Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

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THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA
asti nāsţi ; it is and it is not.* Familiar line of reasoning enough. We can find dozens, scores and hundreds of illustrations of this way of looking at the umiverse, wearisome, perhaps, to the ordinary man, but illuminative and necessary to the metaphysician and the philosopher.
Then we come to the growth, or rather the nnfolding, of the Jiva. The Jiva evolves, it is taught, by re-incarnation and by karma; still, as yon see, we are on very familiar gromd. “The wiverse is peopled by manifold creatures who are in this Samsāra, born in different families and castes for having done various actions. Sometimes they go to the worlds of the Gods, sometimes to the hells, sometimes they become Asurās, in accordance with their actions. Thus living beings of sinful actions who are born again and again in ever-leciuring births, are not disgusted with Samsūra.”+ And it teaches exactly as you read in the Bhagavad-Gītā that the human being goes downwards by evil action; by mixed good and evil he will be born as a man; or, if purified, will be born as a Deva. Exactly on these lines the Jaina teaches. It is by many births, by innumerable experiences, the Jiva begins to liberate himself from the bonds of action. We are told tliat there are three jewels, like the three ratnas that we so often lear of among the Buddhists; and these are said to be riglit knowledge, right faith, right conduct, a fourth * Report on the search for Sumskr! MSS. by Dr. Bhandarkar,
p. 93. + Uttaradh yayasa ii, 2, 3, 5.