making of the universe: desires and bonds

2/15/18

“When a man begins to long for liberation, he is taught to practice “renunciation of the fruits of action”; that is, he gradually eradicates in himself the wish to possess any object;

he at first voluntarily and deliberately denies himself the object, and thus habituates himself to do contentedly without it; after a time he no longer misses it, and he finds the desire for it is disappearing from his mind.

At this stage he is very careful not to neglect any work which is duty because he has become indifferent to the results it brings to him, and he trains himself in discharging every duty with earnest attention, while remaining entirely indifferent to the fruits it brings forth.

When he attains perfection in this, and neither desires nor dislikes any object, he ceases to generate karma; ceasing to ask anything from the earth or from Devachan, he is not drawn to either;

he wants nothing that either can give him, and all links between himself and them are broken off.

This is the ceasing of individual karma, so far as the generation of new karma is concerned.

But the soul has to rid old chains as well as to cease from the forging of new, and these old chains must either be allowed to wear out gradually or must be broken deliberately.

For this breaking knowledge is necessary, a knowledge which can look back into the past, and see the causes there set going, causes which are working out their effects in the present.”

 

Annie Besant