteristic signs of Buddha-hood, as
in the formula : " Iti pi so Bhagava Araham Sammasam-
buddho," etc. While He often spoke of other Buddhas,
such as " the Sambuddha Kassapa " or the like, His own
usual way of speaking of Himself as the " office-holder," was
as the TcbtJiagata, a word which itself enforces the very
idea in question, meaning as it does, " He who follows in
the footsteps of His predecessors," Tatha-agato : " He
who has thus come," even as They came. The rendering
is not mine; it is not only in the sources, but in the
Commentaries, and in the present expositions of learned
Monks. All of these tell us that the personal Gotama
"passed into that utter passing-away which leaves
nothing whatever behind ". All of them, obviously
therefore, have another meaning in their minds when
they recite the Refuge-formula.
Printed by A. K. Sitarama Shastri, at the Vasanta Press, Adyar, Madras.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
i
17 185 252
Ananda Maitreya
l e ligion of Burma
JUL
P3 1980
' 1 3198)
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
17 185 252