The four-fold truth on which Buddha’s whole scheme hinges may be expressed as follows:—Life on earth is full of suffering; suffering is generated by desire; the extinction of desire involves the extinction of suffering; the extinction of desire, and therefore of suffering, is the outcome of a righteous life. But how is desire with the suffering which it generates to be extinguished? The answer of Buddhism is that the eightfold path which leads to the extinction of suffering is by “Right Belief, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Remembrance and Self-discipline, Right Concentration of Thought.” In Buddha’s system, as he himself gave it to the world, doctrines and beliefs are of secondary importance. Fully alive to the truth that “what we do, besides being the outward and visible sign of our inward and spiritual state, reacts naturally and necessarily on what we are, and so moulds our character and controls our destiny,” he formulated for his followers a simple system of moral rules, obedience to which would set them on the path which leads to salvation. On this path there are successive stages, and each of these stages is marked by the breaking of some of the fetters which bind man to earth and to self, and when all the fetters are at last broken then the Holy One, as he is now called, has reached his goal. In other words, he has attained to that state which Buddhists call Nirvana, a state of “perfect knowledge, perfect love, perfect peace, and therefore of perfect bliss.” The Buddhist system emphasises the importance of education and discipline. All over Burma there are schools conducted by Buddhist monastic orders at which instruction is gratuitously given to boys in the vernacular of the country, and one rarely finds a native of Burma who cannot read and write his own language. It is also part of the religious discipline of every Burman boy that he should become a novice in a monastic order and live for a time the life of a monk. The aim of this training is to teach obedience and self-control, and thus in these days of change, when strange and disintegrating influences are at work in the East, the Burman retains, to a certain extent at all events, his simplicity and his kindly faith. To appreciate the influence of Buddhism in Burma let us remember that a Buddhist priest is supported entirely by gifts in kind, and never touches a coin.