Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 7

T. G, Kalghatgi
deed (Karma) and conditioned by this, the beginningless chain of existences following one another.'
Life in this planet is inexplicable in many ways, Happiness and misery are facts of life. Fleeting moments of joy are interspersed by moments of pain. In his Sermon at Banaras the Buddha said to his disciples that the first noble truth is the tyranny of pain. "Birth is painful, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful, union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is the separation from the pleasant” “What think, ye disciples whether is more, the water which is in the four great oceans or the tears which have flown from you and have been shed by you while you strayed and wandered on this long pilgrimage' Kant while refuting the optimism of Leibniz, said “Would any man of sound understanding who has lived long enough and has meditated on the worth of human existence care to go again through life's poor play...?”5 Schopenhauer was exasperated with the false optimism of the modern philosophers, as man is essentially a creature of pain. Life is but a pendulm swinging between pain and pleasure, desire and boredom, Happiness is negative state and only positive state is pain. In such a scheme of things there is no place for hope. But there were others who saw that the world is a pleasure garden. And man is the central figure in the drama of life. With Robert Browning they said that “God is in heaven and all is right with the world." These are the alternating emphases on life and its vicissitudes.
Happiness and misery are distributed in equal ways, some are happy and some miserable. All seek the pleasant things of life, but only some get them while others eat the bitter fruits. Very often we find good men suffer while evil men prosper in this life. King Hariscandra suffered untold misery for his truthfulness. The book of Job present the life of Job which is at once noble and piognantly miserble. In modern society incorruptible men suffer immensely and the dishonest prosper. This kind of personal and social inequalities have been a perennial problem of provident and social injustice.
Attempts have been made to find suitable philosophical solutions to this problem. In the garden of Edan Eve ate the fruit of knowledge that was man's first disobedience 'and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into this world and all our woe'.
3. Glasenapp : Immortality and Salvation in Indian Religion : Trans. E. F. J. Payne
(Sushila Gupta 1964) Author's Preface, 4. Oldenberg : Buddha, pp. 216-17. 5. Kant : Failure of every philosophical attempts in Theodicy : Article, 6. Milton (John): Paradise Lost I