Towards the Truth

15
ferently, it would not be that any more. If stones could fly, they
would not be stones. A stone falls because its internal composition
makes it heavier than air, and not because some external cause like
an omnipotent creator throws it down.
Applying all this to the fact of birth, or rather conception, the
explanation of the physical contact between two individuals appears
simple enough. But why should there have been any contact, if not
for a particular tendency in these two to contact one another rather
than seeking contact elsewhere?
So the differences in individuals, which cannot all be explained
by environment, and heredity, find their reason of existence in themselves.
But can a thing be its own cause? Certainly not! The cause
must exist before the effect, logically. Therefore, as the differences
appear to have been traced by scientists up to the very doorstep of
conception, we must place the cause—and that is here the internal
cause—before conception. Thus, a being must exist even before it is
born, before it has been conceived which shows the logical necessity
of a previous life the rational proof of the doctrine and the fact of
rebirth.
But as long as we try to understand rebirth as the passing of
something into something else, we are thinking of the Hindu theory
of the transmigration of a soul. Buddhism, however, is the doctrine
of soullessness. And even its teaching of rebirth does not admit of
the passing on an individual. It is the rebirth of actions with all
tendencies of reproduction.
It is again on this doctrine of a soulless rebirth, i.e. a rebirth
not of persons but of actions, that is based this Buddhist concept
of morality. Where only actions produce their natural effects, and
where there is no actor to reap the fruits of his own labour, there the
motives of morality become entirely selfless. Actions performed for
the sake of obtaining merit or bliss are based on selfishness. Actions
performed because they are commanded are based on selfishness.
Neither of them are acts of true morality. But a Buddhist practises,