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śramaņa, Vol 59, No.4/October-December 2008
though for the same action a bad man may have to suffer torment in hell. “It is as if a man was to put a lump of salt into a small cup of water, the water would be made salty and undrinkable. But if the same lump of salt were put into the river Ganges, the water of the Ganges would not be perceptibly tainted.'*8
Nevertheless, Buddhism lays great stress on freedom of will, moral effort and activity. Every individual is the master of his own destiny. One makes oneself pure or impure by one's own free good or bad volitions and actions. By one self the evil is done, by oneself one suffers, by oneself evil is left undone, and by oneself one is purified. Purity and impurity belong to oneself, no one can purify another. Hence, every individual can work out his own salvation by free moral actions. Buddhism, like Jainism, maintains that salvation does not depend upon the grace of God. It has to be wrought only by self help. As Nāgasena contends, “It is through a difference in their karma that men are not all alike, but some long-lived, some short lived, some healthy and some sickly, some handsome and some ugly, some powerful and some weak, some rich and some poor, some of high degree and some of low degree, some wise and some foolish.”9 As man is the builder of his own character and destiny the past self is wrought up into the present self. The future self is the projection of the present self. The self is not static but fluid, always a becoming. “Whatever a man does through his body, speech or thought are to be called his own for they follow him when he departs from his life like a shadow that leaves him not.”:10
It is clear now that karmas are the connecting link between one life of an individual and another. Though Buddhism does not accept the immortality of the soul it is in favour of the continuity of personality. Theory of Rebirth
Upanişads present a clear-cut enunciation of the theory of rebirth. As Prof. S. N. Dasgupta asserts: "The Brhadāraṇyaka says
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