UNLIMITED Audiobooks and eBooks

Over 40,000 books & works on all major devices

Get ALL YOU CAN for FREE for 30 days!

The Soul of a People

H. Fielding

Book Overview: 

In The Soul of a People, Englishman H. Fielding explores the beliefs of the Burmese people. He offers an understandable, and yet thorough, explanation of Buddhism, and illustrates the many ways the people of Burma (Myanmar) live their faith. He also provides a glimpse into the folk-practices surrounding Nats--the spirits of individuals who have suffered traumatic deaths, who now seek peace among ancient trees. Fielding, who lived in Burma for many years, gives us an intimate, first-hand account of a people he came to admire.

How does All You Can Books work?

All You Can Books gives you UNLIMITED access to over 40,000 Audiobooks, eBooks, and Foreign Language courses. Download as many audiobooks, ebooks, language audio courses, and language e-workbooks as you want during the FREE trial and it's all yours to keep even if you cancel during the FREE trial. The service works on any major device including computers, smartphones, music players, e-readers, and tablets. You can try the service for FREE for 30 days then it's just $19.99 per month after that. So for the price everyone else charges for just 1 book, we offer you UNLIMITED audio books, e-books and language courses to download and enjoy as you please. No restrictions.

Book Excerpt: 
. . .ng, that nothing can alter one into the other, nothing can ever make killing righteous and violence honourable, that is no creed for a soldier. And Buddhism has ever done this. It never bent to popular opinion, never made itself a tool in the hands of worldly passion. It could not. You might as well say to gravity, 'I want to lift this stone; please don't act on it for a time,' as expect Buddhism to assist you to make war. Buddhism is the unalterable law of righteousness, and cannot ally itself with evil, cannot ever be persuaded that under any circumstances evil can be good.

The Burmese peasant had to fight his own fight in 1885 alone. His king was gone, his government broken up, he had no leaders. He had no god to stand beside him when he fired at the foreign invaders; and when he lay a-dying, with a[Pg 66] bullet in his throat, he had no one to open to him the gates of heaven.

Yet he fought—with every possible discouragement he fought, and some. . . Read More

Community Reviews

Very insight facts of Myanmar in the past and the writer's voice on Myanmar had been reflected in this book !

Although Hall can't help filtering his experiences in Burma through his British sensibilities, he does try to give an objective description of Burma and Buddhism. The chapter on past lives was fascinating.