To this question William
Judge (with the pseudonym Hadji Erinn) replied:
Karma is action. The law of Karma operates to bring about rewards as
well as punishment. The man who is now enjoying a life of ease and wealth has
obtained it through Karma; the sage who has attained to great knowledge and
power reached them through Karma; the disciple drinking the bitter drops from the
cup of failure mixed the draught himself through Karma: Buddha's great disciple
Mugallana —greater than any other— was suddenly killed, apparently in the
height of his usefulness, by robbers: it was Karma: the happy mother seeing all
her children respected and virtuous dies the favorite of Karma, while her
miserable sister living a life of shame in the same city curses God by her life
because she knows not that it is Karma.
The world itself rolls on in its orbit, carried further and further with
the sun in his greater orbit, and grows old through the cycles, changes its
appearance, and comes under laws and states of matter undreamed of by us: it is
the Karma of the world; soon or late, even while revolving in its orbit, it
will slowly move its poles and carry the cold band of ice to where now are
summer scenes, — the Karma of the world and its inhabitants.
How then shall Karma be applied only to reward or punishment, when its
sweep is so vast, its power so tremendous?
Later William Judge
added:
The following query has been received from H.M.H.:
« In August Path Hadji Erinn, in reply to the above question, stated
that "those who have wealth, and the happy mother seeing all her children
respected and virtuous, are favorites of Karma". I and others believe that
these apparent favors are only punishment or obstacles, and others think that
the terms punishment
and reward
should not be used. »
I cannot agree with this view, nor with the suggestion that punishment
and reward should not be used as terms. It is easy to reduce every thing to a
primordial basis when one may say that all is the absolute. But such is only
the method of those who affirm
and deny. They
say there is no evil, there is no death; all is good, all is life. In this way
we are reduced to absurdities, inasmuch as we then have no terms to designate
very evident things and conditions. As well say there is no gold and no iron, because both are
equally matter.
While we continue to be human beings we must use terms that shall express our
conscious perception of ideas and things.
It is therefore quite proper to say that an unhappy or miserably
circumstanced person is undergoing punishment, and that the wealthy or happy
person is having reward. Otherwise there is no sense in our doctrine.
The misunderstanding shown in the question is due to inaccurate thinking
upon the subject of Karma. One branch of this law deals with the vicissitudes
of life, with the differing states of men. One man has opportunity and
happiness, another meets only the opposite.
Why is this?
It is because each
state is the exact result bound to come from his having disturbed or preserved
the harmony of nature. The person given wealth in this life is he who in the
preceding incarnation suffered from its absence or had been deprived of it
unjustly. What are we to call it but reward? If we say compensation, we express
exactly the same idea. And we cannot get the world to adopt verbosity in speech
so as to say, "All this is due to that man's having preserved the cosmic
harmony."
The point really in the questioner's mind is, in fact, quite different
from the one expressed; he has mistaken one for the other; he is thinking of
the fact so frequently obtruded before us that the man who has the opportunity
of wealth or power oft misuses it and becomes selfish or tyrannous. But this
does not alter the conclusion that he is having his reward. Karma will take
care of him; and if he does not use the opportunity for the good of his
fellows, or if he does evil to them, he will have punishment upon coming back
again to earth.
It is true enough, as Jesus said, that "it is difficult
for the rich man to enter heaven," but there are other possessions of the
man besides wealth that constitute greater obstacles to development, and they
are punishments and may coexist in the life of one man with the reward of
wealth or the like. I mean the obstruction and hindrance found in stupidity, or
natural baseness, or in physical sensual tendencies. These are more likely to
keep him from progress and ultimate salvation than all the wealth or good luck
that any one person ever enjoyed.
In such cases —and they are not a few— we see Karmic reward upon the
outer material plane in the wealth and propitious arrangement of life, and on
the inner character the punishment of being unable or unfit through many
defects of mind or nature. This picture can be reversed with equal propriety. I
doubt if the questioner has devoted his mind to analyzing the subject in this
manner.
Every man, however, is endowed with conscience and the power to use his
life, whatever its form or circumstance, in the proper way, so as to extract
from it all the good for himself and his fellows that his limitations of
character will permit. It is his duty so to do, and as he neglects or obeys, so
will be his subsequent punishment
or reward.
There may also be another sort of wealth than mere gold, another sort of
power than position in politics or society. The powerful, wide, all-embracing,
rapidly-acting brain stored with knowledge is a vast possession which one man
may enjoy. He can use it properly or improperly. It may lead him to excesses,
to vileness, to the very opposite of all that is good. It is his reward for a
long past life of stupidity followed by others of noble deeds and thoughts.
What will the questioner do with this?
The possessor thus given a reward may misuse it so as to turn it, next
time he is born, into a source of punishment. We are thus continually fitting
our arrows to the bow, drawing them back hard to the ear, and shooting them
forth from us. When we enter the field of earth-life again, they will surely
strike us or our enemies of human shape or the circumstances which otherwise
would hurt us. It is not the arrow or the bow that counts, but the motive and
the thought with which the missile is shot.
(Path, August 1889, p.130-140;
Echoes II, p.412 / Path, February
1890, p.333-335; Echoes I, p.137-139)
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