contentment as you may find in household, in club, or in office.
The predecessors of those whom we met in Leh had grown old and had grown away from our world in this sequestered western capital of Lamaism. Age had come on to stale their powers, but not their interest in this Himalayan home. Much persuasion, we were told, was needed to start them on the twenty days' march to Rawal Pindi, where the shrieking locomotive should remind them of that noisy civilisation which was their birthright.
It was a stiff climb which took us up to the monastery, temple, and palace, all looking protectingly down upon white houses, half hid by trees, hay-covered roofs, and broad bazaars. In the temple is a great statue of Buddha thrusting its broad shoulders through the roof, the head sheltered by an added structure. One mounts a stair in order to look into the quiet, benignant face. Here is no agony of the Crucified. Repose of self-submersion, of self-immersion, of the "dew-drop in the ocean" —that is the motive of a Buddhist artist. This was Gautama's dream long time ago, and the dream has been in the minds of millions since, and men have tried to carve and paint this dream into the attitude, into the face, into the very hands of Buddha statues, hoping that other men, gazing in rapt vision, might also have this dream, and that these many should try to live it, and thus be led away from self, the sooner to fall, formless, calm, as the dew-drop in the ocean. For further guide to him who gropes, candles are set at the feet of the statue, as saying, " Here is eternal light ! "
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