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DHARMA IN PRACTICE
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virtuous living and tapa which are more liable to be disregarded by one involved in ignorance and falsehood than by him who knows the nature of tattvas. It is to be borne in mind that the nature of himsâ and vice, the respective causes of life in hell and the tiryancha kingdom, has to be properly understood before one can ever hope to avoid them altogether, so that in a general way it is true to say that only the follower of the right path can enjoy complete immunity from the liability to descend into hells or to be re-born in the animal or still lower kingdoms.
If the reader has followed us thus far, he would have no further difficulty in agrecing with us as to the supreme necessity for the adoption of the true faith at as early a period in life as possible, for where the enemy to be overpowered is the formidable energy of karma which acquires additional strength with every false step, evil thought, and harmful, careless, action, where the forces of existence might come to an end in the most tragic and least expected manner, and where there is no security, or certainty, of life even in the very next moment, the least delay in turning to the true path is liable to have the most calamitous consequences for the soul. It should never be allowed to escape the mind that all evil traits of character, arising from the activity of speech, mind or body, have to be eradicated before the attainment of final emancipation can be brought within the pale of practicability, and that every action repeated a number of times becomes habitual and makes it all the more difficult for the soul to acquire control over the channels of its worldly activity. With the advance of age, habits become more firmly rooted and the tenacity with which old people stick to the notions imbibed in the earlier period of life is well known. Finally, when the powers of the body and mind have become too enfeebled by age to bear the severe strain of training required for the understanding and practising of religion, blankness of despair alone remains staring one in the face. Add to this the fact that the human birth is very difficult to obtain, so that he who wastes his opportunity ow may have, for ages to come, to wander in the lower grades of life where the soul is generally too much overburdened with karmic impurities to acquire the truth or to be
