Page:The Kural or The Maxims Of Tiruvalluvar.pdf/33

 forms and a thousand shapes, tempts men even the most spiritually minded, and until that is killed once for all there is no permanent bliss for the soul. And so the killing of Desire forms appropriately the last chapter of the section on the Life of the Ascetic.

The chapter on Destiny requires some explanation. The word used by the poet is Ûj and its original meaning is old or ancient. The idea underlying the word is the accumulated unspent force of a man's actions in all his past lives. The Hindu belief is that all actions good and bad alike have, in addition to their visible physical effect in life, an invisible effect in the unseen world which transforms itself again into visible effects only later on. Using the phraseology of physical science may help a good deal to understand what we mean. Of the total force of every action of a man–including thought and word also in the word action–one part goes off as kinetic energy and that is represented by its visible effects that appear immediately the action is ended. But another part remains unspent for the time being and, whether it is much or little, it is stored up Rh