47' 



The Journal of Hcrctlit>' 



are people with beings superior or in- 

 ferior to man. In e\er\- one of these 

 spheres re-incarnation may take place." 



"Are there any evil deeds requiring 

 more than one birth-renewal.'' 



Certainh*; there are such, of which 

 the offender must bear the penalty in a 

 succession of re-incarnations in a lower 

 state." 



"Are the misdeeds of the parents visited 

 on the chiUlren- 



No, indeed ; no one has to suffer for 

 the wrongs of others; it would be con- 

 trary to the laws of eternal justice, 

 whereby guilt and suffering are so 

 closely interwoven that one cannot 

 exist without the other. . . . 



It is because we are like our parents 

 in our innermost being, our in(Ii\"i(lual- 

 ity, that we ha\e become tlieir children, 

 not the converse, as is generally be- 

 lieved; it is because at the moment of 

 our re-incarnation we have greater 

 affinity with them than with any 

 other being, that we have taken flesh 

 from them. Similar causes produce 

 similar effects. The inward resem- 

 blance between parents and children 

 nuisl necessarily find its expression in 

 outward form, in inclinations and 

 aversions, circumstances and the like. 



The cjualities of the parents are 

 never hereditary — in other words, 

 never can be transmitted from parent 

 to child. Heredity is but a name, and 

 the doctrine of Karma and re-incarna- 

 tion can alone gi\e a satisfactory 

 e.xplanation of the fact that parents 

 and children ha\e man\- c|ualities in 

 conuuon. 



"How lon^ does the individuality con- 

 tinue to renew itself in repeated births^ 



Until perfect knowledge and Nir- 

 vana is attained. Then, and not till 

 then, is that ha\en of rest attained 

 where there is no more suffering, no 

 more death, birth-renewal, or indi\id- 

 ualism." 



Most i)eopIe are born again; e\il- 

 doers go to the dark worlds, righteous 

 people go t(; a bright state. Those who 

 are free fr^m all fellers and worldly 



desires attain Nirvana — they are never 

 born again. 



The doctrine of re-birth or re- 

 incarnation is the most ancient and 

 \enerable truth possessed by mankind. 

 It is that primitive religious sense of 

 which we seem to haAe an innate 

 knowledge unless prejudices and errors 

 ha\e been instilled in our minds from 

 early youth.' 



MENTAL ABSTR.VCTION OF TMIC HINDOOS 



How a primitive people might de- 

 velop the idea of transmigration is not 

 difficult to understand. From the 

 general belief of savages that the soul 

 wanders away from the body in dreams 

 and comes back again, it is only one 

 step to the belief that should wander 

 after death and enter the bodies of the 

 next children that are born to the 

 tribe. The savages may be interested 

 only to the extent of recognizing dead 

 friends or enemies in their children, 

 but with the Hindoos the idea of 

 transmigration became a fantastic, 

 overwhelming obsession. The oppres- 

 sion of the belief in endless rebirths is 

 what the Buddhist hopes to escape, 

 through celibacy and denial of human 

 ties. An utter indifference to all 

 human interest is the Hindoo's ideal of 

 perfection, which he sacrifices every- 

 thing to attain. He looks on human 

 existence as a field of punishment, and 

 the world of living creatures as a 

 purgatory where the souls of dead men 

 are passing through endless processes 

 of retribution, working out through 

 "laws of eternal justice," toward new 

 births in human form, with the idea of 

 complete detachment of the "soul" the 

 only hoj)e of escape. It is little enough 

 that the Buddhist hopes for, but any- 

 thing is better than the nightmare 

 world of the i)rimiti\e Hindoo beliefs. 

 According to Buddhists, 



"The soul, disc-ntangled from all that 

 exists, finds itself alone without an\' 

 object it can adhere to; folding itself 

 up into its own being, it remains in a 

 state of internal contemplation, desti- 



' KxtratU'd witl> slight riMrranncmcnt of paragraphs from ".•\ Butldhist Catechism 

 for the- Use of Europeans," by Subhidra IMiikshii, New York, 1920. 



