Karma and Rebirth

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

Page 85

THE ENDING OF KARMA
AND REBIRTH
There are two ways to the Goal, to diminish the self, the power of the personality, until it is servant to the Self, and then to diminish the Self, the 'soul' or character, until it ceases to have any will or purpose other than that of the SELF, or, the Vedantin rather than the Buddhist way, to increase the power of the SELF in the Self, and then in the self till the separative impulse has ceased to exist and the whole of the man is One. In this connection it has been said that all men serve a self, but their enlightenment depends on the size of the self they serve. Is it the purely selfish lust of the egotist, the more enlightened love of family and neighbour and the immediate commonweal, or is it a love, an enlightened and illumined love for all mankind? As is the answer, so will be the attainment of that individual in the process of becoming.
The first answer, then, to the problem of the ending of Karma is that the self which causes and must suffer Karma must be left to die. When the three fires of hatred, lust and illusion die for want of fuelling, the personality, robbed of its independent willing, becomes the obedient servant of the soul, and as the soul gives up its life it learns to live. For the only slavery is desire, and he who learns to let go, to climb the wind-swept hills of self-becoming naked of all possessions and desire, will drink the mountain air of freedom, and find the peace that lies not in the satisfaction but in the absence of desire.
The second answer is twin to the first. "Without attachment, constantly perform action which is duty, for performing action without attachment man verily reacheth the Supreme.' So runs the Bhagavad Gita, and its theme is the absence of attachment to the act. There must be no more action in which 'I' strive for a result. But if the act seem good, that is, to be duty and no more, let there be the performing of that action, regardless of the consequence.
Whose acts are free from the moulding of desire, whose acts are burned up by the fire of wisdom, he is called Sage by the wise. Having abandoned all attachment to the fruits of action, ever content, seeking
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