THE RIDDLE OF LIFE/PART 8

 

CHAPTER VIII

 

KARMA --LAW OF ACTION

AND RE-ACTION

 

THE word Karma simply means action. But the connotation of the word is far-reaching, for much more goes to the making of an action than the ordinary person might think. Every action has a past which leads up to it; every action has a future which proceeds from it; an action implies a desire which prompted it and a thought which shaped it, as well as a visible movement to which the name of 'act' is usually confined. Each act is a link in an endless chain of causes and effects, each effect becoming a cause, and each cause having been an effect; and each link in this endless chain is welded out of three components, desire, thought and activity. A desire stimulates a thought; a thought embodies itself in an act. Sometimes it is a thought, in the form of a memory, that arouses a desire, and the desire bursts into an act. But ever the three components—two invisible and belonging to consciousness, one visible and belonging to the body—are there; to speak with perfect accuracy, the act is also in consciousness as an image before it is extruded as a physical movement. Desire—or Will—Thought, Activity, are the three modes of consciousness.

This relation of desire, thought and activity as 'action', and the endless interlinkings of such actions as causes and effects, are all included under the word Karma. It is a recognised succession in nature—i.e., a law. Hence Karma may be Englished into causation, or the Law of causation. Its scientific statement is: 'Action and reaction are equal and opposite.' Its religious statement cannot be better put than in the well-known verse of a Christian scripture: 'As a man soweth, so shall he also reap.' Sometimes it is called the law of equilibrium, because whenever equilibrium is disturbed, there is a tendency in nature to restore the condition of equilibrium.

 

Karma is thus the expression of the divine nature in its aspect of law. It is written: 'In whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' The inviolableness of natural order; the exactitude of natural law; the utter trustworthiness of nature—these are the strong foundations of the universe. Without these there could be no science, no certitude, no reasoning from the past, no presaging of the future. Human experience would become useless, and life would be a chaotic irrationality.

 

What a man sows, he reaps. That is Karma. If he wants rice, he must sow rice. Useless to plant vines and to expect roses; idle to sow thistle-down and hope for wheat. In the moral and the mental worlds, law is equally changeless; useless to sow idleness, and hope to reap learning; to sow carelessness, and look for discretion; to sow selfishness, and expect love; to sow fear, and hope for courage. This sane and true teaching bids man study the causes he is setting up by his daily desires, thoughts and actions, and realise their inevitable fruiting. It bids him surrender all the fallacious ideas of 'forgiveness', 'vicarious atonement', 'divine mercy', and the rest of the opiates which superstition offers to the sinner. It cries out as with a trumpet-blast to all those who thus seek to drug themselves into peace: 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.' That is the warning side of the law. But note the encouraging. If there is law in the mental and moral world we can build our character; thought makes quality; quality makes character. 'As a man thinks, so he is.' 'Man is created by thought; what a man thinks upon, that he becomes.' If we meditate on courage, we shall work courage into our character. So with purity, patience, unselfishness, self-control. Steady persevering thought sets up a definite habit of the mind, and that habit manifests itself as a quality in the character. We can build our character as surely as a mason can build a wall, working with and through the law. Character is the most powerful factor in destiny, and by building a noble character, we can ensure a destiny of usefulness, of service to mankind. As by law we suffer, so by law do we triumph. Ignorance of law leaves us as the rudderless boat drifting on the current. Knowledge of law gives us a helm by which we can steer our ship whithersoever we will.

NEXT CHAPTER 

The Three Threads of the Cord of Fate