use the Burmese terms if I
can help it, for this reason, that strange terms and names confuse us.
They seem to lift us into another world--a world of people differing
from us, not in habits alone, but in mind and soul. It is a dividing
partition. It is very difficult to read a book speaking of people under
strange terms, and feel that they are flesh and blood with us, and
therefore I have, if possible, always used an English word where I can
come anywhere near the meaning, and in this case I think monk comes
closest to what I mean. Hermits they are not, for they live always in
communities by villages, and they do not seclude themselves from human
intercourse. Priests they are not, ministers they are not, clergymen
they are not; mendicants only half describe them, so I use the word monk
as coming nearest to what I wish to say.

The monks, then, are those who are trying to follow the teaching of
Gaudama the Buddha, to wean themselves from the world, 'who have turned
their eyes towards heaven, where is the lake in which all passions shall
be washed away.' They are members of a great community, who are governed
by stringent regulations--the regulations laid down in the Wini for
observance by all monks. When a man enters the monkhood, he makes four
vows--that he will be pure from lust, from desire of property, from the
taking of any life, from the assumption of any supernatural powers.
Consider this last, how it disposes once and for all of any desire a
monk may have toward mysticism, for this is what he is taught:

'No member of our community may ever arrogate to himself extraordinary
gifts or supernatural perfection, or through vainglory give himself out
to be a holy man; such, for instance, as to withdraw into solitary
places on pretence of enjoying ecstasies like the Ariahs, and afterwards
to presume to teach others the way to uncommon spiritual attainments.
Sooner may the lofty palm-tree that has been cut down become green
again, than an elect guilty of such pride be restored to his holy
station. Take care for yourself that you do not give way to such an
excess.'

Is not this teaching the very reverse of that of all other peoples and
religions? Can you imagine the religious teachers of any other religion
being warned to keep themselves free from visions? Are not visions and
trances, dreams and imaginations, the very proof of holiness? But here
it is not so. These are vain things, foolish imaginations, and he who
wou