Power of Karma

Author(s): Alexander Cannon
Publisher: Rider and Co

Page 27

27
KARMA material possessions. What, otherwise, can be the meaning of your saying that—"Time is money'. which would be apt to amuse us if it were not for the saddening thought which underlies it. I say again that what you call your glorious civilization, is, and has been, nothing but a process of multiplying your wants—the luxuries of to-day are the necessities of to-morrow-and the more the horizon of these wants extends, the more you will have to toil in order to gratify them; you are forced to devote an ever-increasing part of your life to the procuring of the means wherewith to gratify artificial wants; you are, indeed, the slaves of your wants, for each new want implies a new sorrow, viz., the sorrow experienced in the deprivation of the means to gratify it. A thousand wants mean a thousand sorrows, a thousand disappointments, a thousand pains. Has the standard of happiness been raised even to the extent of one inch by your much-valued civilization ? I say no: on the contrary, you suffer more than your forefathers did at any given period, because they lived in a simpler and more frugal manner, and their wants were fewer. ...
“We Hindoos, on the other hand, after having risen to a certain height of material culture,