en a search after knowledge, any kind
of secular knowledge, would be a return to the things of this life,
would, perhaps, re-kindle in him the desires that the whole meaning of
his life is to annihilate. 'And after thou hast run over all things,
what will it profit thee if thou hast neglected thyself?'

Besides, no knowledge, except mere theoretical knowledge, can be
acquired without going about in the world. You cannot cut yourself off
from the world and get knowledge of it. Yet the monk is apart from the
world. It is true that Buddhism has no antagonism to science--nay, has
every sympathy with, every attraction to, science. Buddhism will never
try and block the progress of the truth, of light, secular or
religious; but whether the monks will find it within their vows to
provide that science, only time can prove. However it may be, it will
not make any difference to the estimation in which the monks are held.
They are not honoured for their wisdom--they often have but little; nor
for their learning--they often have none at all; nor for their
industry--they are never industrious; but because they are men trying to
live--nay, succeeding in living--a life void of sin. Up till now the
education given by the monks has met the wants of the people; in future
it will do so less and less. But a community that has lived through
twenty-four centuries of change, and is now of the strength and vitality
that the Buddhist monkhood is, can have nothing to fear from any such
change. Schoolmasters, except religious and elementary, they may cease
to be, perhaps; the pattern and ensample of purity and righteousness
they will always remain.

CHAPTER XII

PRAYER

'What is there that can justify tears and lamentations?'
_Saying of the Buddha._

Down below my house, in a grove of palms near the river, was a little
rest-house. It was but a roof and a floor of teak boarding without any
walls, and it was plainly built. It might have held, perhaps, twenty
people; and here, as I strolled past in the evening when the sun was
setting, I would see two or three old men sitting with beads in their
hands. They were making their devotions, saying to themselves that the
world was all trouble, all weariness, and that there was no rest
anywhere except in observing the laws of righteousness. It was very
pathetic, I thought, to see them there, saying this over and over again,
as they told their bea