ttle better than the villager's
hut. Some villages are so poor that they can afford but little for their
holy men. But always there will be trees, always the ground will be
swept, always the place will be respected just the same. And as soon as
a good crop gives the village a little money, it will build a teak
monastery, be sure of that.

Monasteries are free to all. Any stranger may walk into a monastery and
receive shelter. The monks are always hospitable. I have myself lived,
perhaps, a quarter of my life in Burma in monasteries, or in the
rest-houses attached to them. We break all their laws: we ride and wear
boots within the sacred enclosure; our servants kill fowls for our
dinners there, where all life is protected; we treat these monks, these
who are the honoured of the nation, much in the offhand, unceremonious
way that we treat all Orientals; we often openly laugh at their
religion. And yet they always receive us; they are often even glad to
see us and talk to us. Very, very seldom do you meet with any return in
kind for your contempt of their faith and habits. I have heard it said
sometimes that some monks stand aloof, that they like to keep to
themselves. If they should do so, can you wonder? Would any people, not
firmly bound by their religion, put up with it all for a moment? If you
went into a Mahommedan mosque in Delhi with your boots on, you would
probably be killed. Yet we clump round the Shwe Dagon pagoda at our
ease, and no one interferes. Do not suppose that it is because the
Burman believes less than the Hindu or Mahommedan. It is because he
believes more, because he is taught that submission and patience are
strong Buddhist virtues, and that a man's conduct is an affair of his
own soul. He is willing to believe that the Englishman's breaches of
decorum are due to foreign manners, to the necessities of our life, to
ignorance. But even if he supposed that we did these things out of sheer
wantonness it would make no difference. If the foreigner is dead to
every feeling of respect, of courtesy, of sympathy, that is an affair of
the foreigner's own heart. It is not for the monk to enforce upon
strangers the respect and reverence due to purity, to courage, to the
better things. Each man is responsible for himself, the foreigner no
less than the Burman. If a foreigner have no respect for what is good,
that is his own business. It can hurt no one but himself if he is
blatant, ignorant, contemptuous. No one