Buddhist Monks

No other country has so many of them.

They have not only a spiritual function in the communities, people come to the monastery and ask for guidance in many worldly subjects. Since there is no God in Buddhism it is obvious that there can be little in the way of worship or prayer. It ought not to be necessary to state that they do not worship the image of the Buddha. 



They sit and fix their eyes on the image to remind them of that great compassionate teacher and the way of salvation which he taught ; that practice is an aid to meditation and concentration  Prayer too is not addressed to anyone ; it is aspiration rather

than communion or petition. The nearest approach to worship is found in the reverence which everyone renders to.

The principles they are trying to convey which is Dharma teaching, law and truth

Three Gems

I go for refuge to the Buddha.
I go for refuge to the Dhamma (Law).
I go for refuge to the Sangha (Brotherhood of Monks).

We have already dealt fairly fully with the first of these objects of reverence in our consideration of the life and teaching of the Buddha. We have now to consider the other two. The Dhamma is the body of teaching handed down by the Buddha to his disciples. On his deathbed, before attaining to the final Nirvana, he told them that the Dhamma was to be their light and guide, and that the fulfillment of it would be the highest way of reverencing himself. 

'Whosoever, Ananda, be he brother or sister, lay brother or lay sister,'whosoever walks uprightly it is what truly honors, reveres, respects, worships, and defers to the Blessed One in the perfection of worship.'

Buddhists in Myanmar or Burma have tended to identify this teaching 

with the external law, written and contained in the Tripitaka, the three 'baskets' of the Scriptures. These are a)Vinaya or Discipline, containing the rules of life, intended mainly for the monks. 

b)The Sutta-Pitaka or Discourses, including the four longer books'The Dialogues of the Buddha, Further Dialogues of the Buddha, Kindred Sayings, Gradual Sayings, and a number of shorter ones of which the best known is Dhammapada or Verses on Dhamma. To the ordinary student of religion this collection is by far the most interesting of the three, though it does not make easy reading ; but patience will discover many gems of thought and religious insight. There is a good deal of repetition and a number of literary devices, which point back to an oral tradition, when the teaching was learnt by heart and handed down from one generation of monks to the next. All the main books in this section may be read in the English translations pub­lished by the Pali Text Society.

c) Abliidhanima, which describes the processes of thought and psychology of Buddhism. This is of a very metaphysical nature and makes more difficult reading still. Strangely enough this is the most popular of the three 'baskets' in Burma, suggesting that Burmese Buddhists are more interested in the metaphysical side than in the ethical or religious aspects of their religion.
To the serious Buddhist the essence of the Teaching, contained in the Scriptures, will consist of several strands. There will be the insight of the Buddha into the cause of suffering, and the way of release in following the eight­fold path ; there will be an appreciation of the Law of Causation and its working out in the law of karma'regarded from these aspects Buddhism is certainly a `gnosis', a way of knowledge and enlightenment. There will also be the ethical teaching of the Buddha, summed up for the ordinary man in the Five Great Commands, binding on every Buddhist. 

These are :

1. To kill no living thing.
2. Not to steal another's property.
3. Not to commit any sexual crime.
4. Not to speak what is untrue.
5. Not to drink intoxicating drinks.

The highly moral character is evident from these five general commands. The first and the last need some comment. Not only human life is sacred, but all life, that of animals and insects as well. This is a logical development of the belief in re-incarnation, that long recurring cycle of lives progressing from humble forms of life and lower standards of character, to that final existence in the world when all guilt has been purged away, the debt of karma fully paid, and from which is no return ; Nirvana has been reached. 

So theoretically all life is equally sacred, that of an insect or animal equally valuable with that of a man. But in practice Burmese Buddhists fall short of that ideal as indeed the adherents of any religion fall woefully short of their highest aspirations. Most monks live an exemplary life the only country in the region where it is not like that is Thailand.