if
hell may perhaps open to him it is only for a time, only till he is
purified and washed from the stain of his sins; and then he can begin
again, and have another chance to win heaven. If there is no immediate
heaven there is no eternal hell, and in due time all will reach heaven;
all will have learnt, through suffering, the wisdom the Buddha has shown
to us, that only by a just life can men reach the Great Peace even as he
did.

So that if Buddhism has none of the consolation for the dying man that
Christianity holds out, in the hope of heaven, so it has none of the
threats and terrors of our faith. There is no fear of an angry Judge--of
a Judge who is angry.

And yet when I came to think over the matter, it seemed to me that
surely there must be something to calm him in the face of death. If
Buddhism does not furnish this consolation, he must go elsewhere for it.
And I was not satisfied, because I could find nothing in the sacred
books about a man's death, that therefore the creed of the people had
ignored it. A living creed must, I was sure, provide for this somehow.

So I went to a friend of mine, a Burman magistrate, and I asked him:

'When a man is dying, what does he try to think of? What do you say to
comfort him that his last moments may be peace? The monks do not come, I
know.'

'The monks!' he said, shaking his head; 'what could they do?'

I did not know.

'Can you do anything,' I asked, 'to cheer him? Do you speak to him of
what may happen after death, of hopes of another life?'

'No one can tell,' said my friend, 'what will happen after death. It
depends on a man's life, if he has done good or evil, what his next
existence will be, whether he will go a step nearer to the Peace. When
the man is dying no monks will come, truly; but an old man, an old
friend, father, perhaps, or an elder of the village, and he will talk to
the dying man. He will say, "Think of your good deeds; think of all that
you have done well in this life. Think of your good deeds."'

'What is the use of that?' I asked. 'Suppose you think of your good
deeds, what then? Will that bring peace?'

The Burman seemed to think that it would.

'Nothing,' he said, 'was so calming to a man's soul as to think of even
one deed he had done well in his life.'

Think of the man dying. The little house built of bamboo and thatch,
with an outer veranda, where the friends are sitting, and the inner
room, behind a wall of bamboo matting, whe