Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

TWENTY-SEVENTH TALK 547

escape from doing physical work and did nqt sub-
stitute the work of tfie higher planes. Of course
there were many who did that. In the same way
there are tliose airing the Buddhist monks, at whom
their fellows rather sneer, calling them (< Rice
Monks "—men who are monks for the sake of the
assured living, not a very luxurious one; but among
the Buddhists there is an assured living for every
monk—a living which will never fail while, say, one
in the country has any food at all, and for the sake
of making sure of that, without doing any work for
it, there are some who have joined that great Order.
But after all only a very few.

The same thing was true perhaps, in a somewhat
greater degree, of the monastic orders of the middle
ages in Europe. There were people who joined them
for the sake of the power and influence, and did not
mind in many cases the lack of possessions. For
though the individual monk did not have possessions,
the monastery as a body did acquire a very great
deal which was at» the disposal of the individual to a
large extent. So that they lived luxuriously enough,
I do not doubt. But the original intention was not
at all that; that was only a defection from the original
idea.

We who are decidedly on the line of action must
beware that we do not find ourselves secretly rather
despising the man of pure devotion, who, as we say^
does nothing on the physical plane.