when it is understood that anyone can
enter a monastery--thieves and robbers, murderers and sinners of every
description, can enter, are even urged to enter monasteries, and try to
live the holy life; and many of them do, either as a refuge against
pursuit, or because they really repent--it will be conceded that the
discipline of the monks, if obtained in a different way to elsewhere, is
very effective.

The more you study the monkhood, the more you see that this community is
the outcome of the very heart of the people. It is a part of the people,
not cut off from them, but of them; it is recruited in great numbers
from all sorts and conditions of men. In every village and town--nearly
every man has been a monk at one time or another--it is honoured alike
by all; it is kept in the straight way, not only from the inherent
righteousness of its teaching, but from the determination of the people
to allow no stain to rest upon what they consider as their 'great
glory.' This whole monkhood is founded on freedom. It is held together
not by a strong organization, but by general consent. There is no
mystery about it, there are no dark places here where the sunlight of
inquiry may not come. The whole business is so simple that the very
children can and do understand it. I shall have expressed myself very
badly if I have not made it understood how absolutely voluntary this
monkhood is, held together by no everlasting vows, restrained by no
rigid discipline. It is simply the free outcome of the free beliefs of
the people, as much a part of them as the fruit is of the tree. You
could no more imagine grapes without a vine than a Buddhist monkhood
that did not spring directly from, and depend entirely on, the people.
It is the higher expression of their life.

In writing this account of the Burmese and their religion, I have tried
always to see with my own eyes, to write my own thoughts without any
reference to what anyone else may have thought or written. I have
believed that whatever value may attach to any man's opinions consists
in the fact that they are his opinions, and not a _rechauffe_ of the
thoughts of others, and therefore I have not even referred to, or quoted
from, any other writer, preferring to write only what I have myself seen
and thought. But I cannot end this chapter on the monks of the Buddha
without a reference to what Bishop Bigandet has said on the same
subject, for he is no observer prejudiced in favour of B