Karma and Rebirth

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

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KARMA AND REBIRTH APPLIED small importance, and the littlest act is seen as the possible parent of great consequences. With a growing sense of responsibility for every thought and act there comes a new valuation of all circumstance. There is a greater willingness to face facts as they are and a reluctance to label them. Things and events are secn as neither good nor bad ; they are. It is man who adds the changing labels to the bare events. The value of intense sincerity is obvious, for if to lie to others is evil, to lie to oneself is an absolute barrier on the Way. Even sin is the less sinful when it stands alone, and is not aggravated by self-delusion as to what it is. In the delightful words of Gerald Gould :
For God's sake, if you sin, take pleasure in it,
And do it for the pleasure. Do not say : “Behold the spirit's liberty !-a minute
Will see the carthly vesture break away And God shine through.” Say: "Here's a sin—I'll sin it ;
And there's the price of sinning—and I'll pay !” In the same way, happiness is seen for what it is. Most men would say that it was the aim of life, yet, as I wrote elsewhere, when the conception is analysed, it is found to contain at least four ingredients, of which the first is a sense of security. In the second place there must be an absence of worry, which to most men means an absence of that fruitful cause of worry, responsibility. Thirdly, there must be an absence of strife, or conflict; and fourthly, there is a powerful sense of comfort, involving a 'comfortable' income, good health, a happy home. ... Such a conception is a lie, utterly selfish, and impossible of achievement." Even when such an animal contentment is for a short while achieved it is only at the expense of utter forgetfulness of the intolerable misery of millions of mankind. Not that pleasure is evil, nor happiness a sin, but to seek for it, to make it the motive of life and the goal of all endeavour is a low, unworthy motive for treading the Way.
1 From a specch reported in Buddhism in England, for July, 1938.
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