7rcTIX1xP

The Sixth Lesson: The Minor Systems.1235
carried to its extreme limits of logical conclusion—a Reductio ad Absurdum,
or reducing a proposition to an absurdity, or, in the common parlance,
“carrying a good thing too far.”
To the philosophical mind which has the inclination and time to delve
into the extreme lengths of reasoning, and speculation, indulged by these
old Purva Mimansas, the works of some of these old teachers would be
a source of the greatest joy, and it is a pity that so little of their work is
obtainable in translations. They built up a system appalling in its details, all
dealing with “the Fruits of Action.” Colebrook says of their work: “Each case
is examined and determined upon general principles, and from the cases
decided the principles may be collected. A well-ordered arrangement of
them would constitute the philosophy of law; and this is, in truth, what has
been attempted in the Mimansa.”
The real merit in the study of Karma Yoga, which is the Path of Liberty
best suited for the everyday person who has not the mind for the higher
Paths and studies, lies in the Essence of the Teachings, which is to the effect
that the “Fruits of action” may be avoided in their Karmic effect, by the
recognition of the nature of the Soul, and its relation to the Universe and
to that. This recognition leads to the understanding of the performance of
“good work, for work’s sake,” and the virtue of “performing action without
hope of reward or fear of punishment”—the observance of the best that is
in one—the doing of the best you know how, “without bribe of heaven, or
fear of hell,” from the pure joy of the doing. The Hindu teachers of Karma
Yoga point out to the student that while seeds in their natural state always
sprout and bring forth fruits, so do all actions bring forth Karmic fruits of
effect. But that as the “fried seeds” used in the Hindu cookery have the
“fruit-quality” killed within them, so are actions performed as a duty, and
right, in accordance with the highest impulses of one’s nature, and without
hope of reward or fear of punishment—so are such actions “fruitless” of a
chain of binding consequences, which attach the soul to their Karmic results
in future lives, but which, on the contrary, enable it to rise above the plane