On the other hand, the monks’ life is a very idle one. They live in perfect ease, all their wants are supplied by the people, and they are not expected to work at all, except some of them at teaching. There are usually far more of them in the monastery than are required for that purpose, so that they spend a vast amount of idle time, and it is thought by many that the indolent, easy-going habits, and the lack of discipline and enterprise the Burmans display as a nation, is largely owing to the idle life of the monastery, which is continually before their eyes, for there they receive their teaching when young.
The Buddhist monk is not a minister of religion in our sense. He has no pastoral charge. He is for himself, and for his own deliverance, and the merit he acquires he shares with nobody. He may occasionally be called to attend this or that function, when the presence of a monk is customary, or he may expound the law occasionally, if he so choose, reciting some of the sacred writings for that purpose; but he undertakes no responsibility for the guidance of the souls of others. In Buddhism a man must save himself, and nothing that a monk or any one else may do can alter the balance of his merits and demerits. Even if the monk be summoned to the couch of a dying man, as he is sometimes, it is not that he may speak words of consolation, or offer him the comforts of religion. It is merely that the presence of the holy man may drive away the evil spirits that would be liable to haunt the place on such an occasion.
The habits of the monastic Order are very simple. In the morning, after the few Pali prayers have been uttered, the monks invariably go forth through the village, attended by the boys carrying the alms-bowls, to collect their daily food from the people. Not that they beg. There is no occasion for that. Their rules forbid them to ask; and in going from door to door amongst their own people they do not ask. But privately, I must own, I have found occasionally amongst the Buddhist monks of my acquaintance some of the most arrant cadgers I ever met with. Few, indeed, are the matrons who do not put something in the way of food in the alms-bowl. Nor do they thank the people for what they receive. They would never think of doing so. In fact, the obligation is all on the other side. The monks are conferring a favour by giving the people the opportunity to do this work of high merit by means of their alms. A useful hint, by the way, to collectors for good and useful objects in England!
In their walks abroad, and in the performance of such functions as bring them into mixed companies, many of the monks carry a large palm-leaf fan in their hands, in order that, as celibate ascetics, they may shut off the sight of feminine charms from their eyes.
The education given at the monasteries is very poor, but the acquisition of any learning at all by the children is a matter for wonder, when we consider how poor the instruction is. What they do succeed in learning is not so much by means of teaching, as we understand it, but is almost entirely due to the system of noisy repetition of the lessons, at the full pitch of their voices in unison, in which all the children engage, the elder ones leading, and the younger following. For this reason the little learning imparted at these schools is of a mechanical sort, and lacks intelligence. Arithmetic is very low indeed. Geography, if taught at all, must of course square with the orthodox Buddhist cosmogony; and as there is much that is doubtful about that, it is perhaps best left alone, and is accordingly. Burmese history is abundant in quantity, but in quality it only consists of what we call fiction, and has but a poor foothold upon fact, and is left out of the curriculum. All other branches of study are unknown, except a little of Pali in the form of devotions, which, however, is mostly taught in mere parrot fashion.
“THERE THE PEOPLE ASSEMBLE OF AN EVENING, AND ARE TO BE SEEN IN THE OPEN SPACE AROUND THE PAGODA, ON THEIR KNEES IN THE OPEN AIR, REPEATING THEIR DEVOTIONS IN PALI.”
The Director of Public Instruction in Burma told me a good story of his first visit to Mandalay. He had been calling on the great Thathanabine or Buddhist Archbishop of Burma, and had sought to impress upon that venerable ecclesiastic the desirability of improving the education given at the monastery schools. He mentioned arithmetic and geography as very desirable subjects to be taught, offering to supply teachers already trained and able to teach them. One of the attendant monks, an elderly brother of the yellow robe, remarked that for his part he could not see any great need for learning geography, especially now that the English Government had been good enough to construct a railway. “If you want to go anywhere all you have to do is to take your ticket and get into the train.” Where was the use of learning geography?