Karma and Rebirth

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

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KARMA AND REBIRTH APPLIED Buddhism, in Indian philosophy, and in most of the religions of the world. In the Dhammapada it reads, “ The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive ; the faults of others one lays open to all, but one's own one hides, as a cheat will hide the bad die from the gambler."
Mistakes will be made, and be paid for, in valuations as in all else. For values pertain to the mind, not to things, and as the mind evolves, so must its values and its power to value wisely. Sin and happiness must be revalued, as already shown ; so must time, for it is only time which separates those below us in the scale of evolution and those ahcad. So must death and the fear of death. When the body is seen as a garment of the soul, and the soul or returning Self is found to be one with the SELF, where is the sorrow at the need of sleep, of rest at the close of day? Again, a lesson well learnt can never be bought too dearly, and many of those who in the stress of war have lost their all-of visible belongings—have learnt, as only the violent teacher, war, has been able to teach them, the unimportance of possessions, when all that a man possesses is what he is.
The way is a Middle Way, a path of temperance, of the due avoidance of extremes." All opposites provoke their opposites," which is another way of saying that action and reaction are equal and opposite. All extremes must ultimately cancel out, even as a pendulum, however fiercely swung, will finally fall to rest. The more a spring is compressed, the greater will be the recoil. The Middle Way avoids extremes, and threads its way between the opposites so lightly and so reasonably that no act is followed by reaction, and hence there is no need for a Self to suffer the consequences of the act. “The perfect act has no result.”
But the Middle Way has naught to do with compromise, where compromise means loosing the reins of principle. That which is right, for that individual at that time in thosc circumstances, is right ; all other act is wrong. The way between two extremes is not a little of each, but a third way, the genuine
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