Towards the Truth

44
for that is craving. The motive for goodness itself: to be good
for goodness sake. And if any effect follows or not that is not of
interest to a truly virtuous person. A good action will produce a
good effect; and even if the sower does not live to see his work ripen
and the fruits harvested, he will be content with the knowledge
that, as he is reaping now the good effect of deeds done in a life he
cannot remember, so the fruits of his present life will be enjoyed by
someone else, whoever he happens to be. Does this not encourage
people to do evil, as they themselves will not experience the evil
effects? In practice it does not; for nobody will inflict suffering on
another merely for his own gratification, unless he happens to be a
masochist, which places him rather in the class of abnormality and
lunacy than that of criminality.
In this connection I would like to raise the counter-question:
Should a tendency to evil not be classed as an abnormality, as a
mania? We were told that “rebellion against the will of God makes
the tendency to evil”. But why should there be rebellion, if there
were not a tendency to rebel? And if that tendency is inborn, and
forms therefore a part of one‘s nature, how can that constitute an
offence?
Thus it would appear that the natural explanation of morality
as found in Buddhism is perhaps not so sublime as the supernatural
explanation of grace and predilection as found in Christianity. But
by throwing man back on his own resources, it gives him the full
responsibility for action and reaction, for motive and effect. And
that is ultimately the standard of a person’s morality.
Where the roots are so fundamentally different, I wonder
whether the similarity of the fruits is not deceptive. A morality
based on selflessness, an ethical code in which the only wrong is
self-gratification at the cost of others even if only in thought, is
bound to produce different fruits from a morality, the only aim of
which is the salvation of a soul in order to obtain eternal bliss.
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