The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.29

c11.29

Note the superb moral possibilities of this teaching. This is the well-known doctrine of *karma*, or “deed,” now famous wherever men are interested in the evolution of the human mind. Deed and the will, or “desire,” as the Hindus call it, back of the deed, are essentially one and the same thing. On desire man’s nature is founded; as his desires so are his endeavors, as his endeavors so are his deeds. By his deeds the character of his next birth in the round of existences is regulated, for he is himself the sum of his own deeds. If his *karma* in a given life has accumulated for him a good balance, as it were, the next life will be delightful and noble; conversely, if his life is evil, the next birth will be, consequently, as a low and degraded being. Life is character—character inherited and inherent from previous existence, and character modelled and shaped by the deeds of the present existence. Now we may answer the first question, namely, Why must the soul wander at all? The answer is: No deed leads the way to salvation, to release from life and union with Brahma. Aye, to be sure, as the fragrance of a tree in blossom so the fragrance of a good deed is wafted afar, saith the Chāndogya Upanishad.¹ But even the best deed is a thing from its very nature limited and vitiated by the finite. It rewards itself, it punishes itself, according to a process of automatic psychic evolution, but the fruit of the finite can itself be only finite: