364 TALKS ON " AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER "
the matter was submitted to the Master, and He was
asked, for the sake of His pupil, whether this partic-
ular thing should be done. He said:ci Yes, for the sake
of the rest of the family who mfght be shocked or
troubled, you may go down for an hour at such
and such a time, but be very careful that, during
that time, you repeat nothing whatever which you do
not understand, that you in no case repeat things
blindly after the priest and that you do not allow
anything to be done for you that you can do for
yourself,—that is, in the way of ceremonies and bless-
ings and so forth." So there, quite evidently, in the
best of good faith, an attempt was being made to force
upon the boy a duty which was certainly not his to
do. I take it that it is just possible tfcat the special
reference here may have been to that and to similar
cases. Be sure that it is a real duty and not one
that people are trying to impose upon you when
clearly it does not belong to you. We find that so in
the Hindu religion, but people even here often expect
from you, as duties, things which are clearly not
necessary parts of your duty. I can quite imagine,
for example, that people might expect from some of
our members attendance at all sorts of social functions
and so on, and the members might very well say that
they have not time. A member might say: te I am
willing to give up a reasonable amount of time for the
sake of keeping on friendly terms with people," and
they will be quite justified, no doubt about that. This
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