z:\ ambedkar\vol 011\vol11 04.indd MK SJ+YS 5 10 2013/YS 18 11 2013 300
300 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
unpleasant is said against him. It is only when unpleasant things are said against him that you can test if he has Maitri—fellowship in him.”
III
Then he added, “I do not call an almsman charged with the spirit of Maitri if he shows it only to get clothes and food. Him only do I recognize as a true almsman whose Maitri springs from the doctrine.”
“None of the means employed to acquire religious merit, O Monks, has a sixteenth part of the value of loving kindness. Loving kindness, which is freedom of heart, absorbs them all ; it glows, it shines, it blazes forth.
“And in the same way, O Monks, as the light of all the stars has not a sixteenth part of the value of the moonlight, but the moonlight absorbs it and glows and shines and blazes forth ; in the same way, O Monks, none of the means employed to acquire religious merit has a sixteenth part of the value of loving kindness. Loving kindness, which is freedom of heart, absorbs them; it glows, it shines, it blazes forth,
“And in the same way, O Monks, as at the end of the rainy season, the sun, rising into the clear and cloudless sky, banishes all the dark spaces and glows and shines and blazes forth ; and in the same way again, as at night’s end the morning star glows and shines and blazes forth ; so, O Monks, none of the means employed to acquire religious merit has a sixteenth part of the value of loving kindness. Loving kindness, which is freedom of heart, absorbs them ; it glows, it shines, it blazes forth.”