Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 87)

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Parts 1 to 86 were posted earlier. This is part 87. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 87

 

2) The Vindication of the Glory and Liberty of the Human Soul Lies in Placing the Burden of Responsibility on Our Own Independent Actions

[A principle which not] only all Hindus, but all Buddhists and Jains agree upon is: we all agree that life is eternal. It is not that it has sprung out of nothing, for that cannot be. Such a life would not be worth having. Everything that has a beginning in time must end in time. If life began but yesterday, it must end tomorrow, and annihilation is the result. Life must have been existing. It does not now require much acumen to see that all the sciences of modern times have been coming round to our help, illustrating from the material world the principles embodied in our scriptures. You know it already that each one of us is the effect of an infinite past; the child is ushered into the world, not as something flashing from the hands of nature as poets delight so much to depict, but he or she has the burden of an infinite past; for good or evil he or she comes to work out his or her own past deeds. That makes the differentiation. This is the law of karma. (53)

The premises from which inference is drawn of a previous existence, and that too on the plane of conscious action, as adduced by the Hindu philosophers are chiefly these:

First, how to explain the world of inequalities? Here is one child born in the province of a just and merciful God, with every circumstance conducing to his or her becoming a good and useful member of the human race; and perhaps at the same instant and in the same city another child is born under circumstances, every one of which is against his or her becoming good. We see children born to suffer, perhaps all their lives, and that owing to no fault of theirs. Why should it be? What is the cause? Of whose ignorance is it the result? If not the child's, why should it suffer for its parents' actions?

It is much better to confess ignorance than to try to evade the question by the allurements of future enjoyments in proportion to the evil here, or by posing "mysteries". Not only does undeserved suffering forced upon us by any agent is immoral - not to say unjust - but even the future-making-up theory has no legs to stand upon.