Part 4 — XIV. KARMA, THE COMPANION TRUTH OF REINCARNATION.

298We are our own children.—Pythagoras.

Nothing can work me damage but myself.—St. Bernard.

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill

Our fatal shadows that walk with us still.

Beaumont & Fletcher.

The kingdom of heaven is within you.—Jesus.

We make our fortunes and we call them fate.—B. Disraeli.

Men must reap the things they sow.

Force from force must ever flow.

Shelley.

The soul contains in itself the event that shall presently befall it, or the event is only the actualizing of its thoughts.—Emerson.

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such pain;

I never saw a brute I hated so.

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

Browning.

Not from birth does one become a slave; not from birth does one become a saint; but by conduct alone.—Gautama.

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow.—Beecher.

Then spake he of that answer all must give

For all things done amiss or wrongfully,

Alone, each for himself, reckoning with that

The fixed arithmetic of the universe,

Which meteth good for good, ill for ill,

Measure for measure unto deeds, words, thoughts,

Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.

The Light of Asia.

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XIV.

KARMA, THE COMPANION TRUTH OF REINCARNATION.

Karma is the eastern word for what the West knows as the Law of Causation, applied to personal experience. In Christendom the full recognition of this great principle, like that of its mate, reincarnation, lies dormant; but it is merely an extension into the spiritual domain of the fundamental premise of all science, the substratum of common sense, the cardinal axiom of every philosophy,—that each effect has an adequate cause, and each cause works infinite consequences. Briefly, the doctrine of karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about. God places all the powers of the universe at our disposal, and the handle by which we use them to construct our fate has been and is and always shall be our own individual will. Action (karma) of the spirit, whether in the inner consciousness alone, or by vocal expression, or in outward act, is the secret force which directs our journeys through infinity, driving us down into the gloomy regions of evil, of matter, and of selfishness, or up toward the luminous fields of good, of spirit, and of love.

300The most adamantine of facts is that of an infinite all-comprehending power of which nature is the pulsing body, an eternal reality shaping the shadowy appearances of time, and variously named Force, Fate, Justice, Righteousness, Love, Mind, The Over-Soul, God. The most essential attribute of this unfathomable Being is that of Almighty Equity. Confronting this fact is the puzzling fact of our spiritual personality enveloped in matter. The thought always associated with this, never practically forsaken, though sometimes theoretically denied, is individual responsibility. “Two things fill me with wonder,” said Kant, “the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.” When Daniel Webster was asked what was the greatest thought that ever stirred his soul, he replied, “The thought of my personal accountability to God.” Every balanced mind agrees with these intellectual giants on this point. The inevitable outcome of grouping these two actualities (God and responsibility) is the conception that the Universal Sustainer is giving every creature the best thing for it, and that each soul is in some way accountable for its condition. Single observations seem to contradict this idea, but the long trend of life’s experience verifies it. Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercession, forgiveness, and death-bed conversions. But it rings through the inner soul-world as the fundamental harmonic tone, setting the key for all wholesome poetry, philosophy, religion, and art, and inspiring the magnificent sweep of progress which is rationalizing modern Christendom. For it is identical with the essence of Bible truth, as these representative sentences will suggest:—

301“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Solomon.)

“Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.” (Jesus.)

“Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (St. Paul.)

The embryos of all animals are at the earliest stage indistinguishable from one another. The biologist who has lost his labels cannot tell which would become a fish, which a cat, and which a man; but nature knows the past records and therefore the future possibility of each. So within souls apparently similar there hide unsuspected germs of vast difference, resulting from the forgotten pasts, which may develop into corresponding divergent futures. The ancient behaviors of every soul have accumulated a grand heritage of influences from which our present bequest is derived. Using another figure, as each piece of “new” soil contains through all its depth a multitude of various seeds sown in past ages, which patiently bide their time to be brought to light and bear fruit, so the kernels of remote conducts shall eventually all have their unfoldment in the revolution of our lives, until at last, if we refuse weeds and harbor only worthy germs, we shall bear a continual harvest of good.

The “bonds of action” include the whole range of material for character,—not only the recognized habits of the soul, but, of more consequence still, the unconscious inner thought whence the outward manifestations spring. Whatever impulses are secretly cherished, these feed the acts of life, and mould all our environments to fit them. The nurtured thought of killing produces a thousand unseen murders and must continue wreaking crimes in immensely larger degree 302than hangable horrors. Our favorite inclinations show what we have been doing in ancient ages. Within the germ of to-day’s conduct are coiled interminable consequences of good and evil.

