Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s14.2.3

v1.c8.s14.2.3

The world of the fathers, as in the Ṛg-Veda, was one of the ways, but the distinction arose between the Vedic gods and their world and the way of the fathers and their world of retributive justice. We have not yet the idea of a recurrence of births in the other world and expiations for actions done on earth. But the question cannot be avoided whether the wicked suffer eternal punishment and the good enjoy eternal bliss. "To men of the mild disposition and reflective spirit of the Indians it would not appear that reward and punishment could be eternal. They would conceive that it must be possible by atonement and purification to become absolved from the punishment of the sins committed in this short life. And in the same way they could not imagine that the reward of virtues practised during the same brief period could continue for ever.” When we finish experiencing our rewards and punishments, it is suggested that we die to that life and are reborn on earth. The natural rhythm by which life gives birth to death and death to life leads us to the conception of a beginningless and endless circuit.¹ The true ideal becomes redemption from the bondage of life and death or release from saṃsāra. “He who sacrifices to the gods does not gain so great a world as he who sacrifices to the Ātman.”² “He who reads the Vedas is freed from dying again and attains to a sameness of nature with Brahman.”³ Death with birth for its cause seems to have become a thing to be avoided.