ied for many things: love and hate, and religion
and science, for patriotism and avarice, for self-conceit and sheer
vanity, for all sorts of things, of value and of no value. Death proves
nothing. Even a coward can die well. But a pure life is the outcome only
of the purest religion, of the greatest belief, of the most magnificent
courage. Those who can live like this can die, too, if need be--have
done so often and often; that is but a little matter indeed. No Buddhist
would consider that as a very great thing beside a holy life.

There is another difference between us. We think a good death hallows an
evil life; no Buddhist would hear of this for a moment.

The reverence in which a monk--ay, even the monk to-day who was but an
ordinary man yesterday--is held by the people is very great. All those
who address him do so kneeling. Even the king himself was lower than a
monk, took a lower seat than a monk in the palace. He is addressed as
'Lord,' and those who address him are his disciples. Poor as he is,
living on daily charity, without any power or authority of any kind, the
greatest in the land would dismount and yield the road that he should
pass. Such is the people's reverence for a holy life. Never was such
voluntary homage yielded to any as to these monks. There is a special
language for them, the ordinary language of life being too common to be
applied to their actions. They do not sleep or eat or walk as do other
men.

It seems strange to us, coming from our land where poverty is an
offence, where the receipt of alms is a degradation, where the ideal is
power, to see here all this reversed. The monks are the poorest of the
poor, they are dependent on the people for their daily bread; for
although lands may be given to a monastery as a matter of fact, very few
have any at all, and those only a few palm-trees. They have no power at
all, either temporal or eternal; they are not very learned, and yet they
are the most honoured of all people. Without any of the attributes which
in our experience gather the love and honour of mankind, they are
honoured above all men.

The Burman demands from the monk no assistance in heavenly affairs, no
interference in worldly, only this, that he should live as becomes a
follower of the great teacher. And because he does so live the Burman
reverences him beyond all others. The king is feared, the wise man
admired, perhaps envied, the rich man is respected, but the monk is
honoure