The relentless hand which metes out our fortunes with the stern justice most vividly portrayed by the Greek dramatists in their Nemesis, Fates, and Furies, takes from our own savings the gifts bestowed on us. “Alas! we sow what we reap; the hand that smites us is our own.” In the domain of eternal justice, the offense and the punishment are inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its outcome. He who injures another in fact only wrongs himself. To adopt Schopenhauer’s figure, he is a wild beast who fastens his fangs in his own flesh. But linked with the awful fact of our undivided responsibility for what we now are, goes the inspiring assurance that we have in our control the remedy of evil and the increase of good. We can, and we alone can, extricate ourselves from the existing limitations, by the all-curing powers of purity, love, spirituality. In eastern phraseology, the purpose of life is to work out our bad karma (action) and to stow away good karma. As surely as the harvest of to-day grows from the seed-time of yesterday, so shall every kernel of thought and feeling, speech and performance, bring its crop of reward or rebuke. The inherent result of every quiver of the human will continually tolls the Day of Judgment, and affords immeasurable opportunities for amelioration.

The worthy soul straitened with misfortune is shifting off the chains of old wrong-doing. The vicious soul enjoying comforts is reaping the benefits of old virtues. So intricately are all situations connected 303with untraceable lineages that only the Omniscient can penetrate below appearances in the real natures of men. The world is like a garden in which is newly planted a huge assortment of unknown plants. To the common observer the fresh sprouts are only deceptive, for the most promising stalk may prove to be a weak, fragile thing, and the uninviting leaflets may introduce a sturdy growth. But the all-wise Gardener knows each seed, and that it will ultimately show its ancestry. The stupendous issues of conduct endure through all changes. After one has climbed to high summits of character the surprising reappearance of some forgotten sin may stay his progress and require all his forces to conquer the viper whose egg he long ago nested in his bosom. The man plunged into the abyss of degradation may be a saint much farther advanced than those exalted persons who despise him.

It is karma, or our old acts, that draws us back into earthly life. The spirit’s abode changes according to its karma, and this karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical re-births. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this; but it is the goal of mankind. Some have reached it and have voluntarily returned as saviors of the race.

An illustrious explanation of karma appears at the close of “The Light of Asia”:

Karma—all that total of a soul

Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,

The “self” it wove with woof of viewless time

Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.

· · · · ·

304What hath been bringeth what shall be, and is,

Worse—better—last for first and first for last;

The angels in the heavens of gladness reap

Fruits of a holy past.

The devils in the underworlds wear out

Deeds that were wicked in an age gone by.

Nothing endures: fair virtues waste with time,

Foul sins grow purged thereby.

Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince

For gentle worthiness and merit won;

Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags

For things done and undone.

Before beginning, and without an end,

As space eternal and as surety sure,

Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,

Only its laws endure.

It will not be contemned of any one:

Who thwarts it loses, and who serves it gains;

The hidden good it pays with peace and bliss,

The hidden ill with pains.

It seeth everywhere and marketh all:

Do right—it recompenseth! do one wrong—

The equal retribution must be made,

Though Dharma^[55] tarry long.

It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true

Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;

Times are as naught, to-morrow it will judge,

Or after many days.

By this the slayer’s knife did stab himself;

The unjust judge hath lost his own defender;

305The false tongue dooms its lie; the creeping thief

And spoiler rob, to render.

Such is the law which moves to righteousness,

Which none at last can turn aside or stay;

The heart of it is love, the end of it

Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey!

· · · · ·

The books say well, my brothers! each man’s life

The outcome of his former living is;

The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes,

The bygone right breeds bliss.

That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields!

The sesamum was sesamum, the corn

Was corn. The silence and the darkness knew;

So is a man’s fate born.

He cometh, reaper of the things he sowed,

Sesamum, corn, so much cast in past birth;

And so much weed and poison-stuff, which mar

Him and the aching earth.

If he shall labor rightly, rooting these,

And planting wholesome seedlings where they grew,

Fruitful and fair and clean the ground shall be,

And rich the harvest due.

If he who liveth, learning whence woe springs,

Endureth patiently, striving to pay

His utmost debt for ancient evils done

In love and truth alway;

If making none to lack, he throughly purge

The lie and lust of self forth from his blood;

Suffering all meekly, rendering for offence

Nothing but grace and good:

306If he shall day by day dwell merciful,

Holy and just and kind and true; and rend

Desire from where it clings with bleeding roots,

Till love of life have end:

He—dying—leaveth as the sum of him

A life-count closed, whose ills are dead and quit,

Whose good is quick and mighty, far and near,

So that fruits follow it.

No need hath such to live as ye name life;

That which began in him when he began

Is finished: he hath wrought the purpose through

Of what did make him man.

Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins

Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes

Invade his safe eternal peace; nor deaths

And lives recur. He goes

Unto Nirvâna. He is one with Life

Yet lives not. He is blest, ceasing to be.

Om, mani padme, om! the dewdrop slips

Into the shining sea!

· · · · ·

This is the doctrine of the Karma. Learn!

Only when all the dross of sin is quit,

Only when life dies like a white flame spent,

Death dies along with it.

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