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.