Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/485

 according to their special peculiarities, each into some individual living at the time, and forming either one of Buddha's retinue, or connected with him by ties of kindred, or (if wicked) marked by hostility to his person or doctrine. Thus, the bad parts in these dramas are often allotted to his cousin Devadatta, who figures in these Scriptures as his typical opponent.

The essential doctrine of all these moral fictions—the corner-*stone of Buddhist ethics—is that every single act of virtue receives its reward, every single transgression its punishment. The consequences of our good deeds or misdeeds, mystically embodied in our Karma, follow us from life to life, from earth to heaven, from earth to hell, and from heaven or hell to earth again. Karma expresses an idea by no means easily seized. Perhaps it may be defined as the sum total of our moral actions, good and bad, conceived as a kind of entity endowed with the force of destiny. It is our Karma that determines the character of our successive existences. It is our Karma that determines whether our next birth shall be in heaven or hell, in a happy or miserable condition here below. And as Karma is but the result of our own actions, each of which must bear its proper fruit, the balance, either on the credit or debit side of our account, must always be paid; to us or by us, as the case may be.

Let us illustrate this by an instance or two. A certain prince, named Kunâla, remarkable for his personal beauty, had been deprived of his eyes through an intrigue in his father's harem. Sâkyamuni, in pointing the moral, informs his disciples that Kunâla had formerly been a huntsman, who finding five hundred gazelles in a cave, had put out their eyes in order to preclude their escape. For this cruelty he had suffered the pains of hell for hundreds of thousands of years, and had then had his eyes put out in human existences. But Kunâla also enjoyed great advantages. He was the son of a king, he possessed an attractive person, and, above all, he had embraced the truths of Buddhism. Why was this? Because he had once caused a Stûpa of a former Buddha, which an unbelieving monarch had suffered to be pulled to pieces, to be rebuilt, and had likewise restored a statue of this same Buddha which had been spoilt (H. B. I., p. 414). The truly Buddhistic spirit of this