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Updated: May 15, 2025
This confirms the words of Eitel, that Maitreya is already controlling the propagation of the faith. The Chinese characters for this simply mean "the great scholar or officer;" but see Eitel's Handbook, p. 99, on the term purusha. "The precious Buddha," "the precious Law," and "the precious Monkhood;" Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; the whole being equivalent to Buddhism.
At any other period the nation would have received with gratitude and approved of such a measure of church reform since it was fully called for by circumstances, was conducive to the interests of religion, and absolutely indispensable for the moral reformation of the monkhood. Now the temper of the times saw in it nothing but a hateful change.
He was detected by the villagers, stripped of his robes, beaten, and hunted out of the place with every ignominy possible. There is only one opinion amongst all those who have tried to study the Buddhist monkhood that their conduct is admirable. Do you suppose the people would reverence it as they do if it were corrupt? They know: they have seen it from the inside.
Has any religion ever had for twenty-four centuries such a proof as this? 'The restrained in hand, restrained in foot, restrained in speech, of the greatest self-control. He whose delight is inward, who is tranquil and happy when alone him they call "mendicant." Acceptance into the Monkhood. Besides being the ideal of the Buddhists, the monk is more: he is the schoolmaster of all the boys.
The monk is he who is attempting to reach it, and he knows that he cannot do that by attempting to rule his fellow-man; that is probably the very worst thing he could do. And therefore the monkhood, powerful as they were, left all politics alone. I have never been able to hear of a single instance in which they even expressed an opinion either as a body or as individuals on any state matter.
By 'ecclesiastical' I mean such matters as referred to the ownership and habitation of monasteries, the building of pagodas and places of prayer, the discipline of the monkhood. Such questions were decided by ecclesiastical courts under the Thathanabaing. Now, it was necessary sometimes, as may be understood, to enforce these decrees, and for that reason to apply to civil power.
They would think it a denial of all religion. And so the only things worth noting about the government of the Burmese were its exceeding badness, and its disconnection with religion. That it would have been a much stronger government had it been able to enlist on its side all the power of the monkhood, none can doubt. It might even have been a better government; of that I am not sure.
Thus there arose about him a brotherhood of those who were striving to purify their souls, and lead the higher life, and that brotherhood has lasted ever since, till you see in it the monkhood of to-day, for that is all that the monks are a brotherhood of men who are trying to live as their great master lived, to purify their souls from the lust of life, to travel the road that reaches unto deliverance.
But the religion has kept itself pure. No hysteric visions, no madman's dreams, no clever conjurer's tricks, have ever shed a tawdry glory on the monkhood of the Buddha. Amid all the superstition round about them they have remained pure, as they have from passion and desire.
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