Karma and Rebirth

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

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CHAPTER II
KARMA IN ACTION
KARMA creates nothing. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates Causes, and Karmic Law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour.!
It is man who crçates his Karma, for it is the product of his thought. As is written in the most famous verse in the Dhammapada, “ All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." Note the corollary which follows, when harmony demands the corresponding effect. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of him who draws the carriage. But if a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
It is of great importance to grasp the fundamental fact, as expressed by W. Q. Judge in The Ocean of Theosophy, that “No act is performed without a thought at its root, either at the time of performance or as leading to it." According to Indian philosophy, the sequence is ignorance, desire, will, thought and act. First comes Avidya, Ignorance, because all manifestation, and all that proceeds within it is unenlightened. In his ignorance man desires things for himself, believing that he has a 'self' which has interests of its own. “Man is altogether formed of desire ; according as his desire is, so is his will; according as his will is, so are his decds ; according as
1 The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky.
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