BUDDHA OR KARL MARX 557
You do not send the child to school on a day and then withdraw the child home and expect the child to grow into learning, to get education. The child has to go to School every day, sit there for five hours and study constantly. It is then, and then alone that the child gets somewhat saturated with what is called knowledge and what is called learning. Here the monastery is not a state. The Bhikkhus do not call the people to the monasteries on any single day and deliver sermon to them on some subject or moral education. I have never seen it.
I went to Ceylon and I told some people that was particularly anxious to see how the Bhikkhus preach. They told me that they have got ‘Bona’, Bana some word they use which, I subsequently learnt meant, ‘ Vanaka’ . They took me at 11 O’ clock to one place, to small little square thing as big as this, a table and I sat on the ground. A Bhikkhu was brought in. Several men and women brought water and washed his feet and he came up and sat there. He had a fan with him, you see, Gods only know what he said, of course, he must have preached in Singhalese. It was not more than two minutes, and after two minutes he departed.
You go to Christian Church, what happens ? Every week people assemble there. They worship, and some priest delivers a sermon on some subject from the Bible in order to remind the people what Jesus told them that they should do. You will be probably surprised, to know that 90 per cent of Christianity is copied from Buddhism both in substance and in form. You go to Rome, see the main Church and you will be reminded of the big temple which is known as ‘ Viswa Karma’ at Berut.
Vishabigne, who wrote a book on Buddhism, and was a missionary in China, had expressed his great surprise as to how this similarity occurs between Buddhism and Christianity. So far as the outlook, he dared not say that the Buddhist copied Christian, but he would not admit that the Christians copied Buddhism. There is so much of it, I think time has turned and we must now copy some of the ways of the Christians in order to propagate our religion among the Buddhist people. They must be made aware, every day and all time, that the Buddha’s Dhamma is there, standing by them like a policeman to guard lest they