An important government official obliged to deal with many vexatious requests and demands declared: “I could not get through my day’s work, if I did not spend an hour every day in meditation, just as Buddha did when he became enlightened.” He was asked what he did when he meditated or prayed. “Nothing at all.” “Well, about what do you think?” “Of nothing at all. I stop thinking when I engage in religious meditation. Life makes me think too much. I should lose my sanity, if I did not stop thinking and enter into the ‘void’, whence we all came and into which we all are going to drop back.” His Christian inquirer still was unsatisfied by the Buddhist’s description of his prayer life, and pressed further for details. “What happens when you meditate or pray?” “Nothing happens, I tell you, except, that I experience a peace which the passing world cannot give and which the passing world cannot altogether take away. The secret of religion is simply to realize that everything is passing away. When you accept that fact, then you become really free. The Christian world seemed to have been tremendously impressed by the slogan of the French soldiers at Verdun, ‘They shall not pass!’ Perhaps the German soldiers did not pass just then or there. But the French soldiers themselves are all passing away. And everything in the world is passing away. What our Buddhist religion teaches us is: ‘Let it pass!’ You cannot keep anything for very long. And prayer or meditation is simply to practice yourself in that thought deliberately. Oh, it is a wonderful peace when you fully believe that gospel, and enter into it every day. Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity! Why worry? We do altogether too much worrying. To pray means simply to quit worrying, to quit thinking, to enter into the indescribably passionless peace of Nirvana.” Here seemed to be an ardent Buddhist. When asked what he thought as the difference between a Buddhist and a Christian, he answered promptly: “Yes, there is my wife. She is a very good woman. All the neighbors come to her, when there is any one sick or in trouble. So I say to her: ‘Wife, I should think you would make a first-class Christian.’ But I think she lets herself be worried by altogether too many troubles. She is all the time thinking and fussing and planning. To be sure, it is mostly about other people, But then she does have the children and the house and the relatives and friends and neighbors to look after. Perhaps she really cannot be a Buddhist. Perhaps it is all a matter of temperament. Oh, but I tell you it is great to be a Buddhist, because it gives you such a wonderful peace.” IX PRESENT-DAY BUDDHISM: _1. Periods of Buddhist History_