Page:Henry Mulford Tichenor - The Buddhist Philosophy of Life.djvu/6

4 bears me; my action is the race to which I am akin; my action is my refuge."

Huxley defines karma, as it relates to the processes of evolution: "In the theory of evolution, the tendency of a germ to develop according to a certain specific type, e. g., of the kidney bean seed to grow into a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus vulgaris is its 'karma'. It is 'the last inheritor and the last result' of all the conditions that have affected a line of ancestry which goes back for many millions of years to the time when life first appeared on earth."

The final refuge of all is Nirvana. Nirvana is defined as the "extinction of illusion," the "attainment of truth." This was the state that Buddha attained while still on earth. Buddha said:

"There are two aims which he who has given up the world ought not to follow after—devotion, on the one hand, to those things whose attractions depend upon the passions, a low and pagan ideal, fit only for the worldly-minded, ignoble, unprofitable; and the practice on the other hand of asceticism, which is painful, ignoble, unprofitable. There is a Middle Path discovered by the Tathagata (the Buddha)—a path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace, to insight, to the higher wisdom, to Nirvana. Verily! it is this Noble Eightfold Path; that is to say, Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Mode of Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Rapture."