es,
but also for everyone else near us; and so if we disapprove of any act,
we are always in a hurry to express our disapproval and to try and
persuade the actor to our way of thinking. We are for ever thinking of
others and trying to improve them; as a nation we try to coerce weaker
nations and to convert stronger ones, and as individuals we do the same.
We are sure that other people cannot but be better and happier for being
brought into our ways of thinking, by force even, if necessary. We call
it philanthropy.

But the Buddhist does not believe this at all. Each man, each nation,
has, he thinks, enough to do managing his or its own affairs.
Interference, any sort of interference, he is sure can do nothing but
harm. _You_ cannot save a man. He can save himself; you can do nothing
for him. You may force or persuade him into an outer agreement with you,
but what is the value of that? All dispositions that are good, that are
of any value at all, must come spontaneously from the heart of man.
First, he must desire them, and then struggle to obtain them; by this
means alone can any virtue be reached. This, which is the key of his
religion, is the key also of his private life. Each man is a free man to
do what he likes, in a way that we have never understood.

Even under the rule of the Burmese kings there was the very widest
tolerance. You never heard of a foreigner being molested in any way,
being forbidden to live as he liked, being forbidden to erect his own
places of worship. He had the widest freedom, as long as he infringed no
law. The Burmese rule may not have been a good one in many ways, but it
was never guilty of persecution, of any attempt at forcible conversion,
of any desire to make such an attempt.

This tolerance, this inclination to let each man go his own way, is
conspicuous even down to the little events of life. It is very marked,
even in conversation, how little criticism is indulged in towards each
other, how there is an absolute absence of desire to proselytize each
other in any way. 'It is his way,' they will say, with a laugh, of any
peculiar act of any person; 'it is his way. What does it matter to us?'
Of all the lovable qualities of the Burmese, and they are many, there
are none greater than these--their light-heartedness and their
tolerance.

A Burman will always assume that you know your own business, and will
leave you alone to do it. How great a boon this is I think we hardly can
unders