Vedanta Teachings on Reincarnation – Universal Toleration -
Sin is an excerpt from an article published in 1905 in The New York Daily Tribune
– it was published by Prabuddha Bharata Magazine in December 1905.
What, then, is the message which these native Hindu teachers
bring to the Vedanta Society? They bring, first, the lesson of universal toleration
that there is truth in all religions. Vedanta points out that all are true for
their day and generation. No other position, they say, will stand logical analysis.
For, if what we believed yesterday be false because we think differently today,
then our today’s belief is equally false because we shall certainly advance
from it to another belief here after…
The Vedantists say that each successive modified belief is
part of a main stairway of progress toward the ideal, of which each particular
stair is as necessary as every other. Each individual step, from the lowest to
the highest, is necessary and important and true.
One of the most striking and essential features of the
Vedanta philosophy is what they call the law of Karma, or the law of causation.
There can be no cause whatever without an effect, nor effect without cause.
Thus, every thought of our mind, every act of our body, has its cause and will
in turn be a cause. And what one is today is nothing other than the sum of the
thoughts, desires and aspirations of one’s past.
And this leads into that other broad doctrine of reincarnation.
Cause and effect are equal. Both terms of an equation must
be equal. There is no escape.
The law is absolute. If man is immortal and is to continue
for an infinite time to come, he must have been in existence for an infinite
past time, else there is an equation that does not balance. .some human beings
live one hundred years, others only a few days. Vedanta says it is a violation
of all knowledge of the law to assume that such an ephemeral existence, such a
fleeting evanescent cause, could produce an infinite effect. Ex nihilo nihil
fit (nothing comes from nothing).
Vedanta teaches that reincarnation is the most logical explanation
of the riddle of life.
Vedantists do not ask one to believe it blindly. They have
no dogmas. They suggest merely that it be studied.
Understanding these great basic facts of Karma and reincarnation
as understood by them, one can better appreciate the great teachings of
Vedanta.
That each man has a soul, which is potentially divine.
That his soul had no beginning and will have no ending.
That it is now and always has been a part of the infinite
Spirit of the universe.
That the destiny of man is to manifest this infinite nature
which is within him, and that is what all are struggling to do, whether they
are conscious of it or not.
That there is no such thing as sin, so-called. One makes mistakes,
they say, but only through ignorance, and even these are often valuable and beneficent.
Adversity is accounted a better teacher than prosperity.
That all these petty doings of men are only part of the diversified
curriculum which all must learn before coming closer and closer to that eternal
verity, which is one’s self.