“And, as the words were said, he knew that the prayer was heard. The lilies returned in a beauty beyond telling, and it seemed that half the world desired them. He who had not known the joy of giving became now, as it were, the very source of charity and gave not only of his lilies but of his rice and millet and all his gains, that the heart of the poor might be gladdened with plenty. So, as he told, we sat together, hand in hand, with tongues that could not be satisfied in telling and eyes that beheld the greatness of the Divine. And for many years he came, and the monks watched and watched for his coming and I most of all. And at last he did not come, but his son in his place, who told me that the bond of life had been gently loosed, and it was believed that High Presences stood about his death-bed while the villages mourned.
“O Brother of the Pen, write this true story, that all may know there is none like unto the Hearer of Prayer!”
The evening star hung like a steadfast lamp over the dim ocean, and the air was so still that, when at last a faint stirring came in the grasses and leaves, it was as if some listening influence were passing softly away, as indeed I believe.
Skeptics may say that the wish was father to the thought. But I know better. And as for the flowers themselves, there is a strange susceptibility in the plant life we call “lower.” Of that truth I know many stories which I shall tell one day.
But how shall I tell the beauty of Puto looking forth on its little sisters of the Archipelago with the serenity of a saint who has attained? I sat alone next day by the carved Rock of Meditation pondering these things, and bathing my soul in the peace of them as in deep water. The mystery of the place was about me, for Puto is a home of the mystic order of Buddhist monasticism which in India is called Jhana, in Japan Zen, and there were men at hand to whom the bond of the flesh is a thing easily unloosed. One sat on the height above me now in profound meditation.
I analyzed my own heart. Is it because all this with the atmosphere it creates, is so beautiful that I love it? Or is it because it presents a truth forgotten, lost, in our hurrying day of fevered unrest?
Because it is of the truth. That is the answer. None can doubt it who understands and loves these people and their teachings.
None—who is admitted to the quiet of their secret places and thoughts.
It is a truth which is a part of nature itself. Consider the lilies of the field. They breathe it, the soft breezes whisper it among the leaves of the maiden-hair trees, the measured cadence of the sea chimes it eternally on the golden shores of Puto.
They have the secret of peace, which we have immeasurably and to our ruin lost.