A section from the journey

"All Men Are My Children"

Ashoka did not leave his dhamma as fine words. He built it into the land. He had shade trees planted and wells dug along the roads, and rest-houses raised for travellers. He arranged healing for the sick, for people and for animals both, and had medicines and herbs carried where they did not grow. He even appointed special officers whose whole work was the welfare of his people. He felt toward all his subjects as a father feels toward his children.

We have heard what Ashoka's dhamma asked of people. Now let us see what it actually built. For this was the rare kind of ruler who did not stop at fine words. He turned his ideals into stone and soil and shade, into things a tired traveller could touch.

Think first of his roads. The empire was vast, and people walked it, for trade, for pilgrimage, for need. So Ashoka had trees planted all along the great roads, to give shade from the hard sun, both to people and to the beasts that carried them. He had groves of mango set out as well, fruit for the journey.

Then think of water and rest. At spaces along the way he had wells dug, so that no traveller need go thirsty. And he had rest-houses built, simple shelters where a person could sleep safe at night. Small kindnesses, you might say. But spread across a whole empire, and meant for every passer-by, they were a new idea of what a king is for.

Now here is the part that touches the heart most. Ashoka arranged for the healing of the sick. And not only for people. He provided care for animals too. Where useful healing herbs and roots did not grow, he had them brought from afar and planted, so that medicine would be at hand for every creature that suffered. A king who thought of the health of a hurt animal, more than two thousand years ago, and wrote it into law.

To carry out all this care, Ashoka even made a new kind of officer. He called them the officers of dhamma. Their whole work was the good of the people, to encourage right and kind living, to look after the welfare of the many, to see that his ideals did not stay mere words on rock but reached into real lives.

And beneath every well and every shade tree lay one simple feeling, which Ashoka carved into stone in his own way. He said that he looked upon all his people as his own children. Just as a father longs for the happiness and safety of his children, so the king longed for the welfare of every soul in his vast land. All men, he felt, were his children.

So see, once more, how far our old word has travelled. was the deep order of the world. It became the right conduct of a single person. With Ashoka it became a shared way for peoples to live together. And here it puts on a third garment: the active care of a ruler for the body and the comfort of every one of his subjects. This is perhaps the first time in history a great state tried to govern by an ethic of kindness. We will weigh, soon and honestly, just how far that ideal truly reached.

A well dug for a stranger you will never meet, a tree planted whose shade you may never sit in. Ashoka filled his empire with such quiet gifts. Where in your own life have you done a small good for someone you would never see again, and how did it feel to give it freely?