BUDDHA'S DOCTRINE

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will enjoy happiness. If a man have wisdom, he will enjoy all happiness. Now ye have judged for yourselves. He who covets not, who hates not, is the disciple of Buddha. Good will come to him; he will be enlightened, he will love all beings. He will be merciful, he will be happy in others' happiness. He will not hate one and love another, but be equal toward all. His friendship, mercifulness, sympathy, good will, shall go forth to all. His equanimity shall be boundless. In this life he will obtain fearlessness in four things: He may say, 'If there be another world, and if ill or well affects it, I shall be happy. If there be no other world, I have harmed none and benefited others, and am happy. If after death only the wicked suffer, I have done no evil, and need not fear. If there be no punishment for the wicked, I am secure."" Buddha said to the princes: "Are these doctrines good or bad?" They replied, "They are good; better than any taught us before," and they became his disciples.

So ended the reading from the Sutta, and for a few moments there was silence. Mr. Ramanathan whispered to me: "Is it not strange that you and I, come from far different religions and regions, should together listen to a sermon from Buddha in favour of that free thought, that independence of traditional and fashionable doctrines, which is still the vital principle of human development? "Yes," I said, "and we, with the princes, pronounce his doctrines good." To me, indeed, it was thrilling that from a past of seventy generations should come this voice summoning man to rest his faith on his own reason, and trust his life for eternity to virtues rooted in his own consciousness.

Invited to question, I asked the priest about covetousness, and why it occupied such a cardinal place among the sins. I observed that all commerce is developed from man's desire for what belongs to his neighbour. I asked whether it might not be possible that originally the covet

ous eye meant the evil eye; it being still believed in some parts of England that if one strongly desires a thing belonging to another, that thing may be so rendered useless to its owner or even destroyed. The priests knew of no such superstition, and Sumangala said that covetousness was not associated with the things a man desired to exchange, and that it was regarded by Buddhism as especially evil because of its lasting effects. "There are short sins and long sins. Anger is a great sin, but does not last long. Covetousness is a small sin, but endures long and grows. Even if a man loves his own things strongly, it brings unhappiness; still more if he strongly desires what belongs to others. He cannot ascend in the path to Nirvana, the extinction of desire. There are five sins especially destructive of what bears man to Nirvana, and these we reckon worst, though in immediate effects they may appear least." "But suppose," I asked, "a man strongly desires to go to heaven; is that covetousness? " "Yes," said the priest, resting his chin upon the table and levelling his eyes like arrows at the head of Christian faith; "yes, it is covetousness to desire paradise strongly. One who goes there with such desires is as a fly stuck fast in honey. Paradise is not eternal. One who goes there must die and be born again elsewhere. Only the desire for Nirvana escapes from the mesh that entangles all other desires, because it is not desire for any object at all." I asked: "Have those who are in Nirvana any consciousness?" I was then informed that there is no Sinhalese word for consciousness. Sumangala said, "To reach Nirvana is to be no more." I pointed to a stone step and said: "One is there only as that stone is here?" “Not so much," answered the priest; "for the stone is actually here, but in Nirvana there is no existence at all.”