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N. M. KANSARA
consequence, this great law implies as the main reason why human beings should not kill and eat, and also even mistreat, the animals. The great fact of high importance to us is that according to this law, we are all constantly creating karma, rather incurring debts, and all of these debts must be paid off. This is the gist of the whole problem.
SAMBODHI
Being very generous, the Nature frequently allows much time, extending over long periods covering several births by way of installments, for the payment of these debts. She graciously grants the sinner plenty of time for repentance and compensation. If one were wise, one would never run into her debt. And, if one did run into her debt, one would seize the first possible moment to pay off the debt. Otherwise, sooner or later one has to make full payment, often with heavy compound interest. But this very fact of the Nature's generosity with the time for payment sometimes leads to terrible misconceptions, resulting in the self: deception on the part of the wrong-doer. It occurs very frequently that the life accounts of some of the human beings are not balanced at the time of their death. But the law of karma is inviolable. And if there be any karmic relation between two beings, that relationship can never be terminated until all accounts are settled between them. This entails in its course the law of reincarnation.
In his Yoga and Western Philosophy, Geraldine Coster has put this very clearly in the following words: It is our custom to regard this philosophy of karma as one of indolent easy-going fatalism, and to attribute to it many of the evils of Eastern social life. But it is in reality the complete negation of fatalism, in that it deletes chance, destiny, in the colloquial acceptation of the word, and the idea of overruling Providence, all three fairly common conceptions in the West. It represents man as the sole and absolute master of his own fate forever. What he has sown in the times of ignorance, he must inevitably reap; but when he attains enlightenment, it is for him to sow what he chooses and reap accordingly.
Jain Education International
There is a perfect solution of our social and economic difficulties. The whole world, particularly the Western world, is profit-mad, because human energies are devoted to heaping up profits, without caring as to how they get it. In such a situation it is but sure that just so long as this system prevails, the whole world would present a gigantic scramble of robbers, each trying his best to take from all the rest, without stopping to think of the day of payment. Modern business methods are nothing more, nor less, than a belated survival of the days of lawless plunder, pillage and the destruction of the weak. This is due to a lack of understanding of the law of karma.
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