notice what himself has done, or left undone.'--_Dammapada._

A remarkable trait of the Burmese character is their unwillingness to
interfere in other people's affairs. Whether it arises from their
religion of self-culture or no, I cannot say, but it is in full keeping
with it. Every man's acts and thoughts are his own affair, think the
Burmans; each man is free to go his own way, to think his own thoughts,
to act his own acts, as long as he does not too much annoy his
neighbours. Each man is responsible for himself and for himself alone,
and there is no need for him to try and be guardian also to his fellows.
And so the Burman likes to go his own way, to be a free man within
certain limits; and the freedom that he demands for himself, he will
extend also to his neighbours. He has a very great and wide tolerance
towards all his neighbours, not thinking it necessary to disapprove of
his neighbours' acts because they may not be the same as his own, never
thinking it necessary to interfere with his neighbours as long as the
laws are not broken. Our ideas that what habits are different to our
habits must be wrong, and being wrong, require correction at our hands,
is very far from his thoughts. He never desires to interfere with
anyone. Certain as he is that his own ideas are best, he is contented
with that knowledge, and is not ceaselessly desirous of proving it upon
other people. And so a foreigner may go and live in a Burman village,
may settle down there and live his own life and follow his own customs
in perfect freedom, may dress and eat and drink and pray and die as he
likes. No one will interfere. No one will try and correct him; no one
will be for ever insisting to him that he is an outcast, either from
civilization or from religion. The people will accept him for what he
is, and leave the matter there. If he likes to change his ways and
conform to Burmese habits and Buddhist forms, so much the better; but if
not, never mind.

It is, I think, a great deal owing to this habit of mind that the
manners of the Burmese are usually so good, children in civilization as
they are. There is amongst them no rude inquisitiveness and no desire to
in any way circumscribe your freedom, by either remark or act. Surely of
all things that cause trouble, nothing is so common amongst us as the
interference with each other's ways, as the needless giving of advice.
It seems to each of us that we are responsible, not only for ourselv