Karma and Rebirth

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

Page 78

CHANGING VALUES It is more, it is undignified, and one of the first effects of applying the Law to all one's actions is a new-found sense of dignity. Man is no longer a pawn on a chess-board, moved by an unseen Hand, nor a blown leaf in the winds of destiny. He is the patient reaper of his self-sown past, and the deliberate creator not only of such future as may be built by the right user of all opportunities, but the creator of opportunity which may be rightly used. The wise man uses Karma as the scientist uses electricity, and the Law is just as impersonal. He who is ignorant of its powers or careless in its handling will suffer accordingly, and only himself may bear the blame, though others may suffer for his folly. Again, if a man uses a natural law to a selfish end it will work as well as if the end were sheer benevolence. He who wants will get ; it does not follow that having got it he will be satisfied with what he has got. There is such a thing as dust and ashes, and he who sows for himself will reap unhappiness.
Few men are their own masters in business ; the vast majority have their outward lives planned for them. Yet in the inner life all are equally free. There is dignity in the thought of a long-term planning for the development of character. In one life much may be done, but in endless lives to come, as many as are needed, all is possible, all will assuredly be done.
Only in action will the wisdom come. Lead the life, and the Way will open and the truth be finally attained. Such is the Wisdom in all Scriptures, but the way, the Middle Way of harmony, must be trodden for the sake of the Self, and not for the self alone. Mistakes are incvitable, but he who is willing to learn will pay the price demanded, retrace his steps to the point of divergence, and march on. And he will learn from his own mistakes to be less critical of others. Where those he Jespises stand at the moment, he once stood, even as he will stand where now, on the heights ahead of him, he sces the more developed of his fellow men.. The parable of the mote and the bcam is always apt, and it is to be found in the Dhammapada of
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