Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: Albemarle Street London

Page 14

INTRODUCTION embracing Law. As Loftus Hare wrote 1 : “A man becomes what he does. Can this doctrinc be refuted ? If it be true it is the most important and the most neglected truth in the world.” One might add, that if it be false it is strange that none has yet attempted to prove its falsity, nor offered a better solution of the ‘Riddle of Life'.
But because it is true the doctrine is intensely difficult. Those who imagine that the fundamental truths of existence can be described on the plane of the intellect have yet to discover that these tremendous principles are not facts, as pebbles on the beach are facts, but cosmic forces compared with which the power and grandeur of the Niagara Falls are insignificant. In the Brihad Upanishad, one of the oldest Hindu Scriptures, Karma is referred to as "a mighty secret”, which only the initiated may know. In the Sutta Nipata, one of the oldest Buddhist Scriptures, Ananda says of Karma to the Blessed One, "How deep is this Causal Law, and how deep it seems ! And yet do I regard it as quite plain to understanding." To which the Buddha replied, "Say not so, Ananda, say not so ! Deep indeed is this Causal Law, and deep it appears to be. It is by not knowing, by not understanding, by not penetrating this doctrine that the world of men has become entangled like a ball of twine . . . unable to pass beyond the Way of Woe, and the ceaseless round of Rebirth.” Even to our intelligence the ramifications and interrelations of cause and effect in all the departments of the Universe are so immensely complex that none would presume to understand them ; how infinitely more enlightened must that being be whose understanding can embrace this Law at the fountain head of its eternal majesty!
Only by studying, and to some extent grasping, an outline of the Wisdom of which Karma and Rebirth are part can the meanest vision of the doctrine be attained, and even then it is difficult to examine it apart from the Wisdom itself from which, as sunlight in the air, it is inseparable. Yet the difficulty is
1 Mysticism of East and West.